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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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):
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).
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):
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.
