T25 Campervan - Weldathon

Cheers for the heads up. The other side is worse than this side and I've found that you can get the correct full panels from vw heritage. It's a lot more expensive but will save a lot of work

I've had a few bits turn up locally very cheap so jumped on them (not literally)

One early LH sliding door


It's had the handle smoothed over


from the inside it looks like its been plated over. I don't see any problems returning this to original


After stripping some paint its apparent that it has a long, shallow dent down it, although you cant see it in the photo


Other than that it has some rust along the bottom edge and there is an outer skin repair panel tacked over the original


I'm not too bothered about that either, there are repair panels for inner and outer lower edges for these doors. I'm happy with the overall condition of the door. It's an original windowed door with a recessed window, not a van door with a window hole cut into it and largely rust and damage free. Not bad for £25

Also got a passenger side front door in mint condition. No rust!


Two nice rear windows with vents


And an undamaged dash top


He did have a set of gauges but the circuit boards behind them where in poor condition so left it

Unfortunately there has been an environmental issue at the motor club and it has been temporarily closed so I cant do anything to the van atm. Don't see why I have to be punished for someone else's cock up but hey, its not like I'm bitter about it or anything.

Now that I've gotten rid of the Disco I can finally crack on with this bus

This is where I left off last time. Interior stripped out, door step needs some awkward bits grinding back with my new belt sander.


The passenger seat was jammed fully forward and underneath the seat rails looked suspect
Exhibit A

And B


After removing the seat I found that part of the seat adjuster had cracked and wedged itself


The next bit of grot was just in front of the seat base.


I had no Idea how I was going to get in there with a grinder without destroying half the surrounding metalwork. Then I remembered this. Plasma cutter!


First time using and I was a bit wobbly but the hole is there and can be tidied up


Now have room to get the grinder in to tidy up. There's 3 different joins here originally and is a bit of a water trap. Sod that, I'll make it with two. This first bit ties in the outrigger with the floor in 1 single layer of sheet, again thicker than original


That just left a little bit to tie in the floor


Tidied up a bit


And seam sealed


The finished off the welds on the doorstep with the belt sander and seam sealed that too


Also got some rust converter in this horrible little gap. There's only light surface rust in there luckily


The other thing I've found is that there appears to have been a metal wall behind the front seats at some point which has been roughly ripped off. I'll need to remove the welds properly and get some paint on the exposed metal


Next up, I needed to see what the floor was like after a good hoover.Pretty flipping good!


Not so good own here. Some previous repairs to uncover



And the other side


Thought I'd get the drivers side sliding door off as there was rust visible at the front of the sill and theres bound to be more hiding
It was welded in with two scraps of metal at the bottom


The lock was welded up too


More coming...

Don't you just love a bodge. Some inner structural sections on my van had been cemented in.

Plasterer probably. He'd done a bl00dy neat job 😁

So a little bit more done on this. Managed to score a drivers side wheel arch panel for £60 rather than £200 and with that in mind, went about destroying some more van

First things first, get rid of that horrible wheel arch. What a mess


Nice easy bit to get my eye in


And then what to do with this? You can see the spot welds I've drilled through. I was hoping there'd be good metal under here but there wasn't. Lower down you can see where this panel overlaps the one beneath. I decided that this would be a good sized piece to recreate.


I think one of the problems with this area and why it has rusted so badly is that there are seams facing into where water and gravel would be be spraying off the front tyre. you can see here that the seam has rust inside it, pushing it apart. It needs to be cut out but I won't be replacing it the way it was. I'll weld it flat here. Hopefully that'll make it easier to seal and there wont be any problems in the future


One repair panel made. This wont be seen as the wheel arch panel goes on top. I will obviously be replacing the rest of this forward face of the lower B-post but I'd like to see if there's a repair panel available to save me making it.


Well that's all for today. I only had time for half a day in there. hopefully I'll have more time tomorrow

Some great repairs there. Must have been so satisfying hacking off that bodged up wheel arch.

I’m a Vw t25 2.0cu aircooled automatic owner as well have done a few bits of welding on this year but it was the offside rear outer arm mount and a bit in the Nearside front inner arch. We got it in February it was only running on 3 cylinders as rocker arms had a broken stud so rebuilt that side of the engine. Then we ripped the interior out and remade it

Regarding your comment on getting a power file for getting into the corners....do you have a compressor? I’ve been using a die grinder with tungsten bits to get into tight areas. Really handy tool. You can also put the bits in a high speed electric drill if you don’t have a compressor for air tools.