luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
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I'm gonna damn well do this as a fox-picture multiquote just because I goddamned well can .... now bstardchild showed me how
Man, what fantastic pictures...I'm going to come back and stare at them more when I have more time. Beautiful! Kind of you to say so. To be fair, Yorkshire might (apparently) be God's own country but for me the Staffs/Derbyshire border comes a very close second. Hard not to take decent pics when the thing you're pointing the camera at is so beautiful. That was the perfect antidote at the time; we all needed a break and I really needed some time away from fighting (and losing) against recalcitrant vehicles! Great write up as usual, ive missed the updates! Have the wrinkles dried enough to sand out now? looks like you might need some sort of isolator coat before the top coat goes on now Thanks. I didn't want to write too much about the Beryl while I was still fighting with her because it makes me sulky and ill-disposed towards her and I'd rather write in a happy place knowing it got sorted... Thoroughly enjoyed that thanks. Not so much the paint reaction, but the trip up the country. Hope you can sort the paint out. ...or did it!? Bwah bah bah bummmmmmm! Paint reactions do indeed suck donkey balls. Had a beach buggy years ago where the paint reacted - ended up spraying lacquer over the reaction, then more primer and that seemed to cure it. Good score on the California Look book, it's widely regarded as the New Testament, following on from KS's first installment of the Cal Look Bible in 1994ish. Some awesome cars and great stories in there! Yeah, Ok, it did. Although there's plenty of grim reading still to go, and you're all 100% spot on; paint reactions are indeed an utter pain in the  And yes, Seume writes very engagingly and that book kept me sane in the looooooooong evenings when the kids were in bed and I had to sit and listen to MrsL7 and her mum gasbaggin incessantly about great aunts and third cousins twice removed that I'd never even heard of, let alone met. Ooooh, and did you hear that our Noreen's been having endless trouble with her bunions since that doctor, the one I've never liked cos his eyes are too close together, since he supposedly re-set them but they've never healed right and now her big toe sticks out the side more than ever.... arrrrgh! Please, Keith, tell me more about the Inch Pincher and the problems affecting cracks in magnesium OG Gas Burners...for the sake of my sanity! Yes thanks for the post and inspiration .... I’m now going to try and write something interesting   It feels like that's still a more substantial van than our Beryl! Interesting to see inside the deformation panel, I suspect I may be seeing the inside of ours eventually.... when it crumbles into flaky rust I'm off to find some copies of Keith Seume's books. I'd forgotten all about them. Great write up as usual, waiting for the next update. Thanks... though hardly great when compared to your rebuilding an entire Type 3 from welding wire and optimism! Next update will follow soon as I can get a minute's peace School holidays innit  There! Absolutely multi-quoted the living shizzle out of that one  |
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Last Edit: Aug 8, 2019 21:00:20 GMT by luckyseven: stuff and tings
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Lovely pics from a part of the world I know well. Very nice. Good luck with the paint! |
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MiataMark
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 2,971
Club RR Member Number: 29
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I've got the Colin Burnham, Air-Cooled Volkswagens book from the mid 80s, and the pages from Street Machine of his project Cal-Look Beetle.
and I don't even really like Beetles...
