where do I start.
On Sunday night I shut up the servo where I work at 7:30 and stuffed around a bit, got organized and headed towards Warwick/Killarney where my parents have a 160 acre farm for three days off. I pulled in to Allora BP at about 10:20 for a top up of fuel and a drink and then kept going towards Cunningham's Gap. I got about five minutes up the road when I heard a noise brrrrrBRRRRRRBUDABUDABUDA BANG! the tread separated on my passenger rear tire. Yay. I had gotten two new BF Goodrich radial tyres for the back of my baja a week earlier. Well, one was a 2nd hand one with 95% tread and the other was a new one that was old stock. The new old stock one blew. Of course I was in the middle of nowhere on the side of the road at 10:30 at night with no mobile reception and only a farm house about 200 meters up the road in sight.
However when I was walking up the driveway to the farmhouse I notice on my mobile that I got ONE bar of reception if I stood in one spot in the driveway. So I got a 20 second message through to my Dad who was already at the farm and then the mobile dropped out. So I had two and a half hours sleep in the back of my baja before Dad arrived in the fourby with some old wheels off my brother's baja. So I finally got to the farm at about 1:30 as I couldn't cruise at 100k's cause the tires were taller.
Then I spent my three days off doing whatever I liked and we fixed my wiring, headlights and power system. So on Thursday morning I headed off that morning to get home in time for work. Half an hour later I’m sitting on the Cunningham Highway at about 90-95 cruising along no problems. Overtaking vans and trucks up hills and going really well. Then on a long up hill the 1641 starts to strain, and struggle and I smell burning. I immediately pull over and as I stop it dies. I run out and feel the dipstick- not burning hot. Though there is smoke coming off the engine from oil or something. I try to turn it over by hand already knowing that it’s seized. Yay. Luckily this time I had good mobile reception and had to wait a hour and a half to get towed back to the farm. So I missed out on work that night and after doing some other stuff we left at 6:00 that night to head 2 ½ hours home and pick up 2 motors some parts and tools and drive all the way back. We got back to the farm at 1pm. The next day was spent pulling out my motor and then having EVERY possible thing going wrong. We decided to use my $150 1300 as the old 1200 wasn’t really ours and it didn’t push my baja around very well. So after swapping over all the better parts onto the 1300 we put it in…and it didn’t fit. The flywheel which was the same size as mine didn’t fit because it was in better condition than mine and didn’t have about 2mm worn off of it. So after stuffing around trying to get it to fit we decided to swap the flywheel from the 1200 onto it. Then we realised that we had left our big socket set at home and didn’t have a 34 mm for the flywheel gland nut. Shit. We then spent a couple of hours grinding the nuts down to 32mm and swapping them over. Then we noticed that we left the special spindle to align the clutch properly at home. Shit, More time was spent pulling apart a gearbox to get a spindle out. By this time it was late afternoon and we had a new tank arrive and that took a couple of hours to set up. When we got the flywheel and clutch sorted and the engine in we found that it ran but only with the throttle a 1/3 out. Yay vacume leak. We spent another couple hours trying to fix it without success and finished at 11:00pm.
Saturday: I had to work that night from 1:00pm till ten and we couldn’t do any more on the manifold till we got home. We drove nearly three hours to Brisbane straight to work. While I worked Dad went home and found and brazed up all the holes in the manifold. There was enough to suck your finger onto it. Then he picked me up from work and we drove straight back up to the farm and got the at 1:30.
Sunday: I had to work the next day (Monday) so this was sort of our last chance to get it going. Fitted the manifold which had shrunk slightly from the brazing and we had to bend to fit, put the shroud, alternator, and everything else back on and found that the carby had stripped studs and you could move it with your hands- another big vacume leak. Rebuilt carby, left tap and die set at home, found another carby and swapped the best bits over and came up with one good one. Put it on and started the engine. Had problems timing it as timing equipment was left at home and we had to use a test light that only worked half the time. Yay. I left at roughly three in the afternoon to head home while Dad stayed back to clean up and organize the exploded parts shop that was our shed. Had no problems home engine ran perfectly.
Conclusion: So I got another three days off at the cost of an engine, a new tyre and lots of time and sweat. Dunno why the 1641 seized till we split the case and have a look. There was no obvious reasons. Dad and I have decided that NO MORE work at all will be done on my baja other than maintenance and consumable parts untill my next one is on the road. I’ve sort of lost faith in the type 1 motor as I’ve never had one that wasn’t a pain in the ass. But I still WILL NOT go down the jap conversion road, that’s not for me. Not my thing.
Boozer ·