Rickman Rancher project thread - sleeping shite

[Mally]

All looks good to me, can't think why I sold my Rickman.

But I've done 20 times the mileage in the 75, so there must be a reason.

[Felly Magic]

That does really look a nice and tidy little campervan, well bought, even if it does have OMFGHGF, it will be a simple job to sort on a Pinto, swapping the water pump, cambelt and tensioner to make sure things are OK would be a wise precaution

[somewhatfoolish]

Marine ply is a fine material for building units with but leaving the edges untrimmed like that means if they get bashed there's a good chance you'll raise skelfs and get splinters. Some hardwood beading is probably the cheapest and easiest way of preventing it, or there are metal trims you can get for finishing. Splendidly shite motorhome and most excellent price!

[groovylee]

Interested in what the "FS" warning light is for? Does it have a blown head gasket warning light somewhere else, marked "FFS"?

 

Following thread with interest!

 

from what I have figured out so far, it is (disappointingly i might add) for the Front Spotlights.  boring but true.  i may add another F later

[Arthur Foxhake]

My God.

 

Nobody I know would know what I know about knowing how cool this is. But I know and you know it's cool.

 

Top Shiteing there.

[stuboy]

wonder if i can get one instead of a 7 seater..

[barefoot]

Would it be worth fitting revolving 'Captains' chair mounts to the front seats to open up a bit more space

or are the cushiony things hard up against them?

[groovylee]

Would it be worth fitting revolving 'Captains' chair mounts to the front seats to open up a bit more space

or are the cushiony things hard up against them?

cusiony things are hard up against them.  also, you can't see in the pics, but the bed extends over the top of the front seats, so they have some sort of funky double runner things to enable that.  otherwise it would be a great idea

 

Lee

[groovylee]

sorry for the thread resurrection, but things have been ridiculous, both at home and at work, so I have been a bit of a social hermit of late

 

lots has happened since the last update on this, and not all good....

 

compression tester arrived, and we duly tested the engine. No. 3 cylinder was way down compared to the rest, so we duly pulled the head to take a look at the gasket.  nothing untoward was found, so i made sure that the valves on cylinder three were closed, and poured some paraffin into the combustion chamber.

 

lo and behold, it absolutely p***sed through the exhaust valve.

 

so off went the head for some TLC at a local trusted cylinder head dude.  the verdict was that the exhaust valve seats were badly recessed, the cam had been starved of oil at some point as the bearings were picking up on the 'shaft, the spray bar was pretty much knackered, and a few of the rocker arms had seen better days.

 

so, £500 and a few weeks later, we were furnished with a nicely skimmed head, with new camshaft, bearings, rockers, hardened exhaust valve seats, valve seats recut, and new valves lapped in.  they even cleaned it and painted it for us.  top boys.

 

next up was refitting everything - this went fine. new head (and other associated) gasket, and new head bolts.  a new thermostat also went in.  

on first turn over (plugs out, fuel not connected) we simply could not get the oil pressure light to go out.  we removed the dissy, and got a long hex drive on a drill down to the oil pump.  it felt awful!  something clearly wasn't right, so anew oil pump was ordered.  'this'll be easy' - a few bolts and robert's your mothers brother.... 

 

wrong.

 

unlike the kent engine, where its oil pump is on the outside, the pinto is inside. in the sump. FFS.

 

so, TCAs disconnected, engine hoist holding the lump up, engine mounts undone, cross member removed, sump removed, and finally, theres the pump.

except it uses ribe bolts, not torx. and my bits are too short. could this go any more wrong??!!  bits ordered from amazon prime, and next day the pump is swapped out.  the old ones drive shaft had parted company with the rotor part, and was only spinning the pump intermittently.

 

with the new pump in, and everything refitted, all was well!

 

we've since been up to stoneleigh for the kit car show in May, and it ran like a dream.  a few teething niggles with fridges, but otherwise perfect!

 

ill get some up to date pics in a bit

 

cheers for reading!

 

Lee

[Mally]

Good to know it's alive and well.

I used to go to Stoneleigh every year, but it's not the show it used to be, when there were a million Duttons about.

[groovylee]

agreed, I am having a right time getting sufficient numbers from the OC to even hold an official AGM at stoneleigh

 

there is soon to be another rancher outing - this time involving some of the original Rickman moulds, and unfortunately, a reciprocating saw or two...

 

i'll update with pics when we have done the deed - probably the 9th of september or so.

 

Lee

[groovylee]

wow, just came across this thread that i had forgotten i started!

the good news is that the engine work went well, and the Rancher has been doing sterling service for the last few years. until now....

it seems i may have had a small incident on the way to the edinburgh trial  

so it looks like there will be a new rebuild thread. i'll try to keep this one updated this time!

i just hope its all repairable, or my parents will disown me.

pics to follow

[groovylee]

[High Jetter]

It looks v. sad, hope you can make it smile again. What's happened to the NSF wheel?

[groovylee]

17 minutes ago, High Jetter said:

It looks v. sad, hope you can make it smile again. What's happened to the NSF wheel?

strangely the nearside strut snapped at the bottom! I can't figure out why at this point, but needless to say they will both be getting replaced.

[catsinthewelder]

The back of that wobblebox is surprisingly solid.  I'd have thought you'd have gone straight through it with a bull bar.

Best of luck with the repairs.

[groovylee]

true to form, ive been awful at updating this thread. sorry!

so, to bring things up to date:

got a quote to repair the existing bonnet and front end. basically got told that the labour involved would be rather high, and the whole job could run into thousands. the guy did say that i could likely do it myself as my time is 'free', and he would happily advise as i went. so that was the new plan.

in the meantime, i put out a request in the owners club magazine for anyone selling either the space ranger front end, or (highly unlikely) a rancher front end. that went in just before xmas...

Xmas eve, i get an email from a lovely gent, who has a whole front end he is willing to sell me for £100. never fitted! ive never driven to leatherhead so fast 🤣

picked this up:

and promptly test fitted it

[groovylee]

as you can see, the colour was a bit of a mismatch. in true autoshite fashion, rather than look for the correct colour code, we decided to smash a bigger socket over it, or in this case, find the closest match in smooth hammerite...

a suitable spray booth was constructed in the garage, the required holes were cut out of the bodywork, and we set to work with my ancient cheapo spray gun, and some cream hammerite... WCPGW?

[groovylee]

as it happens, not a lot went wrong. i mean, its no mirror finish, but it is as good as the rest of the car, and a pretty decent match to be honest.

we fitted the headlamp bowls, and offered up the front end

 

not too shabby if i say so myself!

A lot of things then got in the way of progress. crappy weather, trials, kids stuff, holiday. you all know the drill.

so it sat under a cover for a few months until we could muster the enthusiasm to get back to it.

[groovylee]

and get back to it we did!

new headlights, sorted out the wiring under the bonnet, new bonnet badge.

we found that the replacement radiator was a little inadequate to keep the original rather obstructive grille, so we did what had been done to the old front and opened up the grille and replaced with some stainless mesh.

and here she is in all her glory at the Malvern Kit car show at the beginning of the month.

not looking too sad at all, and im finally off the hook for smashing it up in the first place!

 

thanks for reading. hopefully there wont be too many updates to this thread now. well, not of my own making anyway!

 

Lee