1985 Bedford CF
Discussion
I bought my first CF, a SWB twin sliding door van in 2013 from Norfolk. I drove it almost all the way home to West Wales (it broke down 20 miles from home), fixed it and dailies it for a year until it failed its MOT spectacularly on welding. It was so rotten I decided to buy a bare shell to transplant the running gear in to from a lovely, slightly eccentric couple in the Midlands who were having a clear out before HS2 was due to come straight through their home ..
So, this shell was really straight, only needing a small amount of welding to the cab floor and and the bottom of the rear arches. It was originally a minibus but someone had done a lovely job of welding the rear windows up using so little filler that you couldn t even see the joins on the inside.
I bought it 4 months before my 3rd child was due with a view to doing a quick turnaround, turning it into a crew van and using it as my family bus. Barnaby is just about to turn 10 and I haven t got around to the engine yet
Anyway, having welded the shell up and converted the standard drivers door to a slider, I rebuilt the front and rear suspension - all powder coated, poly bushed, new shocks, brakes all renewed including bigger calipers from a Land Rover and various other small mods to make getting parts in the future easier. I bolted it all on and sent it to a customer of mine for a bare shell respray in Vauxhall Polar white with signal yellow, star silver 3 and dolphin grey stripes
As you may have worked out all this lovely work took longer to sort than I wanted so in the absence of a Bedford to take my new born son home, I bought KO06XFC - the ex-Top Gear cheese hauling E63 wagon for family duties .. because of this new daily, I didn t need an economical engine so I went more left field with the replacement engine .
A BMW M70 V12 from a 750 I broke years ago . Now I d originally fitted a senator 12v Goldtop engine, good for 200hp, which I d heavily modified to fit the original ZF box, but it s such a comically long engine I couldn t make the coolant system and ancillary drive work nicely so the V12 was thrown in
In preparation for this I made a 40 gallon fuel tank, with the aim being to get to Scotland without stopping for fuel. A mate drew up a bellhousing adaptor in CAD, I mocked up engine mounts etc BUT then someone offered good money for the lump and I flogged it ..
In the meantime I was playing with interior choices . One of my other Bedfords had two rows of Airbus seats fitted, with Senator fronts seats trimmed in blue leather to match. They were nice but not quite what I wanted. Another upholsterer friend then offered me some scabby but useable front seats from a Conti GT which had been rewired to get rid of the ECUs. They ll be retrimmed in grey leather with a Bedford flying B embroidered into the headrests a la Bentley. When I first started the project I mentioned 3 children. By the time I d decided on seats I had to factor in another baby which meant a third row, then I lost my wife and the project was shelved for a while .
That brings us to a year ago when, after reconnecting with my childhood sweetheart, I decided to restart the project .
So, remember those seats? I needed another two for my sweethearts kids now . This is getting silly. To aid ingress and egress I dug out a fairly rare side loading door from my spare s stash which I m planning on fitting to the NS. All the seats will be mounted on Unwin rail so they can be removed quickly and the van used as I had originally intended - for lugging stuff about. I m using a pic of the original DTV race vans to make a humongous roof rack which I can mount my roof tent and side and rear awnings to turning it from a day van to a van that can sleep 4 in bunks in the back, two in the roof tent and two in the side awning so my expanding family can all be catered for. It ll look something like this
Now that I had decided on the bodywork and interior jobs to sort, I started looking at engines. One of my old vans was a Viano V6 CDI which was probably as close to driving a train as I m gonna get. I had my eye on an older 6 cylinder Merc diesel, either OM606 or V6 but the former is a little pricier than I wanted to pay, the latter has many wiring issues I havent t got the head to fix.
One of the guys who works for me suggested a BMW M57 and he happened to know of an E46 for sale with one fitted, with less than 100k on the clock, so I bought it. That s where I am now - waiting for the Beemer to be delivered so I can start the transplant. There s a company who offer all wiring, ECU mods etc off the shelf. I can make it work for about £1500 including the donor car. For that I ll have 200hp with plenty of scope for more, I reckon I ll easily get 30mpg (remember my 40 gallon fuel tank!) and I should have another 100k in the engine before it needs looking at. I ll update once I ve started the conversion but before that I need to get cracking on my VX220 which is another thread I need to start
So, this shell was really straight, only needing a small amount of welding to the cab floor and and the bottom of the rear arches. It was originally a minibus but someone had done a lovely job of welding the rear windows up using so little filler that you couldn t even see the joins on the inside.
