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Cheers for the comments! I want to stick with actual glass in the windows, even the good plastic stuff gets full of swirly marks in no time at all, plus one or two of the windows will be sliders. Again I've done LOADS of work but nothing particularly photogenic, I had the day off work and flap wheeled all the welds back on the final window surround then "dressed" any high spots back and slung some filler at it, but not before I found some rust in the window recess that I'd missed: I cut a big lump out and put a patch in, don't seem to have taken a photo of any of that. I finally decided to take the "plunge" and mod the sliding door runner since the door just grazes the back wheel when opened. It never really bothered me when the van was "rough" because another couple of scrapes here and there made no difference. A lot of people go for 60mm, but I decided to just add 38mm (which is not coincidentally exactly the width of my masking tape) because I didn't want to go mad and start adding loads of extra leverage in etc. So basically you grind this front end stop off the runner: Then you cut the end off the runner (cut the same amount as you want to extend the bracket by): Then weld the end stop back on: I added a bit of the old runner back on the bottom, that carries the bracket for the runner cover. It would have been fine without, but it only took a few seconds to add back on. So now you have a sliding door that tries to slam itself into the bodywork 38mm too early. Then you take the U bracket and add 38mm to it. I had two of them so I just welded two together so I only had one weld to do: Before (I took it for reference to see how everything was assembled) Two runners prepped with a nice V on the end so I could get some reasonable penetration with the welder on full bore And welded: Aluminium stepladders work surprisingly well as a grounded welding workbench. The welding was fairly tidy but I decided to grind it all back off for neatness, it's hardly a life critical part. shazam: Sliding door misses the wheel by 35mm. I was very relieved to find that it still closes perfectly, and didn;t even need re-aligning. I finished at about 6pm today because I was just too damn hot to sand any more filler. The drivers side is 80% finished, but the back passenger corner will need a skim or three more before I'm happy with it. I'll probably go at the filler for 3 or 4 hours after work during the week, but there won't be a lot to look at photos of really.
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Jul 12, 2013 21:58:44 GMT
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Three nights after work (10 hours+) It's 95% perfect, but I'm not happy. I'm glad I don't do this for a living.
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luckygti
Posted a lot
I need to try harder!
Posts: 4,912
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Looking good mate, going to be one good looking van in fresh paint. What colour you going for?
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Lawsy
Posted a lot
Posts: 2,615
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Jul 13, 2013 14:55:53 GMT
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I really want a T25 panel, glad to see you getting stuck in to it, cant help but feel sad to see the windows cut in tho.. I love my panel vans, took me ages to find my T4 with no windows in too.. only to find out campsites get the if you havent got windows in.. lool Keep up the good work
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Jul 15, 2013 20:11:11 GMT
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Looking good mate, going to be one good looking van in fresh paint. What colour you going for? I'm getting pretty excited now - finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's going to be VW Toffee Brown, you see it on a lot of the newer stuff. Not usually a fan of modern colours on old vehicles, but I think it's naff enough to work. I really want a T25 panel, glad to see you getting stuck in to it, cant help but feel sad to see the windows cut in tho.. I love my panel vans, took me ages to find my T4 with no windows in too.. only to find out campsites get the if you havent got windows in.. lool Keep up the good work Yeah, I was definitely umming and aahing over it, but in the end it'll make it a lot nicer to use. As much as I liked the panel van, I didn't enjoy the lack of visibility when driving it every day. Plus there was always the little worry in the back of the mind that I'd drive miles to camp somewhere and the site owner would see a bunch of lads turning up in a panel van and take a bit of a dim view: It should hopefully be a bit more presentable to normal people once it's done. I've done a few bits tonight - I've had the sliding door off and wanted to put a coat of primer inside and out, but all the neighbours were in and had loads of expensive new cars around, so I didn't fancy covering them with overspray - It'll have to wait til tomorrow morning when they are all at work, so I decided to take the front doors off and sort out all the cavity wax and stuff in the door shuts. I added them to the kit form T25 I'm building in the back garden: That shed is full from bottom to the top with stuff I removed from the van, plus that lot outside. It was nasty stuff to remove so I had to give it a barnsley footscrub (2k thinners and wire wool) Fairly unpleasant job, but it came up nice and clean, and the wire wool leaves a really good key for the primer. I'm approaching the stage where I need to buy some actual paint - I'm going to do all the inside and the door shuts etc, and hand it over to the painter with doors on for him to mask the shuts and window holes and just paint the outside. I can't wait to sling some colour at it.
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Jul 15, 2013 21:08:48 GMT
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The whole thing in Toffee Brown, or a split? It's a nice colour, and I'm guessing with the windows it'll not be too much but I don't think you could have got away with it so well had it been staying a panel van.
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Jul 15, 2013 21:21:55 GMT
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Yeah, the whole thing toffee brown.
I'd considered going two tone with some genuine old devon colours, but now I've decided to build a later looking van with the big bumpers etc, they were all a single colour. Ideally I want the body to look like it could have come out of the factory as it was, so the colour is quite similar to a stock one, but a few shades lighter and with a slight pearl to freshen it up.
Plus if I do it all one colour there's no awkward line to mask down the middle, and nobody will think I'm trying to emulate an old splitty.
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luckygti
Posted a lot
I need to try harder!
