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

[badongo]

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.

I think that mine is made of plastic. Maybe I can find one in a junkyard that's in ok condition. New I'll not even try.

[badongo]

So as I previously said, one of the things that I did in this truck was to fix the seats.

These seats are not original to this truck, but they are confortable and in good shape. A original seat would cost me 60€ (around 65$) + the cost of upholster it. Since this was in pretty good condition I decided to keep it.

The only problem was that the slide action was not function and the frame was indeed a bit rusted.

This was the slider that had problems, one of the plastic rollers was missing:

So I solved it with some scraps plastic parts that I'd laying around. I found an almost exact match that solved the problem:

And after some primer and paint in the seats, they're looking like new:

All the interior was almost sorted by now, there were a few things missing, like the headliner, the door panels, the ceiling light and rearview mirror, the radio and a duct pipe that orients the air from the main controller to the driver seat.
Also another thing that is missing is the plate for the shifter knob. Small details that I intend to correct in the future.

But at this time, we were almost in August 2023, and we decided to stop the interior and start working in the mechanics of the truck.
And this is still were we are by now, in May 2024. OFC some things happened along the way that couldn't allow us to work on this truck, but I believe that we are reaching the light at the end of the tunnel now.

Parts to rebuild the engine have already arrived and we are seeing some light now. But some times that it was very hard, since it is very hard to find parts and to do this without the propper tools and knowledge. I'm very glad that I found this website since there is a lot of important information here, otherwise I don't know if we could have done halft that we've done.

[badongo]

So, what I forgot to mention that we also did to this truck was to add a cabin air filter. This truck add lots of dirt inside, since it had none cabin air filter. So we managed to find a correct width and thickness filter that fitted above the blower motor, and just cutted it by length to fit. I also managed to find a new control lever in the junkyard because the one with the truck was in terrible condition (it had duct tape holding it ).
This was the old control lever:

This was the airbox and blower motor, also check the filter that we added:

I also ordered a new relay box and modern relays, to allow for ease of replaceability in the future:

At this phase we knew that we had to replace all the oil seals, including the crankshaft rear oil seal (this would be a pain ). But we dind't know that we had to do a full-engine rebuild. The first red alert was to lift the valve cover and to see this:

So we removed the head from the engine, and we found the the best thing to do, since we had to replace the crankshaft rear oil seal, was to remove the engine and dissassemble it, also remove the transmission (because there was also some problem that we didn't know what it was by now with the transfer case, since the 4L and 4H were not shifting) and probably do some honning of these cylinder liners, because they're very shinny:

We also found some more rust problems at the front bottom of the truck, so space was needed to be able to fix this:

The head removed from the engine, look at the amount of gunk, it was a miracle that this engine was still running :

Since the engine head was out of the car, the best thing to do was to dissassemble everything, clean and put new stem seals and maybe to grind the valves. Therefore, that's what we did:

And were it is, after months, finally in April 2024 this head was properly cleaned, primed and assembled back together again. The reason it took so much was because the first gasket kit we bought for this engine had no stem seals, therefore we bought another kit, since the price of just the stem seals was almost half the price of the full gasket kit. We bought a total of 3 full gasket kits , since I only found out this 4wd had a different type of sump late in the process. Still didn't manage to find the top sump gasket. I'll probably will need to make my own. But well, we'll have gaskets for future repairs if needed.

PS: The head was checked and measured, and also the valves were regrinded, unfortunately I don't have pictures of that process. The valves were a bit loose, but still inside the specs, therefore what I think is that if we have problems with the engine, the head is kind of easy to remove and to take to a machine shop to press new valve guides and put new valves on. The springs were also tested with a common scale and with my drill press (found my inspiration in this youtube video ). The springs rigidity was ok, but bear in mind that the method used for testing might not be the most accurate one.

[puttputtinpup]

Take a peak at the underside of the rockers where they contact the valve. See how worn they are. Many have wear marks in them that make it super difficult to set the clearance properly. Regrinding and hardening might best be done now if needed?

[badongo]

Take a peak at the underside of the rockers where they contact the valve. See how worn they are. Many have wear marks in them that make it super difficult to set the clearance properly. Regrinding and hardening might best be done now if needed?

Thank you, I'll do that and post a picture of them here.
I've already measured the rocker and there's a bit of play in the tunnel one of them, I was thinking of installing a bushing or something like that.

I imagine that finding new rocker arms and shafts it's nearly impossible as well, right?

