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Introducing Ruby-Doo


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Thought I would have a play and see if I can display images from my Onedrive account and share some images of Ruby.

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When I picked her up... I had to fit a carby and buy a battery and tinker around for about 2 hours just to get her to come to life again. Jumped online, got a permit and drove over 2 hours home. Not bad for $400 I thought.

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Home

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Cleaning up the bull bar.

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Interior was half pulled apart with bits missing but the majority of it was there.

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First donor car, bought this one for the rims, instrument cluster and a few other bits. $200 with a couple of months rego, there is a real story to driving this one home, I've done some crazy spoob in cars in my time but driving this thing home was terrifying. So far I've wrecked the Leone Sedan, L Wagon, MY Wagon, a partial stripped Brumby just to keep piecing Ruby together.

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Out with the old...

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In with the new... While I had everything disassembled I took the opportunity to reseal the ventilation system, no more leaks and good air flow through all the vents. Put all new felt underlay on the floor and up the rear wall of the cabin. The doors, roof and anywhere else I could get to also got treated with sound deadner. The doors really close with a nice solid sound.

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I guess this is what you would call stage one of the interior, put back together and cleaned up getting ready for RWC. Still a few little odd jobs to go but almost complete again.

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Changing the gearbox oil just before road worthy inspection and this fell out, pretty sure that wasn't meant to happen and belongs with the syncro's. Still done about 6,000 Kms on this box that I know of and never gave any hint of trouble.

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About the time I changed the oil and noticed my little present falling out, I thought I should turn this into...

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Into this so I could get the 5 speed out of it and get it out of my back yard. Sorry Beenie... I did keep a few parts out of the wagon for later reference, the tool box/storage in the cargo area of the wagon we are grafting into the tray of Ruby and turning it into a dual battery box (Hopefully). Kept the 13" alloys, not sure why yet but they polished up and cleaned up real nice with a paint job so they are just sitting in the shed gathering dust for who knows what. Kept the rear sub-frame out if it, figured that was a great starting point to make a kayak trailer out of. The electric mirrors and switch, I would like to try and mount the motors into the brumby mirrors oneday.

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Yeah... It sort of fits LOL Basically a quick mock up to see where I would have to mount bars at the front to give it added support. This is in kayak mode, no roof spot lights. Roof rack is removable, with the greatest of difficulties, takes about 35 mins to remove but I can still at least carry the kayak without having to tow my 8X5 trailer everywhere. Which makes it great for getting up into some of the back creeks.

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Stage two of the interior install, installed this center console when I done the electric window conversion (Shout out to Bennie for his write up here, confirming my suspicions that the wagon regs would fit). At this stage just a gear knob off of a 5 speed FWD, waiting for future 5 speed upgrade. I had still managed to avoid cutting the center console up at this stage, am still trying to avoid doing so. Made a box to go behind the center console at this stage as well to relocate the stereo head unit and to mount the rear speakers in to.

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Apart from a few other little mods here and there, this was Ruby until a couple of weeks ago... Once its finished I'll update with a few current pics then.

And yes, I'm scared of the dark :-)

 

Cheers,

Al

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Pics didn’t work for me mate (but I’m on my phone so that’s not much of a surprise).  I hope they work for others!

Glad the electric windows worked out for you. Did you use the front or the rear regulators and did you have to reposition the “crescent” cog to make the windows go all the way down properly?

I remember that bit being a bastard of a job to do - and I’ll be doing it again on my brumby at some stage too...

With the electric mirrors, you should’ve got the wiring too, even if it meant pulling the body loom for it. Once stripped down it’d be a piss easy piece of wiring to deal with! And I’ve got the same plans as you for this... started back in 2008 I think from memory!

I can’t wait to actually see the pics! 

Cheers 

Bennie

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Hhmmmm... They show up on my chrome browser on the PC... Back to the drawing board then I guess

Bennie, I used the front regs but have kept the rear for spares as they look identical units. If nothing else the motors will be salvageable for spares anyway. I didn't reposition the cog enough, I still have about 10mm above the door and YES it was a pain in the arse. And because I was a dumb arse at the time it and didn't take enough notice how the spring went back in and several weeks between removal and reassembly, it took me several attempts to get that mongrel back in. And to this day I still have no idea why I found that so difficult to do at the time. Haven't been overly fussed about it at this stage, I'll look at adjusting them when I strip it down to do the body work and paint.

And holy c@#p mate!!! I didn't think trying to mount electric motors into the mirrors was going to be that difficult that it takes 10 years, I think I'll just stick to putting my arms out the window and adjusting them :-) Wiring for the electric windows is easy enough to figure out, I'm thinking that mounting the motors into the mirror is going to be a bigger problem to solve.

Cheers,

Al

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Sorry Bennie, I meant that the wiring for the electric mirrors won't be that difficult to figure out. Unless of course you actually meant the mirror mode LOL

And I was joking about it taking you 8 years to do and yes, unfortunately,sometimes life takes priorities in another direction... Not always the one we want to be going in :-(

Take it Easy,

Al

Edited by Al Zhiemer
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