Floor removal

Based on the extent of the rust around the area on the floor which the sills attach to and a lot of the perimeter sections I decided the best approach would be to replace the floor entirely (this will give me a chance to clean up most of the underside properly and restore it fully).

Starting to chop the floor out in sections:

Front half out:

Nearly there:

All that I could find of the offside middle sill:

And majority of the floor out, just the areas around the edges left to unpick from the walls (just to think 4 months ago I was driving this around as my only vehicle!):

Having assessed the cross floor supports it looks like I’ll need to do the following:

  • 1st support – Already taken out, new one to fit.
  • 2nd and 3rd I beam supports – In fairly good nick so I’ll repair the sections that need repairing.
  • 4th tophat – Minor repairs.
  • 5th and 6th tophat – Given that these are only welded to the chassis legs now and need some significant repair I think I’ll just replace both of them to save time.
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Winter week on Iris: Day 4

It doesn’t look like I’ve done a huge amount over the last few days but it takes quite a while to cut out the rot before I can even think about welding new bits in. I’ve postponed the shot blasting for now as I’d rather focus on getting the core of the van in a better condition.

Today’s delights included discovering the the B pillar has been bodged by a previous owner (this should be 2 separate sections, the b pillar on the right and then the wheel arch on the left, instead it seems to be one continuous piece!):

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And what could be under these patches someone’s welded in?

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More rust of course:

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Onwards!

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Winter Week on Iris: Day 1

I’ve had to reschedule the shot blasting for Thursday as I’m still waiting for my new priming gun to arrive and didn’t want to leave the chassis in bare metal.

So I spent today making a start on removing the nearside outer and inner sill, and front top-hat, outriggers and cross member.

The outer sill came off first:

to reveal a second outer sill underneath. Some lazy sod had just welded the new one straight over the rusty old one:

With the outer sill off it’s clear the middle sill also needs some work:

Stripping the paint above the spot welds for the inner and middle sill to drill them out also revealed a few holes:

Outrigger and jacking point cut out to make access to the sill easier:

And started chopping the inner sill out:

Hopefully I’ll get the rest of the inner sill off tomorrow, and carry on with the front top hat section.

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Prepping for media blasting

I’ve got a whole week off next week to work on the van, starting with a guy coming in to media blast the underside (it should save me a fair bit of time and effort, and allow me to get on with the more interesting bits!). In preparation for this I’ve been scraping off as much of the underseal as I can, so that the media blasting gets straight onto the paint. This has also given me a chance to assess what needs replacing.

The Good bits

The vast majority of the main chassis leg sections are in good condition and so shouldn’t need too much work.

One of the top hat sections also seems to be in Ok condition so shouldn’t need too much fiddling (maybe a new end once I get the sill off?).

The Bad bits

As I already knew all sills will need replacing, as will most of the outriggers and jacking points (I suspect some of them could be saved, but given I’ve gone to the effort of rolling it over, it makes sense to do them all).

The two I beams will need new sections letting in on at least one end, where it has rotten quite badly.

The rear cross member has, at some point, either been used by a previous owner to jack up the van or hit a speed bump and sustained quite an impressive dent:

The front cross member is also a little pretty battered, as is the heater tube:

From what I’ve seen on other restos this looks like typical rot for a UK bus (stupid wet weather), so although it looks a bit grim I’m optimistic! I’ve got a stack of panels at work ready to bring home this week, so should have a plenty to do next week. 

Once again I wasn’t on my own as Max came down to help scrape off the underseal. To save time we also brought the camp stove down to cook dinner (even when we don’t have a van to camp in we’ll find an excuse to cook on a camp stove)

Hopefully my next post will be of a freshly shot blasted underside, with some work started on the restoration proper.

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