Resident truck restorer Lyndsay Whittle laments the lengthy restoration project and the distractions along the way
Would you believe it? Here we are at Part 30 of what was only supposed to be a relatively simple restoration, one I would’ve expected to take 12 to 15 months at the most to complete.
This restoration was only intended to be a transitional job between the previous 1970 D Series Ford and one of the three Bedfords I had on my list of to-dos when I could ‘get around to it’ (tuit) type of situation.
The ubiquitous round ‘tuit’
I think I must’ve been conned by an old mate Mike Ozich, who I hadn’t seen for close to 30 years. His dad was Lou Ozich, a well-known West Auckland earthmoving contractor who recently passed away at the grand old age of 96, so Mike was back home from Australia to sort out his old man’s workshop, which had one of those ‘round tuit’ emblems hanging on the wall.
My old mate must’ve cottoned on to the fact that I was dragging the chain with the Dodge restoration, so he gave me the artefact in the hope it might motivate me.
Well, I’m here to tell you that, I’m still not making a lot of headway with the Dodge, although I do have some news surrounding the speedo cable I was agonising over in last month’s issue.
What revs? How fast?
Regular readers will recall that I put out a call for any assistance that could be given regarding speedo cables for RG Series Dodge.
Turns out that I didn’t even have to wait for the magazine to be published before I coincidently received not one but two phone calls from guys who had answers to a question that had yet to be put into the public arena.
The names of the two gents who came to my rescue will be familiar to anyone who’s been reading about this restoration from its inception: Kevin Healey and Noel Galloway.
The first call was from Noel who’d remembered me talking about speedometer and tachometer cables several months ago, so when he found a brand-new cable still in its sealed parts bag, he knew just who he could donate it to.
A day or so later, Kevin was on the phone to tell me that the two cables he’d previously procured for me, courtesy of the Garrity Brothers, were one half of a speedo cable and a full-length tachometer cable.
Turns out that the speedo cable comes in two halves: one that fits between the back of the gearbox and the two-speed axle changeover unit, and the other that goes between that unit and the speedo itself.
For the benefit of the uninitiated, the changeover unit allows the speedometer to register the correct speed of the vehicle regardless of the ratio selected at any given time.
I’ll be meeting up with Kev sometime soon to collect the cable but unfortunately, any story to tell about fitting it to the truck will have to wait for my next restoration story.
A not-so-small distraction
I must cut myself a bit of slack for the lack of progress on the Dodge this month, as I’ve had to spend almost every spare moment working on another one of my vehicles.
Surprise, surprise — it seems I can only be in one place at one time, so when my 1993 Daihatsu Delta tipper failed a COF check on some inner guard rust, I had to throw all my time at remedying that issue.
I know I’m meant to be writing about a 1982 Dodge restoration here, but I hope I’ll be forgiven for focusing on a truck that’s 11 years newer, if only for a couple of paragraphs.
While the Daihatsu is a bit of a gutless wonder, it’s quite a handy tool for going down the road to get a load of topsoil, bark, or aggregate, so I’m trying to keep it on the road for a wee while.
The rust the testing station found was in an unbelievably inaccessible place, and I knew from the beginning that the job at hand was way above my pay scale, so I set at the task with full knowledge that by doing the job myself, I could well be signing the truck’s death certificate if I got it wrong.
With VTNZ’s 28-day timeline for completing a repair, I knew I’d never get a professional to carry out the work in the time allocated. So there was only one option left: I had to tackle the job myself.
Fast forward just under three weeks and we were back at the testing station packing oneself, only to find that the repairs passed muster, and we came out the other end with another six months before we have to go back and face it all again.
Spot the ruse
The adroit reader, of course, will immediately detect the smokescreen contained in the previous four paragraphs as being nothing more nor less than an elaborate ruse to re-direct attention from the fact that not much has been achieved this month on the RG13 Dodge restoration.
Where to next?
So, it’s with a bunch of apologies to the faithful readers, many of whom have become close friends, that I’m currently considering the future course of the regularity of my restoration stories.
There have been times in the past when I’ve found difficulty in getting through enough work to try to make an interesting story. The D Series Ford was a classic case where I had to place its finalisation on hold while the brakes got sorted, which did happen eventually.
Coincidently, it’s a braking problem that’s causing great delays with the Dodge, aside from the recent Daihatsu issue.
To that end, the Ed and I have decided to monitor the situation over the next couple of months, as I have enough work in the pipeline to carry on the tradition of the past 12 years of providing a monthly update.
While I’m on the subject of possible future restorations, I’d appreciate some feedback as to whether there’d be any interest from the community at large in reading about another Bedford restoration, as I have a 1955 A5, a 1955 A3, and a 1955 S Model that are potential candidates.
Images by Lyndsay Whittle