Vw Caddy Van VR5 Project - We have 3 pedals!

I used Renault steel wheel on my old Caddy. I used hubcentric spacers and to sort out the different offset, and a set of plastic spigot rings to make up the center bore difference. Renault steels are cheap as chips and can be had in 15 and 16 inch varieties for 4x100 PCD

I have a sensible sized update for this weekend

Saturday I text my old boss (Ian) to find out if he'd had a chance to weld my pedal box up yet. Thankfully he had so once I'd put my Daughter to bed I headed over to his to collect it (there was someone home to watch my Daughter btw!). I ended up staying for about three hours because when I got there he and his mate Matt were making a six branch manifold for a customers Cortina engined kit car so I ended up staying and helping out and also calling various people I knew to ask about parts for other projects Ian and Matt are taking on.

Anyway, today I had the afternoon free to get the pedal box back in and I was going to be happy with doing that!

One welded pedal box. Ian apologised for the welding looking untidy due to the previous person who welded it making a bit of a pigs ear of it. He did however say that it's probably more solid now than when it was new haha.





Typically I headed outside at the hottest point of the day to go and sit in a van! It was about 26 degrees outside so I'd imagine it was quite a bit warmer in there! I had a bit of a sweat on anyway. I got the pedal box bolted back in pretty quickly and bolted the steering column back on too. I'd taken it all apart so quickly I was a bit concerned that I was going to forget something but I had no nuts or bolts left at the end so it's all good haha!





Once that was in and done up I had to get the clutch pedal back on along with the pivot bar for the pedals. I got a bit stuck here when I realised I'd have to remove the heater matrix again to get the pivot bar in. I obviously hadn't refitted it when I removed the bar to get the pedal box out. Thankfully it's only a handful of nuts and bolts to remove so it didn't really add anymore time.





Once that was done I sat back to have a breather (it was bloody hot in there!) but at that very moment the work inspector turned up! (Yes, I use a Haynes book of lies! It's handy when figuring out how to remove bits of trim!)



Once I'd cooled down a bit I decided to route as much of the wiring as I could but quickly realised (and remembered) that most of it clipped to the inside of the dash. I guess that meant it was time to try and get the dash back in!



You may remember that the van had a grey dash originally. It was pretty knackered with burn marks from something all over it. I managed to pick up a black dash from a Seat Ibiza a few months ago and it's been taking up space in the dining room since I got it. It went in without much of an arguement and I even remembered what nuts and bolts went where!





By this point I was starting to get a headache (the heat doesn't agree with me!) so decided to call it a day. I'm happy that I've managed a decent amount of work today and reallychuffed that the dash is in

Got a spare hour this afternoon so decided to grind out the centre bore on one of the new steel wheels and try and get it to fit.

This is what I started with. A 6.5x15 steel wheel for an Astra.



I started off with a round edge file and after about 20 mins had a nice shiny centre bore and plenty of metal filings.





I tried the wheel on the van and hadn't taken enough off with the file. I went back and forth another couple of times before running out of patience and getting the die grinder out. A few minutes with that and the wheel finally fitted









The perfect fit I'll get the others filed down over the course of the week, give the bare metal a couple of coats of hammerite and then get the tyre's on them. Should keep the van looking pretty standard

Yeh I'm gonna grind a little more out of them to allow for the paint

I'm happy with the dash. Annoyingly I don't have a black glovebox lid for it. This came from a car with a passenger airbag so I might have to dye my grey lid.

I must admit that I'm starting to get a bit frustrated with not being able to mount the engine. I don't have the skills to make a mount myself and my old Boss is so busy at the moment he doesn't have the time or space to have the van and make the mounts for me

Just a quick update to say I haven't given up on the van, however I have lost every ounce of motivation to work on it at the moment! I'm hoping to build some back up soon so I can get on with it!

If you can make the engine mounts I will weld them up for you.

Price will be one pint of a strong continental lager and a packet of chilli flavour chrisps.

P.

As others have said, don’t beat yourself up about the lack of motivation, my mk2 had been sitting untouched for months before I even bothered to start stripping it, it happens, I’m sure you’ll get the motivation back, especially with the offer from Paul Y to weld your mounds for you

Yep - I've made very little progress on my rebuild over the past few weeks either. After a day at work in an unpleasantly warm test bay, the motivation to go into an even more unpleasantly warm garage is somewhat limited, to say the least.

When I win the lottery, the garage will be air conditioned !

Very kind offer Once I'm back on it I may very well be in touch.