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.
