haha cheers mate, i find not many people like the old vans these days but I love em too

I had an XC Sundowner. Even had the small rear bubble windows and full shag-pile the whole way round the trunk.
Oh, and a '68 Mini Panel van - but thats a whole other story.

Hey mate,
Glad to see your still hard at it. Love the colour, the old PV will look awesome when it's finished. Keep the updates coming.

Cheers mate. Yeh still hard at it haha

Sooo first full day on the van today in a while so I was pumped to get as much done as possible.

Started early and got the rack in quickly. Looks really good in there





Everything was going great. Till I went to put the damn engine in

The starter motor hits on the rack so it had to be removed and I have to look at ways to either lower the rack more or forget about it and put the original back in

The aircon pump also hit real hard on the shock tower. Even with some "gentle" massaging with a mallet it still had no chance so now ive got a freshly painted bay. With a mashed shock tower and no aircon

Thats where I gave up for the day and left It. Looking into different pumps over the wkend and see what I can find. It's in tho and that's a start

Yep always helps hey haha. I was pretty bummed out when I left the shed today but the more I think about it now the more happy I am that it's all in there. Also rather then being frustrated I've had a few ideas that I have to try haha

Wow! this build is great! envy envy envy... but I gotta say, you must be the luckiest fellah alive the purchases you've made, I mean, any XY is sooo hard to get these days - but vans were hard to get even in the 80's... follow that with an XP coupe, another XY, the crashed 2k XR8, and the promo XY front with lotsa neat bits on it, you've done amazingly well! Don't let the holdups bum you out, I tend to go for a long bike ride or even a sleep and think it through the next day..many times at work the next day or riding the bike you have that `aha!' moment where all becomes clear.. keep going, mate, like everyone else, I cannot wait to see how this comes out. There's an XY van I see occasionally round my way, purple, built up like a GT, looks unreal..

Cheers mate, yeh I have been very lucky so far haha, I got my xy fairmont around 6yrs ago, It was going to be someones project and it was stripped but never started and I paid the whopping sum of $400 for it haha.

Ive been getting alot of info on the aircon situation. The only reason the au one wont fit properly is because the pipes come out the back of it and would run directly into the shock tower. I have been looking at ed ones and they seem to have the outlets for the pipes straight out the top of the pump, so as long as the brackets fit up this should be a really easy swap haha

WOO HOO I will be having aircon haha.

So a few wks ago I went to the wreckers and bought, what I was told, was an ed xr8 pump. I went to try and fit it and nothing lined up, the pulley was about an inch to far forward when it bolted up. I was talking to my mate the other day and he told me to check out his ed pump. It was NOTHING alike. they were totally different pumps

So yesterday I got my hands on an ed aircon pump and ducked down to the shed first thing thismorning before work to see if it would fit

trial fitted it and this little lug on the back was all that was stopping it from fitting


so i knocked that off


and fitted her in. remembering i had previously massaged the shock tower a bit so that helped with the fitting but it fits (excuse how dirty the bay is at the moment, have a mate sanding down cars in the same shed atm )


The only problem is the top 2 bolts line up perfect. they arnt a problem, but the bottom 2 dont line up, the bolts holes on the compressor are around 5mm lower then the bracket. Will the pump be fine with just 2 bolts if I do regular checks to ensure theyre not coming loose

for now im just cheering something has started to go right haha. I also picked up an xg ute diff the other day which should line up to the au tailshaft aswell so thats going in soon and I got the petty tank out of the xg so I am going to fit that, the filler neck and everything into the van aswell. This means I wont have to run a loud smelly external pump in the van and I will meet all the unleaded requirements with the thingomajig in the filler neck haha.

Glad to see you got the pump sorted, a pat on the back for you for keeping at it.
Re the lower mounting bolts - I would definately try and use them, the two top bolts wont be enough. Maybe try and get the ED A/C bracket? Or can you fill and drill/tap new holes in the AU one?
Good score with the XG diff. But dont forget they are 2" (approx) wider than the XY. My dad put and XB diff in his XR ute, bolted in OK, but the XB spring mounts are wider apart than XR, so he just pushed the springs out a bit to make it fit. Now, a few years later, it is bending the diff, and the tin plate keeps coming loose and leaking, it is getting noisy, etc. You really need to have the spring mounts moved to suit the XY, and if you want to run a decent sized wheel, you will need to narrow the housing too. Just FYI.
The XG tank will be a neat fit, and will keep the rego people, etc happy. Good score.
Keep at it mate, this will be a cool PV when done.

Last edited by sooty72 on Fri Feb 11, 2011 10:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

Haha yeh getting that pump on there definately got me motivated again. and the dark clouds outside at the moment are more then welcome to hang around cause thatll stop me working on my house tomorrow and keep me locked in the shed haha.

The diff is something that I was just going to try. I bought an xd a while ago for parts and it has the diff in it. I heard it was about 20mm wider but 2inch is a fair bit more then I thought. Ill whack it up on the hoist though and see what has to be done to it.

Cheers mate, she should be pretty cool to cruise in once its all done. cant wait!!

So as I said the other day I had trouble with the aircon pump and the power steer rack when I put the engine in so rather then me get annoyed I packed everything up and left it till another day haha.

The other day I got the pump and everything on and everything worked out well there. Today I had a bit of spare time so I headed back out to the van to see what I could sort out.

With the front of the car in the air I crawled under it with the rack to see where it was fouling. turns out the main bracket was hitting on the starter so I grinded that back a little till it fit. Then I found out the outlets for the ps fluid hoses were also hitting on the starter.



you can see in this pic that the 2 outlets came out the top of the rack.

So i pulled it back out and decided to try and pull it apart. Its all actually really basic and I managed to turn it around so now the outlets come out the bottom. Just need to tap a screw in so the grub screw can hold it in place but means I now have power steer and aircon again and it was all very simple





So now I need to get a radiator and sort out a gearbox X member and its almost ready for wiring and then back to the bodywork again to get her finished off

is that a Holden Camira rack? they have a similiar style to that

have been told by a few ppl the same thing mate, im not really sure. I got the whole thing as a bolt in setup.

cool cool. looks the good so far mate

Looking good so far mate, will be awesome when you are done