BEDFORD KBD 46 (ISUZU PICKUP 4WD) - FULL REBUILD

[badongo]

So hello guys and gals!

I bought an old BEDFORD KBD 46 (they are called that way here in Europe - Portugal to be more precise), last summer, that me and my gf are rebuilding.

This truck was very cheap. It costed us just 2000€ (around 2200$) and we bought it 213km (132 miles) away from home. The engine ran, the brakes where ok (as so I tought) and the lights worked, therefore I just asked the guy that sold it to me to tighten the alternator belt and went up my way. It still made the trip back home, but this truck was crying for help. I can't believe it didn't die during the trip. The baterry was loose, and the truck done the trip like that all the way, I only noticed that when I came home ofc (lol ).

Well, we've started by renovating the interior (that was real bad) and after that we started opening up the engine bay. We intended only to renovate the interior and repair 1 thing or 2 in the engine bay, but when we started opening up the engine we noticed the worst. The engine valves were full of sludge and we slowly agreed that a full rebuild in this truck was needed, since we had to remove the transmission because it was leaking and to pass MOT the leaks had to be repaired (also another reason why it was so cheap, because the truck was leaking from everywhere), therefore, might as well remove everything and do a full rebuild.

I'm just a guy that does this for fun and kind convinced my GF to do it with me. She's slowly liking it more and more. Therefore we improvise a lot. Please don't grumble or muble about this, it's just called problem solving as best as me and my GF can, with cheap ass tools and a LOT of improvising. I am not a mechanic, I'm an structural engineer and I do this for fun, so...

I'll share in this topic the truck's rebuild history and share some pics with you guys, hopefully I can share valuable information with someone that likes this kind of adventure too.

As well I'll try to translate everything to imperial, but please notice that we are European and that everything is in metric system here (when do you guys catch up? )

Well, hopefully we'll finish this rebuild soon, and we can share with you my final result.

Here's a picture of the truck the day we first bought it. This truck, as almost all our pick up trucks here in Portugal, has a flatbed with steel framed wood siding. This siding flips down and it's removable if I need it to be a pure flatbed.

Cheers!

[badongo]

Just out of curiosity, the day that I decided to remove the enigne, I've noticed a big end play on the crankshaft.

As an update, the manual specifies that the standard end play is 0.10mm and the limit is at 0.30mm.

Look at this, this is the endplay with new thrust washers in the engine (0.10mm):

This is the end play with the old thrust washers (0.31mm):

OFC this end play is without tightening the bearing caps, but for the sake of fulfil our curiosity, it's pretty dam precise.

My guess is that at this point, the thrust washers stop doing their function and the piston rods and Big End bearings start taking the abuse.

Amazing how precise everything is.

[badongo]

This truck was so cheap because, even being a 4WD, it had no front differential, no front driveshaft, and no CV Axles.

Finding them was a lot of pain, we called everywhere and eveyone told us that we're on mission impossible.
We bought this truck in June 2023 and we only managed to find them from an old '83 truck in January 2024.

But we found them, and here they are:

Thus, just because something is very hard, doesn't mean it's impossible.

[badongo]

Also, so that you can make fun of me, removing the engine was a huge barrier for us, since I am a slimy guy and my gf is a princess .

I also don't have a engine crane, the only thing I did have was a 100kg electric winch. This was a problem because I'd check in the manual that this engine weights more than 200kg.

I tought of screwing the engine to the ceiling, but I was afraid of damaging the ceiling .

Then was when it came to me, I could use a ladder as a truss and use it to lift the engine out of the vehicle. Also I could manage to build some pulleys and use old school Archimedes pulley advantage to remove this engine with my 100kg eletric winch:

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And so it was, this was how we removed the engine from the truck:

The transmission was removed with a 3.5ton floor jack that we bought used for around 125€ (~135$) and that we also used to lift the cabin out of the chassi (that I'll share later).

[badongo]

Please do not link this site to pics hosted elsewhere. That is how we end up with broken links. There is ample space here for your photos to be attached to your posts.

Thanks.
Jack

Hi Jack, thank you for the headsup, I dind know that it was possible to add directly the pictures. Will do so now on. Thank you.

[badongo]

This is a picture of my first "interventions", notice that I've removed the baterry because it was loose and I started tinkering about. The idea here was still to make small repairs to the truck and start using it, since the MOT was only due untill September and the truck ran fine.

As soon as I started inspecting the truck I noticed that a lot of wiring was not standard, and people messed up with the wiring. At first I didn't know that this was the startup resistor, but It was disconected. Someone updated this truck to take 12V glowplugs.

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Also the fuel gauge was not working. So one of my first jobs was to try and fix that, and this was probably the culprit, a cut wire:

Anyway, this truck also had a wrong milage count (according to MOT was 100km higher). I had to check the dash to see if everything was ok with it. So I started tinkering with it, and for sake of god everything was ok. I presume that this dash is not original to the truck and it was replaced, because this dash has no 4wd light, and it should have one.

[fen]

Nice work. Seems cv axles are usually a wear out. I don’t have 4x4 but that’does be tough to have to replace occasionally.

[JoeIsuzu]

Please do not link this site to pics hosted elsewhere. That is how we end up with broken links. There is ample space here for your photos to be attached to your posts.

Thanks.
Jack

Hi Jack, thank you for the headsup, I dind know that it was possible to add directly the pictures. Will do so now on. Thank you.

I really appreciate that you took the time to post the pics here. Thanks so much.