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1990 Mazda MX-52012 BMW 118i (170bhp) - white appliance 2011 Land Rover Freelander 2 TD4 2003 Land Rover Discovery II TD52007 Alfa Romeo 159 Sportwagon JTDm
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luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
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Onwards.... No idea why it had reacted like that. I asked the semi-tame mechanics next door what they reckoned and one who'd worked in a paint shop thought it might be that the primer was still "green" and hadn't fully cured off before the top coat. But he sadly shook his head before explaining that sometimes even using primer and paint from different brands was enough to set off a reaction and you could just never tell. Whatever had caused it, there was no alternative except to just sand the whole sorry mess back and try again  sanding back the wreckage by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Which took ages. And whilst it did create some pretty patterns, it wasn't exactly what I needed in my life right then. Fortunately the areas in the seat boxes had escaped too bad a reaction for some reason and it didn't really matter too much anyway because they were destined to be covered in sound deadening. Well... anything, no matter how token, that reduces the noise levels in a T25 by even so much as a scintilla is a welcome addition. So as much needed relief from endless sanding, I got on with lining the boxes  battery seatbox deadened by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Fortunately I hadn't used the primer on the seat runners because they were still in OG Elfenebein colour and hadn't been PORed. I wanted as few coats of paint on them as possible so as to not interfere with the smooth movement of the seats. And in all honesty, "smooth" isn't really the correct word to describe the grabby, clunky, sticky jerks and strenuous leg workout that's involved with every adjustment of a T3 seat. Anyway. The runners were OK as they were and almost every reaction spot was covered in the boxes by the time I'd finished  pass seatbox deadened by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Because the paint had blistered up so much, it was the devil's own job sanding it flat again. Eventually it got to a "close enough" point where I felt I could try to re-apply primer and this time leave it plenty of curing time. It looked OK, to be fair  reprimed by Nick Liassides, on Flickr and even rougher parts like the step looked as though they might actually look half-presentable once back in paint  reaction sanded & reprimed by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Nope. This time at least I was sensible enough to try only a couple of areas before wasting a load of expensive topcoat. In fact, I never even got as far as applying topcoat on the step. The primer even reacted with the POR15 coat underneath and the whole sorry mess lifted off, peeling away in sheets and bubbling away like a time-lapse Evil Dead effect Like, seriously, what the actual fox-picture‽ (oooh, interrobang) How is it possible for a proprietary primer designed specifically to act as an inert barrier layer for a proprietary paint formula from the same goddamned company do the exact opposite and react with its own self?  second reaction by Nick Liassides, on Flickr It was just bizarre, and extraordinarily annoying. The whole lot was sodden, almost as though it had absorbed water from the very air ...and I know that's how POR cures, but we're talking enough moisture to squeeze it out of a handful of the stuff! Besides, the POR15 black paint was a month old by now and that should mean it was cured off enough to withstand a direct SAM missile strike and be immune to all known chemical attack. I've never found any solvent that will affect POR once it's cured. Until now. Apparently the primer acts as its own solvent. Who knew  Anyway, like I said thank whichever pantheon of imaginary sky fairies you worship that I'd only used the primer on a few areas rather than the whole lot. Even so, it basically meant I couldn't trust any of it, even the older stuff and now had no choice but to sand every single bit back to original paint, primer, or metal if needs be to eradicate every trace of the POR primer. I couldn't risk another reaction, no matter how small. Equally fortunately, the primer that my domesticated welding gnome had used on the steps and floor seemed impervious to the attack of the POR primer and was still intact. I didn't take any photos of any of this. I was too p1ssed off. And to be fair, no-one wants to see a photo essay of sanding, sanding and more sanding. And when that was done I used good ol' fashioned etch primer on everything, then good old fashioned high-build. Then I sanded some more. And then, finally, threw what was left of my Beryl Yellow over everything And dayamm if it didn't all turn yellow, shiny and stay that way  drivers footwell painted by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Some bits were even quite smooth, and bits that had been really scabby and patchy before like the brush-painted B-pillars were already looking much better!  b pillar painting by Nick Liassides, on Flickr I got a few runs, a few sags where I'd laid it on too thick but these were all fixable and considering it was done on a grit-strewn driveway, outside, in mid-April in the cold using rattlecans I don't actually think I ended up with too terrible a finish. I mean, the ol Beryl was never going to win any concours. But then she was never going to anyway  only a few sags by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Not bad for straight out of the can, yeah?  so shiny by Nick Liassides, on Flickr The only snag was I kinda ran out of paint. The first attempt had used a lot, and I just wasn't willing to spend another £120 mixing up and canning another load right now. So it nearly made it... just a few bits were still a bit greenish where the paint wasn't quite thick enough. For now, it would do. I simply couldn't face any more painting just at this point in time!  finally the paint sticks by Nick Liassides, on Flickr I allowed myself a few moments of smugness to bask in my own glory... but in my defence, I felt like I'd earned a bit of smugness after three attempts to get this far... and bolted on some of the fittings to see how it might look done b pillar yellow by Nick Liassides, on Flickr I don't know what this little plate signifies, think it's like a VIN number type thing. Anyway, this is where it lived before I took it off and it might be important so I riveted it back on after cutting back the sound deadening suitably  the isitimportant plate by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Because I really needed something completely different to prep, paint and polish, I started a little side project to keep me amused and provide a bit of an antidote. Mmmmm, how about a nice spot of whittling?  slab of baconwood by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Yep, more Baconwood Arts & Crafts. Can you guess what it is? |
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Assuming it’s the bit with the hole in it cut to the pencil marks?