I bought it 4 months before my 3rd child was due with a view to doing a quick turnaround, turning it into a crew van and using it as my family bus. Barnaby is just about to turn 10 and I haven t got around to the engine yet
Anyway, having welded the shell up and converted the standard drivers door to a slider, I rebuilt the front and rear suspension - all powder coated, poly bushed, new shocks, brakes all renewed including bigger calipers from a Land Rover and various other small mods to make getting parts in the future easier. I bolted it all on and sent it to a customer of mine for a bare shell respray in Vauxhall Polar white with signal yellow, star silver 3 and dolphin grey stripes
As you may have worked out all this lovely work took longer to sort than I wanted so in the absence of a Bedford to take my new born son home, I bought KO06XFC - the ex-Top Gear cheese hauling E63 wagon for family duties .. because of this new daily, I didn t need an economical engine so I went more left field with the replacement engine .
A BMW M70 V12 from a 750 I broke years ago . Now I d originally fitted a senator 12v Goldtop engine, good for 200hp, which I d heavily modified to fit the original ZF box, but it s such a comically long engine I couldn t make the coolant system and ancillary drive work nicely so the V12 was thrown in
In preparation for this I made a 40 gallon fuel tank, with the aim being to get to Scotland without stopping for fuel. A mate drew up a bellhousing adaptor in CAD, I mocked up engine mounts etc BUT then someone offered good money for the lump and I flogged it ..
In the meantime I was playing with interior choices . One of my other Bedfords had two rows of Airbus seats fitted, with Senator fronts seats trimmed in blue leather to match. They were nice but not quite what I wanted. Another upholsterer friend then offered me some scabby but useable front seats from a Conti GT which had been rewired to get rid of the ECUs. They ll be retrimmed in grey leather with a Bedford flying B embroidered into the headrests a la Bentley. When I first started the project I mentioned 3 children. By the time I d decided on seats I had to factor in another baby which meant a third row, then I lost my wife and the project was shelved for a while .
That brings us to a year ago when, after reconnecting with my childhood sweetheart, I decided to restart the project .
So, remember those seats? I needed another two for my sweethearts kids now . This is getting silly. To aid ingress and egress I dug out a fairly rare side loading door from my spare s stash which I m planning on fitting to the NS. All the seats will be mounted on Unwin rail so they can be removed quickly and the van used as I had originally intended - for lugging stuff about. I m using a pic of the original DTV race vans to make a humongous roof rack which I can mount my roof tent and side and rear awnings to turning it from a day van to a van that can sleep 4 in bunks in the back, two in the roof tent and two in the side awning so my expanding family can all be catered for. It ll look something like this
Now that I had decided on the bodywork and interior jobs to sort, I started looking at engines. One of my old vans was a Viano V6 CDI which was probably as close to driving a train as I m gonna get. I had my eye on an older 6 cylinder Merc diesel, either OM606 or V6 but the former is a little pricier than I wanted to pay, the latter has many wiring issues I havent t got the head to fix.
One of the guys who works for me suggested a BMW M57 and he happened to know of an E46 for sale with one fitted, with less than 100k on the clock, so I bought it. That s where I am now - waiting for the Beemer to be delivered so I can start the transplant. There s a company who offer all wiring, ECU mods etc off the shelf. I can make it work for about £1500 including the donor car. For that I ll have 200hp with plenty of scope for more, I reckon I ll easily get 30mpg (remember my 40 gallon fuel tank!) and I should have another 100k in the engine before it needs looking at. I ll update once I ve started the conversion but before that I need to get cracking on my VX220 which is another thread I need to start
Edited by entwistlecymru on Saturday 7th June 00:18
Edited by entwistlecymru on Saturday 7th June 00:22
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