Somehow I’ve spent an entire week so far sorting out the front in preparation for getting it into epoxy this week, as there were quite a few little things that needed addressing.
First up I needed a bit more confidence that the windscreen was going to fit correctly as my previous attempts had never been quite good enough. After more attempts than you’d care to imagine I finally got the seal sitting nicely in the aperture, the key being to only just getting the seal over the lip all the way round, rather than focusing on trying to get the whole thing over in one place and finding it didn’t fit somewhere else:
I then shaped up the corners on the aperture to blend the new front panel into the a pillars:
With the window done it was on to trying to improve the cab door gaps as I didn’t get these as good as I wanted when I repaired this area last year.
The N/S door gap to the front panel was noticeably inconsistent towards the bottom:
So I welded in a piece of steel rod:
Ground it flush and then cut it to give a much better door gap:
Over to the O/S door, and unfortunately the lower mount on the van that the door hinge attaches to had stripped its thread. I did debate fitting a rivnut (too big so wouldn’t allow adjustment), cutting a larger M10 thread (would mean I’d have to enlarge the hole on the door hinge), but ended up deciding to repair it the right way and fit a new plate in the mount.
There is only a single spot weld holding the top in place, so I drilled this out, bent the top of the mount out of the way, and slipped the plate out:
Made a new plate and cut in 2 m8 threads to match the original:
Slipped the new plate in:
And plug welded the mount shut again. Much better:
Both doors currently require shims to get them to fit properly which are a faff to fit so I decided to go full on “Door Whisperer” and bend the mounts with my new Hinge Adjustment Tool:
And now we have relatively decent door gaps which don’t need shimming:
I’ve started stripping the transit primer off, and hopefully the only bits that will need further filler are the edges towards the door:
