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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Roll over Beethoven

After what seems like an eternity I finally have the camper on the jig and rolled over! With the pop-top removed I was able to rotate it one-handed with ease (there’s quite an impressive pile of rust under the left side of the jig in this picture; this fell out of the front deformation panel as I rolled it. It made a sound like a rain maker!)

Now to the actual task in hand of addressing the underside. This is how it currently looks. I don’t know a huge amount about the history of this van but it has had some repairs done under here in the past (certainly some of the jacking points/outriggers have had work done as the welding is a bit naff).

It probably looks worse in the above pictures as it’s got quite a hefty layer of underseal on, I’ve started scraping this off with a wallpaper scraper and paint thinners and it looks like at least on some of the chassis its done a good job of preserving the paintwork (the blue paint below is og).

My current plan is to scrape all this off to get a better idea of what needs attention, and then possibly get a mobile shot-blaster in to completely clean up the underside. I’m still not sure if I’ll get it blasted though.

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Poptop Off!

We finally got the pop-top off Iris today, in a bid to shed some weight to make it easier to roll. Having it on the roll-over jig made it pretty easy to slide off the roof and out of the way.

Once again I owe a big thanks to Max for coming and sitting in the cold car while I arsed around undoing the thing, and for then helping me lift the roof off. I believe she’s displaying the international sign for happiness.

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Slow but steady progress

jamesley:

The last few months have shot past and I don’t seem to have made a great deal of progress! The van is completely stripped down now and on the jig, however my attempts to roll it over recently haven’t filled me with confidence. It feels very heavy as it comes over, and as such I’m now in the process of removing the pop-top. I wanted to avoid this if possible as it was only fitted a short while back, but I’d rather do this safely than conveniently (hopefully it shouldn’t be too bad to fit the pop-top as the canvas has already been cut to size). The list of panels that need work is increasing too (not too surprising!). To name a few (I’d be here a while listing it all!):

  • Front panel
  • Deformation panel
  • Parts of the Cab floor
  • Battery trays
  • Front/Rear arches

Hopefully my next post will be with the damn thing rolled over and me having started on the chassis work.

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Strip down and rollover jig prep

I’ve had the last few days off work so have been down the workshop stripping the van down ready to get the rollover jig setup. As always everything seems to take twice as long as one would hope, with every other bolt rusted shut and needing a little persuasion to get them off (I gave up on the anti roll bar clips and ended up taking the grinder to them).

I now have the van stripped down to a shell (plus the front beam) and hope to get the jig on in the next week or two.

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Bumper brackets primed

jamesley:

Brackets now with a coat of paint.

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Bracket welding complete

So I’ve not got much further over the last few weeks, however I have finished the welding on the rear bumper brackets. These were in pretty poor condition when I took them off the van, with a lot of pitting on the surface that sits behind the bumper. 

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The second one I worked on was particularly bad, needing around 6 sections let in. Repairing these has been more of a learning experience than an economical repair as reproduction ones are readily available (about £120 for the 2, so I’ve saved a bit of cash doing it myself I guess). Here’s the worse one partially welded up (I couldn’t grind the welds down for an invisible finish as some of the metal was already pretty thin):

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And both with a lick of paint (I’m using Bilt Hamber’s Electrox for most of the chassis primer work, it’s 90% zinc. This will then be covered with Epoxy Mastic and then a wax. It’s a bit of a minefield when it comes to paints, I’m sticking with Bilt Hamber for this).

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I also gave the new jacking points a coat of paint too (I’m not sure if I’ll need to replace all of them, but I bought all to cover the worst case scenario):

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Next month should be an exciting month though as I’ll have access to the workshop share. We’re taking one more camping trip before I take her off-road and start the restoration proper.

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A little progress…

I didn’t manage to get much done this weekend as we went over to Dorset Volksfest yesterday and today seemed to disappear. 

I’ve made a start on patching up the rear bumper brackets though, starting with the one that’s in slightly better nick (although still pitted quite spectacularly).

Rot marked up:

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and cut out. Small repair patch shaped up and bent in the vice.

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And welded in and ground down.

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It’s not the prettiest bracket I’ve seen but once it’s painted up it should do the job. I think I’m going to weld another bit in up to the edge of the drilled hole in the bracket (no idea what it’s for any thoughts?)

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And so the restoration begins (sort of)

jamesley:

Over the last few months I’ve been acquiring tools, replacement panels and various other bits to begin some of the resto work on Iris. Having finally finished my workbenches last week I decided to take a look at the rear bumper on Iris as a gentle start. After 20 minutes or so of Max and I struggling to get the damn thing off due to rusty bolts Max insisted on a big teeth picture

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Max was keen to get stuck in so I gave her the angle grinder whilst I finished attaching my new welding torch to my machine. After 10 minutes or so she was struggling to get back to bare metal, it soon become apparent that the previous restorer was a master of sculpture; this is what we found under two huge chunks of fibreglass:

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Suffice to say we need a new bumper as this is a little beyond repair.

On the plus side the bumper irons look to be in reasonable condition so I should be able to clean these up and repaint. It also looks like I’ll have a workshop space available from next month! 

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Managed to put this on my personal blog again! opps.

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