Stainless Steel Exhaust

As a part of the detailed inspection after seven years on the road, year 'round in Canadian summers and winters with all that entails, it seemed a good time to replace the rear section of the exhaust. While it hadn't been making any unnatural noise, the muffler and pipe were clearly getting rustier and rustier, with large sections of rust layers dropping off and more on the way. Probably not long before a perforation.

The forward sections of the exhaust pipes, from the engine to the muffler, are in good shape, with almost no rust or corrosion, and so will stay as long as they remain this way. Instead of going again with the 'standard' rear exhaust and muffler, it seemed a good time to replace them with the stainless variety, seeing as rust was most prevalent here.

Nothing complicated about the installation. Remarkably simple job. Eight bolts in all. I don't know if it's because anti-seize was used when doing the initial assembly back in 2011, but all the bolts came undone without any fuss. Used anti-seize again with the new exhaust.

Old and new:

Certainly looks a little nicer:

Nice and shiny in there now. In this pic you can also see the rear face of the overdrive through the chassis PTO hole, and in front of the vehicle a glimpse of the former wheels and tires. These will be cleaned, wheels repainted, and stored.

Oil Filter Adapter

Having seven years of Series 2 oil changes under my belt, and wondering what it might be like to be able to get the oil filter off without a mess, decided to purchase the screw-on oil filter adapter from Rocky Mountain Products.

The kit looks really nice. I very much like that it simply screws on to the existing oil filter mount, at the same angle as the original filter housing.

Here's what's in the kit:

Having just done an oil change, however, installation of the adapter kit will need to wait until the next oil change comes along!

Disk Brake Conversion

Visited friend Tony's 1962 Series restoration today, and lent a hand with installing with the disk brake conversion that Tony is installing. The kit is from Rocky Mountain Products in Vancouver, BC.

Nice components and the kit looks well put together. Really nice that no parts have to be modified.

My only question, and a small one at that, was whether it might have been possible to mount the caliper further around to the rear, so that the hub's swivel pin assembly didn't have to be dismantled and removed in order to screw in the top caliper mounting bolt, but I'm sure there's a sound engineering reason why. In any case, once it's on, it's not likely that the caliper will have to come off very often.

Some general views of the hub assembly: