I’m beyond happy today. Max and I trial fitted the door to the middle sill today and it only bloody fits! I’ve been so worried about this bit so it’s great to see the door sitting reasonably well. Now just to weld the track in.
Posts
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- Inner sill in epoxy mastic.
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- Inner part of front arches in epoxy mastic.
I got the N/S inner sill, and rear of the middle sill in epoxy mastic last night as I won’t be able to paint these areas once they’re welded in. While I had the spray equipment out I gave the front arches a coat of it too as again I won’t be able to paint these areas once the two halves are welded together. This stuff goes on really nicely!
The middle sill has by far been the biggest pain in the arse on the van thus far as so little of the original was left so I’ve had to make new sections and trial fit it to the van countless times (I’m still not sure if the door will fit correctly, I’ll only know once I’ve got it tacked in place – hoping my measurements I took before I removed it are ok!).
I made up some sections to extend what remained of the old sill:
And ground flat. I had to fillet weld some parts of the repair to the top section of the sill, the finger sander was perfect for getting this flat as any protruding welds will stop the roller from rolling.
And here it is trial fitted before I can weld it in (I’m going to paint the inside of the inner sill and the back of the middle sill before I do any of the welding).
The distance between the top and bottom track, and the back of the track and the front of the threshold are as close to the original measurements I took before I took the sill out as I’m going to get. Once I get it tacked in place I’ll be able to trial fit the door and pray that it fits (anything is better than what I previously had as the front never quite matched up, and the rear of the track had collapsed meaning we could never open it fully).
Hopefully I’m not far off finishing the sill as I’m sick of the sight of it now.
Etched outside and zinc primed inside of wheel tub repair. Fabricated and etched some closing panels for the three holes the Brazilian floor has which I’ve no use for.
Finished welding in and dressed the welds on the front of the O/S rear tub tonight.
I took a break from the middle sill today as it was getting me down.
Rust treated and zinc primed the underside of the door threshold piece (centre section left bare so I can get some etchweld on it instead):
And made a first pass of the welding on the O/S rear tub repair (this side is in pretty good nick):
Having cut away the rot there isn’t a huge amount left on the original middle sill. I’ve managed to keep the curved bit which the new panel doesn’t have so hopefully I’ll be able to make this work (I have to really as I’m not going to find another original middle sill anytime soon).
You can see the curved bit better in the below image (Annoyingly I had to drill out the spot welds on the sill too as I couldn’t drill them out accurately enough through the threshold piece. arg. More work).
My plan is to cut the new middle sill down and then weld it to the old so it looks something like this:
The curved bit is the challenging bit and will need a lot of fiddling and measuring to get right. Hoping to crack on with this tomorrow night.
Next up the N/S middle sill!
The middle sill on the N/S has the top and bottom track for the sliding door roller attached to it (the top track is part of the flange that attaches the sill to the door threshold). i wanted to avoid removing the whole sill as it’s better to repair it in situ, but ours was pretty far gone – there are some substantial holes towards the top track which would be near impossible to fix with the track in place, and the rear of the track has completely collapsed (this was what caused our door to fall out during the first few weeks of us owning the van!).
In theory I should’ve been able to mark the centre of each spot weld holding the sill in place and drill the welds out. However in practice it was a right pain as the rusty track made some of the welds near impossible to spot, resulting in me needing to either chisel it out or expand the hole I’d drilled. It must’ve taken nearly 8 hours to get the thing out (embarrassing I know!).
Here it is all drilled out, it is as bad as it looks! Lots of holes near to the top track. I think I’ll have to graft as much as I can salvage from the old sill to the new one, rather than repair the old one as such.
On the plus side the underside of the threshold is in pretty good nick. I’ll clean it up, rust treat and epoxy it.
I think sorting the middle sill will take up most of the next week or so to get it right.
Next job; repair the sliding door track and middle sill. No room for error otherwise the door won’t open or will just fall off!
Up at 6 today and down the workshop by 7 to finish the floor up. Finally all welded in and dressed the sill welds. Happy with it all apart from the minor bit of distortion on the O/S panel towards the middle (will know for next time 🙂 ). Sexy underside!