Handbrake grip?
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MiataMark
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 2,971
Club RR Member Number: 29
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Seat adjuster handle?
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1990 Mazda MX-52012 BMW 118i (170bhp) - white appliance 2011 Land Rover Freelander 2 TD4 2003 Land Rover Discovery II TD52007 Alfa Romeo 159 Sportwagon JTDm
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Gear knob? |
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Tyre valve dust cap 'arts and crafts' style?
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luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
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johnthesparky wins the internet for today  Admittedly it didn't look much like a handbrake grip when I started. It looked more like a square-ish block of baconwood with an annoying nick in it (another annoying nick, I'm an annoying Nik) where I'd misjudged a previous saw cut. Oh well, it'll polish out  handle embryo by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Hello again. I thought I'd put some more miles on this thread since the kids are back at school and Mrs L7 has pottered off to Fat Fighters. The Beetle's having its rear end cut open to fit the engine, the Beryl is at Ted's having the suspension mount welded back on. Apart from a cat (who is admittedly looking very disapproving at the tapping noise from the computer ruining her nap) I've got the place to myself so I can actually hear myself think... and for once there's not a pressing job fixing rusty old curse word hanging over my head like the Sword of Damocles. Yes, that sword, for those who remember the original Tomb Raider. So, whittling then. It wasn't long before the workshop was full of the scent of baconwood shavings. Smelt like... well, like bacon really  extending the hole by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Once the rough was cut from its slab, I could get the chisel bit all the way through and whether by luck or judgement, the holes even met in the middle. I mean, we're hardly talking @johnnybravo levels of engineering here but it made me happy. Test fit on the actual handbrake stem showed promise  handle test fit by Nick Liassides, on Flickr The bus had never had a handbrake cover during my ownership. I've seen pictures of this elusive unicorn of a thing and as you'd expect, they're a very 80s affair and not particularly nice. They're made from black rubbery stuff, ribbed for extra pleasure. And long since NLA. Funnily enough, not something that often seems to float past on the currents and eddies of eBay either. Ever seen Forged in Fire? It's fascinating. An American import (obviously, I suppose, since it involves four blokes competing to make the best humongous killing knife) shown on the History channel, it's one of few programmes with JEOPARDY in it that I actually enjoy, mainly because the judges are always very kind about telling people that the knife they've just spent six hours making it utter curse word and will fail at the first cut. Anyway, The Boy turned us on to it because one of the things he wants to be when he grows up is a blacksmith, but like anything where you're watching people do something that they're clearly very good at, it's fascinating. What baffles me though is how they can take two sketchily-epoxied chunks of wood and whizz them up on a belt grinder and have a lovely ergonomic handle done in seemingly minutes. Via the magic of editing, I suppose. I didn't have a belt grinder running on a several horsepower genny engine, all I had was a Silverline finger sander that I'd bought to replace my trusty old Black & Decker one that blew up grinding off Beryl's exhaust studs. Actually, the new one was better, smaller, lighter, more powerful and easier to adjust. But it still took ages whittling down the baconwood chunk to a place where I could start finish-sanding it  rough shape by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Meanwhile, of course, the van wasn't putting itself back together. I felt a slight improvement in Mojo Quotient having finally got some paint to stick and actually lay flat and eventually could mentally face cracking on again. First thing was to replace the cardboard battery box liner that had served as an emergency measure to get the bus driveable for VolksWorld. Time for some CAD  CAD for seatboxes by Nick Liassides, on Flickr I bought a truly massive nitrile rubber sheet with which to line the seatbox. When it comes to rubber, size matters  . Looking back, I struggle to explain the thought processes that led me to buy it in white. Hmmm. I guess black does show up dust and grime pretty starkly, too. Oh well. It made it easier to transfer my cardboard-aided design templates across via the magic of Sharpie  rubber components for seatbox by Nick Liassides, on Flickr The next issue was; "how to affix massive rubber sheets to a metal box?" ...a Google search not many people have had to perform, and even fewer have subsequently had survived having their hard-drive seized by Operation Yewtree. Since I was clearly an innocent fool, I got away with out the Special Issue kicking in the door and came out none the wiser. Several suggestions were cleaned, some even from companies that manufacture nitrile rubber sheeting. Epxoy glue was tried. Nope, once set it just peeled straight off. PVA-based adhesives likewise. Superglue (good ol' cyano-acrylate, developed to seal wounds in the field in Vietnam, fact of the day) worked brilliantly but had very little in the way of filling ability, being a thin fluid in a tiny bottle. I'd