James' MK Patrols (The Three Amigos)

[james008]

Been a while since I've been around here.

Good to see Old Yella isn't just rotting away in someone's backyard. Hope she serves you well Nezzy.

I thought I'd give a one year update on my white car... but there's not much to update.
I've had one mudflap fall off, and I bought a factory 130L long range tank. These seem very rare as this is the only one I've ever seen for sale. Other than that the old SD is still chugging away getting closer to the 400,000km mark (398 now)

[james008]

Thought I should give another update for those who stumble upon this thread.

Nothing too major has happened... I fixed up some rust, fitted a VDO boost gauge and EGT gauge, boost controller and a UHF radio. I have a dual battery wiring kit waiting to be installed too, just need to source a second battery tray for that.
The old girl ticked over 400,000km early in 2015 too, up to 408,000km now and she still runs like clockwork. The old SD is a great engine.



The rust was worse than it looked from the outside, so I ground back and covered what I could in rust converter. Unfortunately I'm guessing the whole inner panel is rusty... If any more rust pokes through I think I'll have to get it professionally cut out and welded up.


First coat on, a few imperfections including some bugs that decided to fly into the wet paint. Unfortunately I forgot to take any more photos after this point.

[Bloodyaussie]

James ya still about mate... good stuff.

[mudski]

Nice work mate. The MK shorties I absolutely love. I had an 86 Silver MK shortie. Anniversary Edition it was so it had full cloth trim, even in the canopy, the canopy was metal, not fibre glass, AND it had factory suspension seats. Not to mention all the mods done on it. I stupidly sold the car. I hunt around on Carsales and what not every week looking to for it. as I would snap it up again. I suppose it was first first, true love for Patrols....

[james008]

James ya still about mate... good stuff.

Sure am mate!
How ya been mate?

Nice work mate. The MK shorties I absolutely love. I had an 86 Silver MK shortie. Anniversary Edition it was so it had full cloth trim, even in the canopy, the canopy was metal, not fibre glass, AND it had factory suspension seats. Not to mention all the mods done on it. I stupidly sold the car. I hunt around on Carsales and what not every week looking to for it. as I would snap it up again. I suppose it was first first, true love for Patrols....

I remember seeing a couple of photos of your old MK that you posted, she looked like a beauty If you still have the chassis number, you could punch that into Vicroads and that'll let you know if its still on the road.
I've been waiting for an anniversary model to pop up so I can snap it up, they're very uncommon unfortunately... They were the first appearance of the fully trimmed interior, suspension seat and steel canopy on the shorties too. GL models later got that gear, which both of my '86 shortys are. The silver shorty has a fantastic interior in near new condition, unfortunately the white shorty isn't so great, a lot of the original interior is damaged or missing. I'd like to re-trim it at some point.

[mudski]

Here she is, pre 2inch body lift, 2inch spring lift and 33's on black sunnies. Mate if i ever found it i would snap it up straight away....
uploadfromtaptalk1434722991852.jpg

Sent from my SM-P600 using Tapatalk

[james008]

I'm on eBay, Gumtree and Carsales almost every night, I'll have to let you know if I find it!

[james008]

I have spent the last couple of weekends stuffing around with the rear drums, and safe to say they are driving me insane.
For whatever reason the adjuster bracket will not latch properly on the RHS, and one of the drums continually adjusted too tight (they are auto adjusting drums) causing dragging, squealing and very easy locking of the rear wheels for the first few rotations of the wheels and while braking. I believe I was able to rectify the latter issue today.

The constant stuffing around, sub par performance and the fact that the drums will soon need to be machined and the shoes replaced has me looking very seriously at a disc conversion for the rear. At this stage I'm looking at using a Jackeroo disc and GQ rear caliper. The jackeroo disc is almost identical to the GQ disc, except the center hole, which is better suited to the MQ axle, and due to the GQ and MQ/MK sharing the same front pads and discs I don't believe I'll have any issues with the rear brakes overpowering the fronts.

[james008]

Not much has been happening with the old girl, but I gave it a service and fixed up my catch can today, I knew when I got it that it would be pretty crap as it cost something like $25 off ebay when I got it. It was enough to make the RWC bloke happy but it was soon apparent how crap it really was - after 2 years it had at most 50ml of oil in it and I know there was much more that escaped it as it was filthy due to inadequate sealing and there was significant amounts of oil bypassing it as there is oil residue on my boost controller.
Before I shell out the money for a decent catch can I figured I would see if i could fix this one and maybe save myself some money, so I cleaned it up and pulled it apart.



This is the top 'lid' with the barbs removed, as shown there is absolutely no separation between inlet and outlet and no filter material.



As I could not find a reasonable method of installing a baffle I thought this was the next best thing, I had some old hose laying around that was a perfect fit inside the inlet barb. It was already a fairly tight fit but I smeared some sealant around the area anyway just to make sure.



I cut the hose to length, then filled the catch can with steel. When reassembling the catch can I used sealant on the top and bottom lids to prevent oil leaking out of here again.



Reassembled and ready to install again. The catch can is mounted on an L shaped bracket and held in place with a large hose clamp, the L bracket bolts up to the same mounting points as the pre-filter. I mounted here because it keeps the catch can in a fairly inconspicuous location, allows the breather hoses to be kept fairly short and still allows easy access.

All up this cost me nothing as the steel wool and hose were things I found in the shed.
I realise this setup will not work as well as a decent catch can like a Provent as there is still no baffle between the filter and catchment areas, but unfortunately I had to fill the entire catch can with steel wool (2 pads) as 1 pad would just slip down to the bottom. Looking back on it now I also wonder if I made the hose too long running to the bottom of the catch can as it will be submerged in oil before too long. Time will tell I suppose, I may modify again and try to fit a baffle in there or I might just ditch it and get a decent catch can but this will still be an improvement over what I started with.

[james008]

I've gone and bought another shorty....
5th Patrol, and my 5th shorty. Might have to go for an LWB or ute next to mix it up a bit, but I probably shouldn't be thinking about that right now since there's currently 6 Patrols between my old man and I, 5 of which are on our property!

This one is a 1985 in silver, decent paint aside from a few scratches, there are a few dings on the body that I;ll try and fix up. Engine is an N/A SD33 backed by a 5 speed, it was originally an SD33T, but that engine has a flogged out keyway which I am contemplating repairing, since it appears to be an otherwise good engine... that and a 4 speed box+xfer case were included in the sale.
Interior is in overall good shape, the seats have no tears in fabric, and the rear seat in particular looks quite good, the carpets are dirty with a few stains but they should come up okay with a good clean. Some parts of the dash are quite sun damaged though and will require attention. There are a few extras which I will be keeping regardless of whether I keep or sell the car: the rear bar with wheel carrier (I have a body mounted one currently that rattles the tailgate a lot), the A/C (never had a car with A/C before, except the silver L28, but that didn't work) and the LED light bar, I think its a cheapy but its better than what I have now which is a pair of ancient magnum spotties that are no improvement over my high beams.

Pic time!


Looks nice in the sun I reckon


Original Radio! With Stereo AND FM!

The worst of the body damage, caused by the spare tyre opening into the body.