Dez' 'fleet' thread. Another bl00dy transit!

Excellent. Looking really good.

👍

Had any weight on the first part of the bed yet?


Every bed we've built has much longer drop plates from the rear chassis, giving much more triangluation.

I can't decide if it's just the photos though, as our beds are flat, with and angle at the end, whereas yours is a ramp

They’re actually worse than they look in the pics, heavily gouged and all the mounting studs broken. Being a transit, a new pair is £40 delivered!

It’s now taken a trip down the blasters and has come back looking a lot nicer. I got the ramps done too, not cos they were rusty but to key the galv for paint.






The chassis was also given a lick over on the crusty bits, which inevitably lead to some more holes appearing, giving me yet more to do. This is the only actual hole though, which is actually fairly good for one of these.


The major task now though was to get some paint on it. There was the minor inconvenience of the mrs. catching covid and me having to stop at our other house for a week until she was clear, as the last thing I need right now is a dose of that. but at least it was sat inside the workshop so wasn’t going rusty again!
As soon as I was able to come back down, I got the bed off and masked on the top sides. I’ll explain why later.



I’d fixed up my original pre-fire bigboy compressor after selling off the other 5 I had somehow accrued since then 🙄😂
It only took a new motor, wiring, socket and plug, belt, gauge, most of the fixings and fittings, a new tank valve and making some new gaskets. A ‘new’ pressure switch was pirated off one of the other compressors, then the tank, pulleys and belt guard were sandblasted, the pump and other sundries you don’t want to get sand in cleaned up by hand and cleaning out and rebuilding the valve block!
Looks alreet now though-




Most importantly it now does this-


Which now allows me to huff large quantities of paint with relative ease.

So that is what I did. 1800ml (3 guns full) of primer-




Then pretty much 2.5l of topcoat (4 guns full).
Painting a ladder frame like this is an awful job, especially one that includes angle. There just SO many faces to have to hit, inevitably you end up knocking the bit you’ve just done with either the paint cup or the hose and you have to touch in, or you can’t see what you’re doing so you’ve got the torch in one hand and the gun in the other. Whilst rolling round on your back on the floor!
Only took 8hrs all in😂




I’m pretty happy with it though, despite the runs in it. It’s all one colour and protected, which makes it look half decent. It’s obviously pick up scrapes and scratches in use, and the ability to touch this paint in easily with just a brush or roller is why I’ve used it.

Looking very nice, don't set the panel gaps too tight, with large panels and relatively flexible structure Transit's like most commercials need bigger panel gaps to stop the panels hitting each other.

Wanting a break from the incessant slog that this thing has become, but not being able to stop until it works, I decided to get the winch finished off.
A change is as good as a rest and all that.

The winch is a warn 8274, which is the daddy of all winches. When you see some yankee rock crawler hanging off a cliff by its winch wire, it’ll be one of these it’s attached to.
It already greatly impressed me with its ability to drag the totally beached out Laurel round the yard.
This is from the 70s but still going, although it did need some work.
I’d previously stripped it down and cleaned all the Manky old paint off it, and identified any bits that needed replacing. The brake had been welded together and the pawl removed because the friction material had failed, but other than that it was pretty good.


I bought some overpriced rebuild bits from gigglepin, the most annoying thing is when a business is based online with a UK web address, then charge you VAT and expensive postage on top of their advertised prices.


And with some parts diagrams downloaded off the interwebs, I got it back together.


I repainted all the steel bits black after stripping the old paint. The alloy body will be left bare. I’d replaced the clutch lever at the top here as the old one had taken a whack and the baseplate was cracked. I got very lucky in that a local 4x4 place had one on eBay for half the price I could get one elsewhere for, so I swung by there and collected it.


The motor body was also cleaned and painted to freshen it up.


Here’s the new spring to make the pawl work, which had been deliberately smashed off previously.

And that was that really, it’s ready to go on now.


I also found someone local breaking a couple of transits that I had a few bits off. Their name was Gill, I assumed that was Gill pronouncing the ‘g’ as you would in ‘golf’. Turns out it was actually ‘Jill’, which confused me somewhat when I turned up to collect!
She damn well knew here stuff about transits though, she knew more than most of the male breakers I’d spoken to and was very helpful.

She furnished me with a pair of the elusive inner arch splash guards I’d been looking for for ages. One of mine was missing and the other half melted. No point doing all those repairs for it to full up with crud again.


Plus some undamaged A-pillar trims. These always seem to get broken by ham fisted removal, but we removed these carefully between us so they’re good. The trick is to deliberately break the clips to save the actual trim. I’ve bought new clips off eBay for a whole £3.


And lastly I bought this. Unbelievably it has no wear whatsoever, it just needs a wash. It’s from a mk7 so needs a shifter hole cutting, but mines been cut in half straight down the middle to access the wiring which annoys me so this will get swapped in at some point. They have thicker sound deadening than a mk6 one too.


So with those bits sorted, it’s back onto the truck itself…

No idea tbh.
North Doncaster area, (when I say local I was up that end at the time), was breaking a couple of mk6/mk7 but mentioned having series land rovers too.
I’m sure she was entirely used to having confused people turn up looking for ‘the bloke breaking transits’ only to find out she’s female though 🤣

Next I decided I’d best start sticking some ally down.

Yes, sticking.
No other bed I’ve seen has this done, they seem to just be rivetted or bolted. but it massively increases strength for very little extra weight, as it means when loaded it’s not pulling on the rivets, and it won’t rattle later down the line when the rivets loosen up, so seems like a good idea to me.
First I peeled off the masking tape I’d put on the mating surfaces. This means I’m sticking the ally to the actual metal frame, not the paint on it.


Some fat beads of ‘tigerseal’. Or the starchem equivalent anyway.


I used 4 tubes to do the whole bed and the ramps, so I wasnt shy with it…




Then the ally was bedded down and I started drilling holes. Lots and lots of holes.




First two panels on.


Here you can see I’ve got enough sealant on there to get a little ‘sqidge’ so I know it’s fully stuck.


Quite a while later, all 4 main panels are on, and the ramps are also done in the same way.
The bed is 2mm, the ramps are 3mm.


Looks like f-k all when it’s presented like that, but including trimming down the ally to final size that’s two days work!

Yeah, that is a beautiful job...