have needed to buy gallons of the stuff at prohibitive cost to be able to get enough for what I needed. I was rapidly running out of glue options. Oooooh, wait, what about Hot Glue? I had a gun in drawer I'd bought for a project years ago and never used since because it was such an annoying, messy horror show to use.I dug it out, spent ages cleaning out the clagged-up nozzle and getting it working. Nope It was still really annoying and messy to use, but with the added irritation of utterly failing to stick what I wanted to what else I wanted. Dang Eventually, the beam of light shine from the heavens accompanied by that angelic paean of inspiration AAAAAAA aaaahhhh hhh! like that. It's gotta be Sikaflex hasn't it? And by good fortune, I had half a used tube in the garage. Once I'd drilled out the seized-up nozzle and panel-beat the tube back round so it would actually fit in the gun, tests showed it to be perfect. Good fill qualities, enough immediate grip to hold the rubber in place while it dried and plenty of shear strength to keep it there once set.  sikaflex to the rescue by Nick Liassides, on Flickr I did kinda wish I'd had either white Sikaflex or black rubber, though. It's hard to be accurate with the stuff! Once it was in place and started to set, some celly thinners would wipe off the worst of the gloops, but you had to be quick or a) the rubber started to move if you wiped it too hard, 2) the sika would set too much so all you could manage was to smear it around worse than when you started and iii) the thinners started breaking down the rubber  rubber lined box by Nick Liassides, on Flickr eventually it was all in place as neatly as I could manage and I left it weighted down with the heaviest things I had to hand to set...  weighting to dry by Nick Liassides, on Flickr ...and got on with something else. The passenger seat box lid could go back on while I was waiting. These were originally rivetted on, and I thought about using little screws and nuts to re-affix them purely because I hate rivets. They're so.... permanent. Eventually I decided that since the carpet would ultimately run over the box lid and down the sides, there was no real point in making the lid easy to remove as it would still be held in place by the carpet. Rivets it is, then. At least they're quick  rivetting stuff by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Although I say so myself, it looked quite good once in place, especially considering it was previously rusty, beaten and knackered plus bent in half where 20 stone of Phil had sat on it!  pass seatbox done by Nick Liassides, on Flickr With the careful application of an L7 Patented Invisible Fastener Alignment Tool #AT7865-28 * , I errm... aligned the clips that detent into the little bulges on the sides of the box and hold the lid fastened down when shut * Yes, it's a bit of masking tape. Hey, whatever works
 lining up the latches by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Time to check how my battery box rubberisation went then  battery seatbox done by Nick Liassides, on Flickr well, there were only a few smears of Sikaflex. Most of which would be covered when the battery was in place. I'm gonna call that a win, and besides, I cared less what it looked like and more that it'd stop battery acid from eating through the drivers' seat support. Right, what's next then? Well, the B-pillars, if you remember, were in a pretty poor state. They'd originally been brush painted with some flavour of vaguely white Dulux stuff ...white with a hint of bodgery. I'd sprayed Beryl yellow up to the line that matched the outside swage where the colour transitioned. This left the inside of the top of the pillar still in knackerdy old brush-textured off white.  longwall b pillar before by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Plus, throw into the mix seatbelt mounts, tie-backs for curtains, inexplicable plastic blanking plugs, "coat hooks" (honestly, I you not) and hideous chintzy Hyacinth Bucket bunting hung off them... something had to be done! The nearside one was even worse as it had loads of difficult to justify Velcro tabs glued to it as well with a glue that was as near to impossible to remove as anything I've ever found. Seriously, it's a good job it was only there in tiny amounts; a couple of gallons of the stuff would make a tar pit sufficiently inescapable that entire dinosaurs would be found perfectly preserved in years to come. Scraping the Velcro off and scrubbing (a LOT) with thinners would leave behind little patches where the Beryl's original Elfenbein shone through the textured white  B pillar white before by Nick Liassides, on Flickr After what seemed entirely too long, I had the B-pillars cleaned and prepped right up to the roofliner and could get on with masking up * for some colour-matched Beryl White * I call it "masking up". You might very well and quite legitimately call it something else entirely longwall b pillar prepped by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Likewise the nearside, which at least took a lot less "masking"  B pillar white sanded by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Time to chuck some paint at it, then. I have to admit to a certain degree of trepidation. Would it react like the yellow had done (twice)? Would I end up knackering not only the white but the yellow as well, and having to re-do the entire lot again? I honestly didn't think I'd be able to face that, if that happened the van would be staying wrinkly and curse word-looking for ever after. Nothing for it but to man up and give it a try. I took a deep breath, swallowed a bag of bravery pills ...alright, Haribo... and started spraying....
