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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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Aah, if only you'd have posted this a bit earlier, doh! I've fitted another pump now! I might still have a seal off you and fit it to my old pump at some point though.
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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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Jul 10, 2013 21:44:41 GMT
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Until someone tries to perform even one of the hundreds of repairs you've done on this to a passable standard, they won't even nearly appreciate the skill that has gone into this. Absolutely outstanding, I know pictures can be deceiving but it looks so straight in primer.
Are you going to be doing the filler work etc?
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Jul 10, 2013 16:28:02 GMT
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Jul 10, 2013 16:06:38 GMT
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Nope sorry, went on ebay in the end.
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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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Some of these look like they could just "universal dip" which a lot of cheap lamps are, they just have a flat beam pattern but they should pass an MOT OK RHD or LHD. You can apparently open up the slots for the locating tabs that hold the bulb and twist it round a couple of MM to give a better cutoff. If the pattern in the reflector is symmetrical you are good to go albeit with mediocre dipped beam.
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Last Edit: Jul 7, 2013 20:39:00 GMT by cobblers
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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?
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Last Edit: Jul 7, 2013 20:18:59 GMT by cobblers
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Cheers Matt, I'll have a go at that one day when I get round to it. I'm enjoying using a much much better borrowed welder at the moment which makes my welding skills seem fantastic!
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Before you try and spray it, use TFR and a nail brush and there's a very good chance it'll come up like new, and if it doesn't you'll have atleast cleaned most of the greasy nicotine off so that any paint you do try to apply will actually stay on.
I've used TFR to bring the headlining in a railworkers van like new, and it had some kind of smelting furnace thing installed in the back and ferried 6 chain smoking irish blokes around for over 400k
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Probably about £400/£500, probably on the lower end of that if it's not running right. - If it's the 1.4 16v engine then it'll have a bit of piston slap and some buggered stem seals. They're worked really hard in a Golf so show the miles earlier, but 100k even in a Lupo is about all they will handle. They're OK engines when healthy but not really regarded as worth repairing.
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Definitely with, it looks a mess without!
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Jun 30, 2013 22:01:24 GMT
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Yeah, it's totally transformed being inside it. I still feel a bit bad when I look at the pictures of a somewhat stock panel van when I got it, but it's loads better to use in every way now. The extra windows make it a much much nicer place to be.
That seatbelt mount thing never got used even once! I dunno why I decided I'd have loads of back seat passengers! It'll take me a few hours to clear that mess up too, but I've got the proper profiled metal to cut out of another window recess to weld straight in.
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Jun 30, 2013 20:15:32 GMT
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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.
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Jun 29, 2013 22:04:44 GMT
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Along the lines of above, My good friends T25 with merc hubcaps and tyres off a seciento.
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Jun 29, 2013 20:41:21 GMT
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Alright dudes. Finally got hold of the remaining window orifice after a very quick trip down the A1 today, and back. Here's the prize: Literally minutes after returning with it, I split the inner and outer skins by drilling out the spotwelds. I obviously havent got a spotweld bit, so I just marked the centers with a 2.5mm bit then went most of the way through with a 6mm jobbie. The metal was fairly soft and it was pretty easy going. I'll weld all these holes back up once it's all on the van to hold it all together again. Once that was done I went at the side of the van. I masked a lot of it off to try and save it from the worst of grinder sparks and welder blebs, then marked up and made my first cut: I was expecting to be quite nervous at this point, but in reality it was really relieving to finally just get stuck in. So anyway, I now had a whacking great hole in the van: I needed to trim the window hole down, and keep things central. I was using MATHS to work out a proper central datum point, but noticed that VW have left a little notch in the perfect place (just next to the masking tape that I put to mark my calculated middle). Thanks lads: Some trimming and grinding followed, and I got it all lined up (the panel crosses a swage line a the top so I spent fuggin ages getting it lined up right) and clamped in with some MEGA intergrip clamps. I was a bit underwhelmed when they arrived - they are very "home made" out of a bit of box and a countersunk flathead M6 bolt, but in practice they are fuppin excellent. Unfortunately my welded chose this moment to start curse word me around and having wire feed problems, so I only got it very poorly tacked in before becoming murderously angry with the welder, and called it a day. I'll try a new liner in it tomorrow, if that's no good I'll have to borrow a welder off a mate or something. Overall, despite the welder packing in I was quite happy with progress - that lot only took a few hours and it's all lined up brilliantly.
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Jun 26, 2013 20:42:28 GMT
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Elliot was gutted he couldn't buy this, but personally I'm chuffed to bits that you're really giving it some real attention. You've been a bit 'out of the game' for a few years and it's great to see you back in the swing of things. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this pans out. Nice work Dude. 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) if you'd asked I would have explained removing/refitting the slider, I'd leave out fitting rear windows, just do opposite the slider and leave it, my mate's welded up the back windows that were cut into his syncro panel van and it looks much better for it imho. 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! Progress is looking good, esecially considering that you're doing it all outside. 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.
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Last Edit: Jun 26, 2013 20:44:00 GMT by cobblers
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Jun 25, 2013 21:10:08 GMT
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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.
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Jun 24, 2013 20:19:32 GMT
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Last Edit: Jun 24, 2013 20:22:24 GMT by cobblers
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