1968 Isuzu Bellett 1500

[Barney]

Hey all, quick post to let you know I have joined.

Recently bought a 68 bellett, was restored in 98 at which time it was painted purple. No real plans for it at the moment but it was too good a deal to pass up. Hope to lower it a touch and re paint it less purple sometime in the future.

Website where photos are hosted is currently down so no photos yet

Hopefully this site takes off an we can make some good contacts for parts an knowledge and whatnot

-Daniel

[2ldohc]

Hey Daniel,

Welcome aboard! Where about's are you located with your new acquisition?

Fingers crossed this site does keep growing and we can have the best english based Isuzu Bellett site around! At the moment all of the good resource sites are in Japanese or over in Finland which makes it difficult for us Aussies here

Anyway, post some pics when you can and if you have any questions we will endeavour to answer them for you!

Cheers,
Ross.

[Barney]

New Zealand

[2ldohc]

Excellent, good to get some input from across the Tasman

[Barney]

Heres a bit of a teaser, I'll have to give it a polish and take some more detailed photos sometime

[dave]

That Bellett is totally porno. As porno as Belletts get!!!!!

Crownsixfour* no longer has the world's only purple Bellett!!!!



*I see you lurking; stick some pictures up!!!!

[2ldohc]

Nice Deluxe dude! Looks like it's in great nick!

Cheers for the pic.

[Barney]

Few more pictures I took this morning, enjoy

Dash


Bench seat


More of the dash


It has an engine! bored out to 1550cc with cortina pistons an rodeo bearings an lots more


Not my favourite of the grilles


Back end


Boot, including tool pouch and a wheel that may find its way onto the car


And another exterior shot

[2ldohc]

Nice clean example. Great to have the original tool kit there! I was just talking about what tools came standard in another post

You got any plans for her, or just going to keep her pretty stockie?

Cheers,
Ross.

[Barney]

The tools are mostly replacements but its still cool to have the original pouch.

Mostly stock is the plan, hope to do something with the wheels an tyres then lower it, the fronts have so much guard clearance on these! Then paint sometime in the future.

Just a weekend cruiser

[2ldohc]

If you want to sort the front out get a set of rear springs and chuck them in... works wonders Dave's brown bellett and my blue one have this done and it evens it up very nicely

[dave]

Whoah! It's a Deluxe, but it has 1-speed wipers...

I thought the 67s would have 2-speed wipers for the Deluxe....

Plus it's a floor shift but with a bench seat. I had a bench seat item with a floor shift, but the shift pattern was:

3 1
|-|
4 2

(that made for an interesting first drive, trust me).

The evidence was that it's was a column shift standard, so I restored it to that spec.

So i'm wondering.... if yours has the backwards shift pattern, it's a column shift car, but then again if it has a normal shift pattern it may have been fitted with a floor shift box.

I guess the other option (and least likely, really) was that it was a floor-shift car that had a bench seat fitted! But it matches the rear seat, plus they'd have to have relocated the handbrake.

Damned mystery cars with mystery bits!

Still looks cool tho.

[Barney]

The guy who restored it also wrecked a 1970 bellett and so this may have bits an pieces from that.
Yes I think the bench seat has been added to a floor shift model, the rear door locks/window winders hit the back of it and its not centred so the mounts must be slightly different, I have the original seats in my parts collection along with another loom with two speed wipers.

Mystery cars is correct!

I have a set of springs that came with it, not sure if they are fronts or rears, do you happen to know the uncompressed length of the rears?

[cute wee gem]

Hey D, you wouldn't happen to have a spare blue Bellett badgey thing that sits in the middle of the dash? Someones mashed a radio where mine should be. I'll just have to add some old volt/temp/oil gauges to clean it up a bit if I can't find one. oh and do you have another steering wheel like yours?

Cheers, still keen on that diff head too

[cute wee gem]

The rear springs are approx 70mm shorter, just count the coils on your fronts as the rears have a lot less. I can measure them if you like although it's easy to tell them apart if you have a full original set.

[Barney]

I have another steering wheel but its different to mine, doesnt have the isuzu centre and the horn part is a different shape, will grab you a pic in the weekend, splines might be different but if you were really keen I have a steering column too. Dont have the head unit cover piece sorry, mines got lots of stress whitening where it screw in an I expect it will crack in the future so if you find one try find another I love the cover though, has like air vent venetian blind type things drawn on it ha. Diff head is still here, I know I should keep it/PM me an I will try send it down mang.

Yea I'll count the coils, pretty sure they are rears so I will chuck them in the front, I was having trouble getting the ball joint off last time I was playing around so gave up for now.

Need to work out why my headlights have stopped working!

[dave]

Yes I think the bench seat has been added to a floor shift model, the rear door locks/window winders hit the back of it and its not centred so the mounts must be slightly different

The bench seat sits a bit off to the left (but still shouldn't hit the LH locks and winders) to make way for the handbrake on the RH side.

Would anybody be interested in having some steering wheel centre badges made up?

It probably wouldn't be cheap, but if yours are anything like mine, they're crazed-as.

I dunno who can do them, but people get rare crap made up all the time (at a price) so once we've found out we should take a show of hands and get some action done on it. I have a crazed one sitting here on my desk I was going to put into my rat car, but if it can be used as a template for nice shiny new ones, then we should do it!

I might have to check out some of those restored car mags we have laying around at work; this kind of stuff seems hard to t-up on the interweb.

Cheers


Dave

[JT191]

If you want to sort the front out get a set of rear springs and chuck them in... works wonders Dave's brown bellett and my blue one have this done and it evens it up very nicely

Has anyone measured the front and rear spring rates? Suspension tuning tends to be a little bit more involved than trial and error, because errors can be fatal. A couple years ago, finding no larger rear sway bar available for a non-Bellett car, someone posted a suggestion to the internet "Just stack two of the big bars together and bolt them to the axle, it handles perfect". Three days after trying this suggestion on my own car, I came within feet of running over a track worker, because someone else's "perfect handling" caused my own car to spin suddenly and without warning.

As it turns out, one big sway bar is 20 Nm, two big sway bars is 40 Nm, and the limit of controllable oversteer is about 27 Nm.

This sudden spin was at the speed of 35-40 MPH, and most Belletts are capable of double or triple that.

[Barney]

Got reversed into yesterday! I was slowly travelling along in between cars an just before I got to my park a car jumped out at me. Was a hearty hit an I slid along the benchseat but amazingly the guys towball hit my front right tyre an there was virtually no panel damage. I was expecting a crushed guard! Guard is still mostly straight an I didnt loose much paint. Drives straight still. Very lucky it was at low speed!

[2ldohc]

Wow! Very lucky there Barney.

When I started reading that post I thought it would be a lot worse. Still, any scrap is a bad scrap