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Last Edit: Sept 6, 2019 10:07:05 GMT by luckyseven: spelnilg an sturf
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luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
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Sept 6, 2019 11:10:42 GMT
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There were a couple of annoying things in all of this (and yeah, I know you just want to see photos of whether the paint worked out or not, I'm building tension here. You'll have to wait  ). One was the unexplained wires that clearly did something but who could tell what? An earth and a live, the former simply screwed to the steel of the seat box, the latter via a fuse attached to the positive terminal of the battery. The wires went out of the side of the seat box and then behind the huge plywood sheet that ran the length of the longside of the van...and was the second annoying thing. If you remember back to me fitting the trim panel in the boot, I discovered the other end of this plywood. Then it disappeared behind the cabinets, and removing the front cabinet for access to the seat box revealed the other end. So the short version is, there was no way of removing this humongous plyboard wall without first removing all of the cupboards and in all likelihood the rock'n'roll bed/seat as well. So the wires apparently connected somewhere behind this plywood to the Zig unit in the back. For those who don't know, a Zig unit is a sorta old skool way of getting mains power regulated into a camper. Beyond that very vague description I'm not really sure how they work. I'd had an autoelectrician cast an eye over mine when we first got the Beryl... mostly because the use of Scotchlocks invariably scares me and rings alarm bells. He admitted it wasn't great, reckoned it probably came from an old boat originally. It sorta worked. The external hookup to campsite power supply seemed to work through it OK, though, and a couple of plug sockets were wired into it and also worked. But safely? Hmmm. Not so sure. It all needed replacing, no argument there. It had been bodged, scotchlocked, the wiring looked like a rat's nest. Half of it didn't seem to do anything. There was a snapped-off fuse irredeemably wedged into one of the fuseholders. As to the plyboard; I knew there was rust behind it. I was pretty sure the louvre window above it leaked. There were rust holes in the floor alongside it. BUT I just wasn't ready at this point to gut the entire van, which is what it would take. The cabinets were water-damaged and I was pretty certain they wouldn't survive being taken apart even if I wanted to. The electrics just needed throwing away and doing all new. So we're looking at a lot of time and money here; wood and time to construct new cabinets, money and time to pay for welding; money to replace the window with a sliding one and a new seal; money to replace the electrics (and with what? did I want to go solar, site hook-up, inverters, a new Zig unit, what? Every component is hundreds of pounds). So in the end, I did nothing, just masked it up, tidied up the mystery wiring to the battery and left it for another time. Maybe a bottle job, but I'd call it sense. And as we'll eventually see, it'll get done. Eventually. Meanwhile, paint  b pillar done by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Oh, thanks be to whatever deity or sky-fairy you believe in. It just came out looking like paint!  longwall b pillar painted by Nick Liassides, on Flickr ...aaaaaaaand breathe! Quite a relief, that was, and even un-sanded or mopped, the finish was actually pretty good although I say so myself. That meant that as far as I was concerned, the cab was done. Well, the paint was done anyway. At last I could open the utterly gargantuan box of carpet I'd bought from Heritage months ago and had been tripping over in the garage ever since and start laying it out. I've had a few products from Newton Commercial now, and whilst I make no bones about the fact I found their seat covers pretty poor on the T25, the carpet sets are excellent. Indeed, the first thing you do with the T25 set is lay out all these fiddly little bits of felt to fill in the fullers and ridges pressed into the floor  testfitting fillets by Nick Liassides, on Flickr This may seem a little thing, and a bit odd to get excited about, but it is actually a really nice touch. Without these pre-cut chunks of felt you'd either have to spend ages making them yourself or put up with the fact your lovely new carpet would always be lumpy and uneven as the ridges below came through. So it's a bit of a fiddle, matching the strips up to the floor pressings and then getting all sticky and grungy gluing them down with as potent a contact adhesive as possible, but it's well worth taking the time.  information plate back in by Nick Liassides, on Flickr I also re-rivetted on the information plate about all the weights and measures that make up a T25. Hopefully no-one will ever see it again because my hope is the carpet will never need to come up again for any reason ever. With this in mind, I also ran the speaker cables through some conduit because at least there's a chance that should it ever need replacing they can be threaded through without needing to pull the carpet up. The speaker wires were annoying; another thing that the PO had run before the interior was built and thus there was no way to re-do them without first taking out the rock'n'roll bed, the cabinets and the ply wall Still, once the little fillets were fixed and the glue had cured, I could get the main felt patches down  felting by Nick Liassides, on Flickr The felt is good in as much as it cushions the carpet so it's nice underfoot, and it adds a bit of sound-deadening that the old huge rubber floor mat never did. The downside is that it doesn't cover the entire floor to the same thickness throughout, and hey, you can never have too much sound deadening, can you? So I threw in whatever was leftover from my pack of Silent Coat as well  the last of the silent coat by Nick Liassides, on Flickr In addition, the carpet kit allows both RHD and LHD fitment, with two different felt mats depending where the pedals will go. I re-purposed the redundant mat to add a little extra cushioning, basically using every scrap of the stuff I could, even re-using bits I'd had to trim off other sections to fit  using the extra felt by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Even the smallest leftover couldn't help but make the cab a better place to be, right?  every little helps by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Of course, life went on all around whilst waiting for glue to dry but I even managed to utilise down-time at work to my advantage. I took in a sandwich bag with various grades of sandpaper in it and any spare moments I got I spent getting the handbrake handle nice and smooth right down to 2000 grit. Here it is enjoying the ride in the back cab of a 700-series unit on the way back from London Bridge. Presumably more than one driver wondered why there was the faint aroma of wood and bacon in the cab when they got in  handle sanding work by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Once the underlay felt was dry and stuck, it was time to put down the top layer, which is more tightly packed and thinner to offer a more robust surface for the carpet to lay on. The bottom layer is a much coarser, thicker, looser texture so spongy and soft.  felt in by Nick Liassides, on Flickr So that meant all that was left was to convince this absolutely vast mountain of random carpet shapes to take on the form of a van floor without wrinkles, loose bits, or getting glue over absolutely everything.  huge pile of carpet by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Hmmmm, that ought to be easy then |
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Last Edit: Sept 6, 2019 11:14:26 GMT by luckyseven
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Sept 6, 2019 12:26:53 GMT
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Love the way you chronicle your exploits...thanks for sharing!
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Sept 6, 2019 12:40:37 GMT
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You had a lot of bad luck with the paint, but the white/yellow looks really good.
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Sept 6, 2019 14:59:02 GMT
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Love your attention to detail! U got a gazillion miles more patience than 99% of us that's for sure
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96 E320 W210 Wafter - on 18" split Mono's - Sold :-(
10 Kia Ceed Sportwagon - Our new daily
03 Import Forester STi - Sold
98 W140 CL500 AMG - Brutal weekend bruiser! Sold :-(
99 E240 S210 Barge - Now sold
02 Accord 2.0SE - wife's old daily - gone in PX
88 P100 2.9efi Custom - Sold
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Sept 6, 2019 15:50:27 GMT
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That’s typical..... the day I win the internet, I have no reception on my phone  Great update again, thanks |
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Sept 9, 2019 11:30:42 GMT
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Its coming on nicely now, glad you've got your mojo back!
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ada7
Part of things
Posts: 108 
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Sept 11, 2019 20:00:39 GMT
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More. We demand more 🤣
Adam
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Rotaries help make the world go around... And around and around and...