Posts: 4,912
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Jul 15, 2013 22:13:16 GMT
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Mmmmmm toffee ;D big fan of the colour, my better half loves it, but going anthracite with mine (eventually )
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Right, "my bit" of the van has been finished for about 3 weeks - I worked like mad, took days off work and everything to try and get it done ASAP, only to get it finished and have the painter mess me around for 3 weeks. He's "definitely" having it this weekend. Sigh. It's all cleared out, stripped bare and on the drive like this (with a tarp over it, obv) I put the engine back together and got it started and the handbrake freed off too, ready for it to drive onto the trailer. So I've been pretty much nothing to it other than getting curse word off with the painter. If he doesn't take it this weekend, I'm either going to get someone not completely useless to do it, or just paint it myself if I can blag the use of my pals workshop. To end on a positive note, all the door hardware came back from the platers ( www.jsplaters.co.uk/ ) We use them often at work so the gaffer told me to just sling my stuff in on top of what we usually get done. They've done a lovely job, all this lot was scabby and covered in overspray and all kinds of curse word to start with. Dead happy with that, they've also done all the bolts but I didn't find them until later, they look cracking - I was going to use stainless stuff but the zinc plating is much more OE looking.
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Last Edit: Aug 8, 2013 19:38:33 GMT by cobblers
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They do look nice. Every time I see someone get stuff like that done I want to get my stuff done... then I procrastinate and it never happens.
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It's surprisingly inexpensive - I was actually looking online at the DIY ZINC PLATE IT URSEN kits on my lunch break when the gaffer noticed and said just send it all off cos it costs a lot less to get it done than to just buy the chemicals to DIY it.
We send a couple of shoeboxes worth of rusty galv steel switch frames to them every 3 weeks or so, and they charge about £60 to turn them into shiny new lovelyness, so the stuff I put in was probably £15 or so at the most.
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That's a lot cheaper than I thought it would be. Hmm... I might have to see just how many things I want to get done on the [insert car here].
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Really looking forward to seeing it in colour with it's bodykit etc, It's going to be stunning, Fantastic work,
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BMW E39 525i Sport BMW E46 320d Sport Touring (now sold on.) BMW E30 325 Touring (now sold on.) BMW E30 320 Cabriolet (Project car - currently for sale.)
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luckygti
Posted a lot
I need to try harder!
Posts: 4,912
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Aug 11, 2013 12:09:43 GMT
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Sooooooo, possibly in paint this weekend then........ Mojo boosted I'm off to the garage to crack on with mine
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Aug 11, 2013 13:21:12 GMT
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The latest "painters excuse plan" is that the doors etc are going up on tuesday afternoon to get the backsides painted, then the van the following afternoon for all the shuts and insides doing, then I'll pop round after work thursday and help him bolt everything back on for him to prim, paint, flat and compound the whole thing, he reckoned it would be ready about the 20th. I'm not holding my breath, it's a good job he's flipping cheap really.
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Last Edit: Aug 11, 2013 13:21:45 GMT by cobblers
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luckygti
Posted a lot
I need to try harder!
Posts: 4,912
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Aug 11, 2013 20:00:29 GMT
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Erm, the 20th? I was really looking forward to seeing this at RRG (I'm sure I'm not alone!) But, cheap is good so if you have to wait a bit longer, it's going to make it all the more worthwhile
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Aug 12, 2013 21:42:57 GMT
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Haha, It's a long way off yet! - I've got painters and Upholsterers to wait for. Speaking of upholstery, I picked a pair of these up yesterday: Recaros out of a Rover 800 turned up cheap ish locally on ebay, and looked like they would be alright. I nipped over and measured a few important measurements (runner width, overall width and height of the seat base) First of all, the runners are exactly the same width as the OE seats which will make fitting them fairly simple, plus the bases are actually about an inch lower than the stock seats which is ideal - almost every aftermarket seat bodged into a t25 is a few inches higher than stock, so you can barely fit between the steering wheel and the drivers seat. With the position of the seats in a van, really deep bolsters on the base would get worn out when climbing in and out - these are fairly shallow so should survive pretty well. With these, the driving position is absolutely perfect. As much as I like the OE VW seats (after all, they were designed for the job) it's like sitting on a bin lid compared. They are pretty buggered externally, but the main foams are still nice and stout so they are firm but very very comfortable. I'm going to strip the bases from the frames, weld the runners off some old t25 seats on and then drop them off with the upholsterer so he can get on with making the patterns while I decide on some fabric. I can't afford the £1k + for a set of repro bumpers and side planks, so I've decided to just fit the big bumpers and see if I'm happy with it. After looking around for ages for a pair of 2nd hand bumpers, I decided that I might as well just buy decent new repros - all the 2nd hand ones were over £100 a side, for cracked and buggered ones that were repairable, but by the time I'd spend a weekend sorting them out I might as well just spend the extra and get some new ones, so today I gave the seller of these a call: I asked a few questions and he seemed like a good guy and gave the right answers etc - there are sets of repro bumpers for half the price, but they're wobbly and thin and toss. I'm confident that these will be decent, but we'll see tomorrow!
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Last Edit: Aug 12, 2013 21:53:26 GMT by cobblers
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luckygti
Posted a lot
I need to try harder!
Posts: 4,912
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Aug 13, 2013 18:01:20 GMT
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Like the seat. I have the Subaru Legacy ones from the engine donor, but the width is definitely causing issues I'm really holding off on getting some others though, I really need to stop buying stuff
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Aug 13, 2013 21:44:50 GMT
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Yeah, if the seats are too wide you'll never get hold of the handbrake. I did a t25 with a mate a while back and some pillock had fitted some huge front seats in it - you couldn't actually use the handbrake at all from the drivers seat, and they had to fit a mk2 golf steerign wheel so you could actually get in the seat at all!
I've just finally dropped all the doors/etc off at the painters for him to get started with, along with a big pile of money (£300+) for many litres of insanely expensive brown paint. Could everyone please cross their fingers for me?
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Aug 13, 2013 21:47:45 GMT
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Also if you see me with the van painted, and I haven't mentioned that I've waxoyled the knackers out of the back of all the welds where I pieced the windows in, please remind me to waxoyl knackers out of the back of all the welds where I pieced the windows in.
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