I managed to get a few hours on the van today and got the middle cross member welded in.
I spent a fair amount of time practising my plug welds and stress testing them to make sure they were good and strong (doing them in the vertical position took me a while to get used to).
Clamped in place:
welded to the chassis:
welded to the floor support:
and finished with a clean up and quick spray of electrox:
Really pleased with the results! This project also turned up for one of the guys in the unit across to me, which made me smile:
A little more progress from over the last few days.
Rear floor support welded shut again (I drilled out the spot welds as I didn’t want the inside to have no paint on it and promote rust)
Before I tack weld in the first and last floor support it seemed like a good idea to trial fit the floor to ensure the sills were sitting at the correct height. Very exciting to see the floor fits perfectly!
Now I know the floor and sills fit properly I can crack on with welding the sills, outriggers and cross members in over the next few weeks.
We’ve made steady progress over the last few weeks on the van (god knows how many hours!). Here’s a bit of what we’ve been up to.
New I beams fitted tacked into place (2, 3rd floor support):
Front top hat floor support cut down to size, new flanges bent into shape, and trial fitted to floor with outriggers, and inner sill:
Remaining chassis sections zinc primed and inside of box sections epoxy mastic’d (no way these will rust out for some time now!):
Max epoxy mastic’ing the bit I missed with the spray gun (once the front floor support is in I won’t be able to get to this section so paint on it now is important):
and Max grinding out the last of the spot welds from the old cross members:
I’ve got a day off next week so should hopefully get the inner sills welded in place and perhaps the outriggers and cross members! The underside is really starting to come together now, and it’s so much better than what was previously there.
I finally got the shot blaster in yesterday to clean up the underside for me. I was down there for a mammoth 12hrs as I needed to completely empty the unit for the guy, move everything back in after (inc. Engine, Front Beam, Roof, all doors, tools etc) and give it a coat of paint.
All out:
Shot blaster in:
I knew it would be messy work but the entire workshop was covered in about an inch of sand afterwards (it looked like a beach!). It took me nearly 2hrs to completely clean the workshop (it only took the guy about 1hr to blast the entire underside!).
And the finished result, I’m dead impressed with it:
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.
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!):
And what could be under these patches someone’s welded in?
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.
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.