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Sept 11, 2019 21:40:25 GMT
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WHS!!!!
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Sept 11, 2019 21:51:41 GMT
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I agree with all the above (although I don't know what WHS means) I agree anyway!!
Great van mate, great job!!
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Sept 12, 2019 7:08:58 GMT
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I agree with all the above (although I don't know what WHS means) I agree anyway!! Great van mate, great job!! What he said |
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luckyseven
Posted a lot
Owning sneering dismissive pedantry since 1970
Posts: 3,839
Club RR Member Number: 45
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Sept 12, 2019 9:07:55 GMT
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Err, yeah. OK then Right. With a carpet set from Newton Commercial, you get a nice set of instructions including some useful hints and tips, and basic guidelines on the order in which to affix each piece and any special things to know about them. The order is specified for a good reason, because then you end up with all the overlapping bits strategically arranged to make it as seamless and un-bumpy as possible when all installed. So the first bits...  the first piece by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Wheel arches This made me sad for a couple of reasons, not the least being that they're a ferociously complicated shape for a bit of carpet to make and thus very difficult to get glued on in the exact correct spot. The only bits I got wrinkles in doing the Beetle carpet were the rear wheel arches, because you're trying to get carpet to curve in two different planes and it's almost impossible. It folds rather than bends. These for the T25 were at least shaped so fit the wheel arch (presumably they heat-form them somehow) but they didn't seem exactly spot-on from dry-fitting. I wasn't feeling too optimistic However, I'd learned from doing the Beetle carpet that adding glue softens and even seems to stretch the carpet a bit, and they tend to fit better once glued than offered dry. So I pried open my tin of fearsomely potent Latvian * contact glue and splattered it all over * Possibly not Latvian, but certainly somewhere with a predeliction for Cyrillic lettering. It comes in a plain white tin with no logos or brand name, but lots of warnings of danger of death, madness and inheritable genetic deformities should you mis-use it. And that's what you want because it means unlike weakened Elf-and-Safe-Tea emasculated domestic products, it actually glues stuff together and sticks like the proverbial to the proverbial blanket glue goo by Nick Liassides, on Flickr However.  massive wrinkle by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Smeg  The problem here wasn't my poor gluing skills, the problem was that the carpet piece was simply too long in the dimension from the back, beside the seat box to the front, where the arch curves towards the door aperture. And because the carpet is one moulded piece, there's not really anything you can do to modify that dimension without it then throwing all the others off too. All I could do was stick it down, let it dry and then very carefully slit the bulgy bit and try to almost remove the excess like putting a vent into your natty Mod Suit.  edged this side by Nick Liassides, on Flickr As you can see, it fitted perfectly every where else. It's odd because I'm guessing these pieces are all laser cut on a floating table so you'd expect them to all be exact. Or maybe all the Newton Commercial offside T25 wheelarch carpet pieces are an inch too long? The nearisde one fitted perfectly... The other slight oddity was that the driver's side piece had a nice vinyl edging strip sewn on whereas the passenger side didn't. I didn't even twig for ages after they were stuck down. I've no idea why; I can't imagine it's an economy thing because the firm would be saving about 0.3p in edging trim and one 30th of an hours' wages for someone to sew it on, but there you go. It wasn't there and I wasn't about to try ripping it up once it was glued and taking it back to make a complaint. We were now on to the Main Event.  wrestling match by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Li'l Eliot, the parts counter flump at Heritage (who Mrs L7 wants to adopt cos she thinks he's sweet) extolled the virtues of the new Newton sets when I bought it. Evidently the older ones had the main cab floor mat in three pieces (two footwells and the tunnel) but these new ones are all one-piece. Which apparently is better because you have less seams to trip over and fray and it's a lot easier lining it all up to glue down. I can tell you now.... it ain't! Maybe in a nice, spacious workshop with assistants and all the time in the world. Singlehanded, on a windy driveway it was an utter pain in the pancreas. Even getting it in to the cab was a job in itself, and I was getting The Fear at the thought of doing it covered in glue... and with the cab floor covered in glue, too. And this contact adhesive is called that for a reason; once it makes contact, it sticks. You spread a layer on the thing, another layer on the