[badongo]

THE STEERING SYSTEM:

There were 3 things that this old turd had in plenty, oil leaks, rust and dirt. It was an abused truck, that got a lot of repairs during it's lifetime, some good, some bad.

One of the battles was the steering system. I think that this battle was gracefully won this April. This truck has hidraulic steering, I don't know if it is from the factory, or if it was adapted, I presume that it's original but I don't know for sure. The steering gearbox was leaking badly. Therefore we had to remove it (as well as everything else from this truck ).

The next hard battle was to remove the pitman arm from the steering gearbox, in order to repair it, I tried everything, I mean, EVERY THING! I even welded a makeshift puller to see if a M12 rod and nut, along with the heat of welding, would pull it out. Nothing did it. That guy was permanently fixed there.

I didn't try a hydraulic press because at the moment I did this, I didn't have one or pretended to get one. But I think that it's possible that it wouldn't do it.

I read somewhere that for these types of old pitmans, they get stuck and the only way to remove them is by cutting them carefully along the splines. That's what I did, and it finally worked. I managed to cut very carefully, and finish the cut with a handsaw. After that, I carefully welded it back together. The splines had very minor damage, that I don't suspect that will alter the steering performance.

After that, disassembling the steering gearbox was very easy. The other hard part was to find parts. I ended up ordering them from Rockauto, because it was the best place to order a rebuild kit. Forget trying to buy seals separately, I lost a lot of time trying to find them and it's nearly (I'm an idiot) impossible. But since I'm very hard minded sometimes, the steering gearbox managed to be dissassembled almost since September 2023 untill April 2024. Also because I was ocuppied doing other things.


The steering pump had no problems at all. I just dissassembled it in order to clean it, and since the seals appear to be in good condition, I reused them (although I order a rebuild kit for the pump as well, in case things don't go as planned, I think that is easy to remove the pump and replace the seals).

Sadly I don't have pictures of the dissassembly or of the reassembly process. It's very hard to find good information about the subject of setting the screw on this steering gearboxes, but basically you need to remove the play and check the drag, that's what I did. Also, there are different color bearings inside the steering gearbox, you must put one by one, alternating the colors. This is a very important procedure and I think that it's not referred in the manual.

We've also painted everything, including the steering linkage, along with some other components, and replaced all it's boots, and packed them with new grease. Well, this was the last result:

[badongo]

ACESSORY PARTS RESTORATION:

One of the things we did in the begginig was to inspect every part we took out and try to restore it the best we could.
Here are some pictures of the parts restored:

This metal tube for the radiator hoses was in terrible shape, we were able to buy one new original ISUZU for about 35$:

We also pre-cleanead the timing gears cover:

And this hand break cable was also ready to get the truck down a hill (old vs new):

This was the state of the thermostat body assembly. There was no thermostat inside, the previous owner was using water instead of coolant (I don't know why people do that) and therefore they just removed the thermostat (I don't know why). Old vs new:

We removed the underside protective plates that were a little bit bent. I'll post a picture how they turned out, but currently I don't have none.

And dipped the coolant and powersteering fluid reservoir in an acidic solution to clean it. They didn't turn knew, but it managed to clean it a lot:

This is the new water pump, and the old underside, for comparrisson:

Next I'll show how we managed to remake the brake lines and the rest of the brake components.

[badongo]

Finally the engine block is rebuilt.
New pistons and rings, cam and con rod bearings, sleeves and cam bearings, it was very hard to do, especially the cam bearings, I needed to order 3 sets and I needed them all. But I've manage to do it and the engine and cam spin real fine.

A lot of work has been done in the meantime, I'll show the full process soon.

[puttputtinpup]

Looks good!

[badongo]

For the sake of keeping this post shorter, I'll just add the pictures and keep the rambling to a minimum.

Finally we got the engine block and the transmission fully ready to install in the truck. We'll just add the cylinder head after getting the engine block back in the truck, because otherwise it will be very hard to fit it back in the truck. At this point we have almost everything ready, lacking the fixes in the frame and cabin of the truck, painting the engine compartment and the front wheels that we are currrently rebuilding also.

We're missing 2 oil seals for the front wheels (4x4 version).

Here are some pictures, finished engine and finished transmission. The transmission was fully rebuild, almost every bearing replaced and we managed to bought another donner transmission to get the gears that were broken.

Transmission ready to mount the side case transfer assembly:

And the engine (lacking the 3 big plugs, size 44mm was too small and size 45mm plugs didn't fit, I'll need to find other plugs...