Scrubworks Fleet: 1993 Mitsubishi Pajero 2.5 SWB

[Scrubworks]

4 hours ago, MrBig said:

Anyway, I shall be following this with interest. Always had a soft spot for these, and growing up South Bucks there were a lot of these around (as has already been mentioned). The rust scares me off having one nowadays, but it sounds like @Scrubworks has the skills to eliminate such fears.

Thinking about it I'm pretty sure a couple of teachers at my school had them too, although they weren't as nice as Mrs Frost's Oak Green Mk2 16v Golf GTi 😁

Bodywork/welding skills only get you so far. You need to accept the Sisyphean drudgery of cutting, welding, cutting again, lying on your back, ruining your clothes with weld spatter, arsing about with primer, paint, filler, and all the rest of it. I'm well beyond that point 😛. I've been finding this much easier to do bodywork on than a normal car, because by its nature as a body-on-chassis 4x4, it has significantly more ground clearance and space under the body.

As for advertising your work, if you guys make quality shit for a decent price, especially if you're a domestic firm, then absolutely let us know you're open for business. The two main barriers to keeping stuff like this on the road are being arsed to fix them, and getting the right parts. Without parts available I have to resort to adapting more readily-available stuff, or paying to have things custom made. OEM genuine parts if they're available are great, as I can be assured of quality and fitment, but if there's viable cheaper aftermarket alternatives I am 100% for that.

[Scrubworks]

Have been a little busy with various things, but I've made some progress.

I decided I couldn't be arsed to do the welding at first, so I changed tack to getting things done in the engine bay. I ended up removing nearly all the front; headlights, grille, and all the radiators. There are four of them, rad, AC condenser, and two oil coolers, one for the trans, one for the engine. I also removed a few items from the engine bay, including the air box and the second battery tray, to clean them up and repaint.  Whilst clear of things, the front of the engine bay has been degreased and rusproofed, and I've also given the front end of the chassis a repaint, as best I can. The timing belt, water pump and thermostat have also been changed.

I then had my time wasted for three weeks by a radiator supplier. I asked him to find me a Mahle-replacement condenser. He forgot for two weeks. I asked him again. He forgot for a third week. I asked him again. He phoned me back 10 minutes later to tell me he couldn't get one. The next time you go to a motor factors, and see a mechanic throttling the parts guy to death behind the counter, be rest assured he deserved it.
The alternative is to have a custom condenser fabricated, which would be about £500. Since my existing condenser is a bit tatty, but seemingly still airtight, I've elected to give it a spruce-up and reuse it for now. I'll need to have the AC system vacuumed to see if it actually holds pressure, but I'll burn that bridge when I come to it. I have a new dryer as well, which thankfully was only £20.

I've also had a nice faff about with these two steel lines for the trans cooler:

One of them is nearly rusted through, and the other one isn't far behind. They were listed on Amayama as still being available from Mitsubishi, but after a stock check, unfortunately one of them is now discontinued. I decided instead to get a local tuning/custom car shop to make me a pair of hard lines out of stainless steel. Shouldn't be too hard with the old lines to use as a pattern, right? I tried four different places, including a place that builds literal track cars. Their responses can be summed up as "No", "No", "Uhh, no", and "No". Absolutely spiffing.

If you want something done right AT ALL, you have to do it yourself:

I bought a 2 metre length of 3/8 stainless line and a basic tubing bender. The lines I made don't exactly pattern the orignals, but they are more or less the same, and, crucially, start and end in the same places. Not bad for a first go with stainless, which is many times harder to bend than copper or cupro-nickel. To fit the rubber push-on hoses, I've bought some barb fittings which will have to welded on at either end, but I should be able to persuade someone to do that for me. I'll make some securing tabs that can then be attached to the line via clamping force using a 10mm bolt, which will negate the need to weld them on, and make them adjustable. Altogether, a bit more expense and bother than the originals would have been, but these will last forever. Once I equip my MIG welder in the future to be able to weld stainless, I should be able to do stainless hard lines entirely on my own for just about any application.