surface and once they're together, they're staying that way. You don't get to peel it up and re-position it, at least not without all the glue staying stuck to one surface or the other, meaning you now have huge conglomerations of the stuff in all the wrong places that will cause lumps once you re-glue it and try again. The only way I was going to get this even close to right was set the carpet in place, steam it a bit and make sure it settled where it wanted to go and then trim any excess off so it fitted perfectly. Then take it out and get gluing  leaving it to settle by Nick Liassides, on Flickr and so the inevitable pile of little offcuts and scraps started, and would continue to pile up throughout the operation  the pile of castoffs begins by Nick Liassides, on Flickr Incidentally, that big box in the photo above is the crate engine for the Beetle. Finally Heritage got some 1776 motors back in stock so I whizzed over and scored one before they sold out again. Eliot helped me lift it into the van, but when I got home there was no-one to help lift it out. And then I realised that even if there had been, there was nowhere to put the damn thing. Mrs L7 would have gone utterly garrety if I'd tried to smuggle it into the house, and I mean, it's a three-foot square box, she's gonna notice. I can't put it in the garage because a) the roof leaks and b) the garage is full of broken Beetle. Errrrm. So there it just stayed, on the floor of the Beryl, taking up all the room I had to work in and generally being a massive square pain in the pulmonary artery. Occasionally I used it as a cutting table or workbench before remembering it contained an extremely expensive object and then feeling bad about myself. Anyhoo, the cab floor was trimmed. Time for the good stuff  the good stuff by Nick Liassides, on Flickr I pretty soon realised there was no goddamned way it was going to happen in one go. For a start, the glue I'd have applied to the floor would have cured off too quickly while I was still applying it to the carpet. For another, there was no chance I could get the whole wobbly, massive sheet in place without it touching somewhere I didn't want it to and irrevocably sticking itself. Also, to make sure the gearstick gaiter stayed in place, I had to poke it through the hole in the carpet and fold over the flange (oooooh, flange) underneath, then glue it down. So that meant I had to thread the carpet over the gearstick through a tiny hole in the end of the gaiter.... nahhh. It wasn't a goer. What I decided was to thread the gearstick gaiter on, then glue the underside of the carpet and the floor on the tunnel, stick that central part down and then do the two footwells afterwards, one at a time. This meant it was at least possible, but did mean it would make it a lot harder to line it all up perfectly; it was entirely possible if I got the tunnel even slightly on the wonk then the extreme edges nearest the doors would be miles out. Nothing for it but to take a few deep breaths (not too deep, that glue's potent)and go for it!  scary bit by Nick Liassides, on Flickr  |
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Last Edit: Sept 12, 2019 9:15:05 GMT by luckyseven
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Man, what fantastic pictures...I'm going to come back and stare at them more when I have more time. Beautiful!
Great write up as usual, ive missed the updates!
Paint reactions do indeed suck donkey balls. Had a beach buggy years ago where the paint reacted - ended up spraying lacquer over the reaction, then more primer and that seemed to cure it.
Yes thanks for the post and inspiration .... I’m now going to try and write something interesting 
. Looking back, I struggle to explain the thought processes that led me to buy it in white. Hmmm. I guess black does show up dust and grime pretty starkly, too. Oh well. It made it easier to transfer my cardboard-aided design templates across via the magic of Sharpie
). One was the unexplained wires that clearly did something but who could tell what? An earth and a live, the former simply screwed to the steel of the seat box, the latter via a fuse attached to the positive terminal of the battery. The wires went out of the side of the seat box and then behind the huge plywood sheet that ran the length of the longside of the van...and was the second annoying thing. If you remember back to me fitting the trim panel in the boot, I discovered the other end of this plywood. Then it disappeared behind the cabinets, and removing the front cabinet for access to the seat box revealed the other end. So the short version is, there was no way of removing this humongous plyboard wall without first removing all of the cupboards and in all likelihood the rock'n'roll bed/seat as well.
The problem here wasn't my poor gluing skills, the problem was that the carpet piece was simply too long in the dimension from the back, beside the seat box to the front, where the arch curves towards the door aperture. And because the carpet is one moulded piece, there's not really anything you can do to modify that dimension without it then throwing all the others off too. All I could do was stick it down, let it dry and then very carefully slit the bulgy bit and try to almost remove the excess like putting a vent into your natty Mod Suit.