Jack

[badongo]

Nice work. Seems cv axles are usually a wear out. I don’t have 4x4 but that’does be tough to have to replace occasionally.

Yes, but now I'll take good care of her and hopefully they will last. This ones might have come from a truck that didn't use 4wd a lot, because they are almost brand new.

Also, if really needed I can take the old ones to a machine shop and they will build me a new pair.

Also I think that the CV axles can be bought yet, the problem was knowing what to buy without them. Now that I have them it will probably be easier.

[badongo]

As I previously said, our first endeavour was to rebuild the interior. It was stupid to do it first, ofc, but we didn't know that this would escalate to a full-rebuild. Well, that't how it goes...

The interior was awful, I even found some cockroach in the ashtray :

When I found this I decided that the correct thing to do was to remove everything and freshen the interior up, also because at this time I'd already found some rusted out areas that I needed to fix, like theese:

This was an adventure for me, since I only have a stick welder (LOL) and I'm not a very experienced welder (I'm learning...). So the end result is not the most beautiful thing, but it works.

Also, I don't have the pictures from the original interior, but this is the first one I took while I was removing things:

I've removed everything and make some patches in the interior as well. I'll probably need to revisit this cabin in the future, because some areas will probably need a new full metal plate, but for the next 5 to 10 years it needs to work this way. Also the previous owner had already made some repairs to the floors that were rusting away. I've also added seat belts because this truck had none:

Also, this truck had a severe problem, it was rusting beside the wipper motor, and water was entering the cabin. I manage to do a "repair" using hard strong metal bondo, but before that I scrubbed away all the rust, applied rust treatment product and after that an epoxy primer covered with paint. After I metal bondo it away and in the last step I'll be adding some seam sealer. I've already checked and it's not leaking anymore, even before applying seam seller.

Not the best perfect work, but it's just me and a stick welder. Give us a break.

My GF helped me doing the interior. The first thing, after welding and cleaning everything, was to add sound insulation, because this truck was loud as hell. After that we also added a new carpet, that we molded with an air dryer and a lot of brute force. And we started to reassemble the interior again, with the clean and painted components:

After this I'll continue on how we fixed the dash and the seats.

[puttputtinpup]

Looks nice! Good job. I would focus some attention on the heater core. Those are notorious for developing leaks. In the event your does leak, the floor in all it's glory will get wet with coolant. New heater cores are very hard to find, and pricy.

[badongo]

Looks nice! Good job. I would focus some attention on the heater core. Those are notorious for developing leaks. In the event your does leak, the floor in all it's glory will get wet with coolant. New heater cores are very hard to find, and pricy.

Thank you!

Yes I'll recheck it, it was very dirty and clogged up, but I'll probably disassemble the interior again after we finish the mechanics.

I also think that the "heating switch" of that heater core is not working anymore.

I'm also afraid of the oil cooler, because it can start mixing coolant with oil.

I'll probably buy a vacuum tester and vacuum test both.

[badongo]

So ofc I'm leaving much of the work out of this post, because otherwise it would be an enourmous post. I've probably dissassembled almost every part of this truck an reassembled it back together.

puttputtinpu mencioned the fact that I needed to care for the heater core, and ofc this was another battle. The heater core of this truck was disconnected, I think that either it was leaking or it couldn't turn of the heat. Either way, I know it was clogged, it took a lot of time and effort, along with radiator cleaner and some water pressure to be able to unclog this heater core. Some of the work that I did I don't have pictures or videos unfortunately.

As I previously said, this truck was probably owned back then by a handy guy in electronics, because he did a set of custom buttons to turn up the glow plugs and the horn, for example. Also there was a very handy custom module made to bypass the glow plug system. This is not what I want to do, I want to keep this truck as original as I possible can (ofc some obvious things are very difficult - like the carpet above). But here are some pictures of the cleaver electronics of this guy :

As you can see, there were a lot of custom buttons there:

Therefore I went to the trouble of "welding new plastic" to cover the holes that the previous owner did in the dash:

After cleaning it very well, I tried to restore the plastic, but that didn't go so well, after spending some time trying to sand everything and then polish, I still didn't got the look that I was hoping to get:

Therefore we decided to paint the dash. I read that if done correctly it would give a good nice finish. So I spent around 20€ (25$) in two cans of plastic spray (spray primer and then good acrylic paint). And after carefull sanding and repainting, this was the final result:

I've also spray painted the pedals with good new epoxy primer and metal black paint:

And I did some preventive maintenance in the ignition switch, new leads and some heat shrink, because this had a lot of small wires loose already. I've also labeled the ignition in order to be able to do further testing when I've to deal with electronic problems:

And I've done some speaker panels to the sides (front and back) in order to be able to add the speakers. I did this with some scrappy boards that I'd laying around and with the fabric that I pretend to use remake the top dash cover and also some more things in the interior:

Some sneak peak of the last result, with the seats installed. But in the next post I'll share how I've fixed this seats that we're not slidding. I've also lack to paint the steering wheel cover, this truck is lacking and I got it from the scrap yard along with the new heater core controller that is way much better than the original one. At this date I still need to get 1 plastic conduct that goes from the heater controller to the driver side.

[mja]

Excellent work! Looking good and keep it up

[puttputtinpup]

If your heater core flow control is made of metal (not plastic) and the ends metal (copper?)then you might be able to find a radiator shop to rebuild it. Plastic ones are junk and very prone to leaking.
A couple of members have successfully fitted a core from a 70's ford truck or bronco into that heater box. However the flow control has to be mounted remotely under the hood and separate cable operated.