1987 VW T25 ex-panel van - Hibernation

I've always been a bit dismissive of magic chemicals, the're probably great but I've just ground back until I hit shiny metal and replaced anything at all questionable.

Right so I welded that bit in to the sill and here is a picture.



not really my best work, but it's all covered up, so I put some ZINC 182 on it then welded the U channel over the top. I wasn't confident with the rust resisting properties of said mediocre band themed crappy grey primer, so once I'd welded it on, I ground back everything I could (I even bought a powerfile for this which was deffo £50 worth spending) and wanged some expensive Sikaflex sealer all over either side of the U channel to keep any water out for many years to come.

Once I was happy with all that I put a couple of coats of gravitex on, it loks a bit like an underseal tidemark but it's good gear, I promise.



As you can see, approx 30% of it ended up on my trolley jack.

Oh, and my sliding door with a window in it turned up today, and I finally (after 3 years of nobbing about with these old tubs) worked out that you can get the sliding doors on and off without taking the back runner off and completely messing up the adjustment - there's a recess in the middle of the back runner that allows you to pop the bearing out.




I reckon this photo is going to be the one that I choose as the "low point" of the van to impress people when it's got some shiny paint on it, but I'm happy with progress really.

Also leaves room for amusing signwriting.

Progress is looking good, esecially considering that you're doing it all outside.

Yeah - I've been fairly skint for a few years so even just keeping something on the road has been stretching my finances. I put the van up for sale after losing my MOJO for a while. After cleaning it out and taking some nice pictures on a sunny day I realised I'd be stupid to sell it, especially after looking at what else I'd buy with the money. It feels great to be back deep into a project, and this is the first one I've ever done that hasn't been my daily driver so I can make a proper job of things. Cheers for attempting to sort out a deal with it - if it turned up a couple of weeks earlier I'd have been glad to sell it (then probably regretted it for years)


Haha, I'd just always assumed that unbolting both the rollers was "the way" until I noticed that "hump" in the runner - I must have spent dozens of hours trying to realign doors properly after taking them off!
I know what you mean about vans looking good with just the middle windows in, but I've got an image in my head that I want to stick to. When I worked with a friend last year doing campers we did a light resto and converted a proper t25 devon minibus and every time I sat in it I wished mine had all those windows. Plus, the rear corners should be the easy ones to weld in!



Cheers! I'd bloody love a workshop, but even a somewhat flat surface would make my life a million times easier. Thankfully the neighbours don't seem to mind the smell of thinners/filler or dust blowing all over their cars etc. I rent a garage with a nice flat hardstanding outside, but the van is about 6" too tall to fit.

Top work, thats going to be a really neat job. I didnt realise that vw had a separate panel for window to go in.

I bloody well hope it's finished by 2014! haha.

Had some major welder problems - it's not been "right" for a while but lately it kept welding the wire into the tip every couple of tacks. I went in to 'frauds at 10am and bought a new SIP liner, for my SIP welder. Obviously it was 2 foot too short, so that was £8 wasted. I anticipated this and got 3 meters of bike brake cable outer - which fit in and worked perfect. However, the welder was still nobbing me around. It wasn't the usual SIP bendy wire feed situation. I ragged it open and probed at everything inside, it all seemed OK but I did a "hybrid bstardchild" mod on it and bodged in a random old laptop charger to power the wire feed:



The voltage selection is now my wire feed adjustment (out of picture is a string of 6 diodes to drop about 4 volts to allow it to run slow enough)

Anyway, now I have absolutely perfect wire feed - it's perfectly steady and not all over the place like before. However, surprisingly my welder with a motor out of a hot chocolate machine, bike brake cable for a liner and a cheap chinese laptop power supply to do the wire feed still doesn't work right.

I reckon there's a deeper issue - it's a proper 150amp jobbie and I've been using it on full power to weld all the body panels so clearly something is wrong.

Luckily I've got a good mate who lent me his Clarke mig160 which is about 100 times better.


Right, back to the van.

With the middle window somewhat welded in (some curse word poor tacks) I decided to go at the back one. I drilled a few holes out from the inside to work out where to make the initial cut, then lopped a big hole in the van again:




With that cut out, I noticed this sack of spuds wedged down the back of the panel:






I flipping love finding stuff like this. 1988 dates them to when the van was new, I reckon they must have been stuffed down there by the bloke who initially lined it out before it was first used. They still smelled of chicken too!

So once I'd got over that, I fitted and removed and refitted and removed the window recess about 9000 times, marking and trimming bits off alll over the place, then finally got the lot welded in:






Even with the POS welder issue costing me 4 or 5 hours, I'm pretty happy with progress again - things are coming together nicely.

Oh yes, this is looking bloody brilliant. I bet it feels like a different van, even now, when you're inside it. Panel vans look great, but you really can't beat the airy feeling a few windows give you.

I bet you're kicking yourself over that brace in your other window opening though!

Joe

edit: meant to say, love the crisp packet! I used to work for a building restoration firm and I always loved finding vintage fag packets and old newspapers chucked in behind and under things!

Try changing the fuse in the plug for the welder. I had similar issues with having to have the power far higher than normal, changed the fuse and it's like a different machine. Not sure why it would cause the issues but it's the only thing I changed.

Right so, I drove 30 miles or so to collect the last (NSR) window hole that I was promised, and the guy couldn't find it. I got straight back on the blower to the bloke I picked the middle one off and he still had the van, so I got up early saturday morning and went back down the A1 to St. Ives as fast as a mk3 golf 1.9 NA diesel will go, with a bootful of grinding and drilling stuff.

Got home at about lunchtime which isn't bad for a 250 mile round trip with a stop to cut the side off a van.

I started by cutting a hole in the side of the van (I'm doing a lot of this these days)



The petrol can has veg oil in so don't worry about me setting the place alight or nothing!


With the outer skin off you can see the bit of box section I welded in aaaages ago when I wanted to put a seatbelt mount in for the T5 double seat I was going to use as a back seat/bed. What the fucg was I thinking? That whole idea was massively totally curse word.
In fitting the box section I hacked the curse word out of the inner skins of the side panels, to get at the structural stuff.

I chopped it all out and replaced it with donor sections from the van I robbed the window holes out of




The window hole I was about to fit was grotty in one corner, so I robbed the top corner of the opposite window to use a repair panel.





I snotted the repair section in:


It was a bit of an experiment really, lay a fairly low powered weld on from each side to save getting everything so hot at warping it etc. It didn't seem to warp much, but it looked curse word so I probably won't do that again.


I welded all that lot in after removing and refitting it literally 40 times til I was happy with it. I've left off grinding all the welds back til tuesday when I'm off work, to save curse word off the neighbours too much.

That was yesterdays progress. Today I have spent from 9am til 7pm applying filler and sanding, and in pictures it looks like I've got nowhere but in reality I've broken the back of the drivers side filler work, really.

With that mostly sorted, I slung some glass in the window holes to make sure I hadn't done anything mega stupid which would cause it to fit, thankfully I hadn't




With that I noticed that the glass is completely flat, so I'm thinking of getting new windows made out of that really dark smoke ambulance glass stuff rather than tinting these, but I can't remember the name of it. Any clues?

Or else tinted Lexan/Plexiglass. Lightweight for that racing feel.