A Dodge, A Kangaroo & A ZT260

[stirlingmg]

The Dodge

Last October I was approached by a well known North East haulier to have a look at their vintage Dodge & see if I could “tune it up a bit”
Their workshops had been meddling with it & they couldn’t get it to run right. I popped across to see what the issue was & it would start eventually on full choke, but wouldn’t run without it. I photographed the carb & got them to email me the section from their very precious little handbook so I could swot up first.
Then life took a bit of a turn when I lost my Dad at the end of October & I put it to the back of my mind.
I got a gentle reminder over Christmas so I started looking into it again. My photos & the pictures of the carb in the book didn’t match & I discovered it had a different carb fitted, it should have a Carter which to be honest I’d never heard of but instead it has a Solex “self starting” carb fitted. The little truck is ultra low mileage having only covered about 30,000 miles, so I can only assume it was replaced due to corrosion rather than being worn out.
The trouble with this little truck is there is very little info on the web on either it or the carb. Luckily with some persistence I found some genuine Solex leaflets for sale on eBay, so I bought them & set to work.
On my first visit I removed the carb, quickly stripped it & found it to be pretty clean inside, but with the lack of any compressed air I couldn’t blow it through. I refitted it & then had a look at the ignition side of things & found the points, cap & rotor to be in very poor condition. I reported back to my contact & he said he would search for the bits.
A week or 2 later he got back in touch & said
“I’m struggling to find anything, would you mind trying?”
Well that’s right up my street so I searched & searched, but was having very little success, then I found a UK based American car specialist who listed the right brand of ignition bits (Autolite), so I contacted him with my requirements. He came back to me & said if I could get the serial number off the distributor he would probably be able to help.
I managed to photograph it in situ & get a legible number & got back to him & he was able to supply the lot.
In the meantime I removed the carb again & took it across to my workshop, where I exploded it, blew it out & reassembled it. I went back & refitted it & the difference was instant, it started so much better & would run off choke.......after a fashion😆
Then when my ignition stuff turned up, I spent a Sunday afternoon across there fitting them & again had excellent results.
Then it ran out of petrol🙄 I left it a few weeks as other projects were taking up my time, but I went back on Sunday armed with 5 gallons of “sports petrol” & tipped it in............well most of it, the rest ended up all over me & the floor😆 After leaving it for 20 mins to evaporate I went back & once the fuel pulled through, it started instantly & after a minute ran by itself without choke. I then manoeuvred it out of it’s hole & took it up & down the lane half a dozen times & it seems to drive really well.

[stirlingmg]

[stirlingmg]

The Kangaroo

Well Renault Kangoo actually😆
Back in January last year I went to Sheffield & got this little wheelchair accessible Kangoo, so we could take my Dad out instead of him being stuck in the house all day every day. He had dementia & had lost the use of his legs, it seems the signals weren’t getting through.
It’s a proper low mileage little thing & is in very nice condition, though the ramp needed tidying. The section visible between the rear bumpers was getting quite scruffy & I was always planning to tidy it up. Sadly now we have no further use for the little van so I started prepping it to sell. I intended cleaning the scruffy bits off the ramp & giving it a coat of stonechip & some black paint but unfortunately the panel was absolutely rotten. I took it off & had our local metalworks fold me a new one up. I then squeezed some rivnuts into it, painted it & bolted it on. I have given the whole van a deep clean & it is now ready to put on eBay.

[stirlingmg]

The ZT260

I’ve owned this car since 2011, I bought it as a Cat D write off from a local salvage yard. The damage was minimal requiring nothing more than a bumper, a headlight & an air box, but cost/availability of parts rendered it beyond economical repair in the eyes of the insurance company.
It doesn’t get used a great deal & has actually been laid up since August 2019. Unfortunately it sat outside on my drive all of last year which has taken it’s toll a little bit. The car is still perfectly sound underneath but the subframes & suspension components have started to look quite scruffy, so I’ve set about it. The first job was to remove the front bumper to replace the air filter.........yes I know, it’s a crazy idea but that was the only place they could put it.



As a result this job does quite often get overlooked...........guilty as charged yer honour😳



I’ve also made a start on the front brakes, it just needs new discs & pads & the calipers cleaned & painted, oh & a couple of brake pipes.
I’ve opted for M-Tec discs & mintex pads as I did with my Volvo recently. The rear brakes will get new pads & the discs cleaned up..........at nearly £500 a pair it’s certainly not getting new ones😆 & they’re plenty thick enough to take a good skim if needed.
I think I’ll probably drop the whole subframe out of the back & give it a proper clean up, I always intended doing it but you know how it is🙄

[Steed]

Well done! and lovely looking truck