Chapter 17 - Guess who's back....

Wally's Back, tell a friend... Guess whos back, Guess whos back, Guess whos back, na na na na na na na .........

Wally took some time out from our project to peruse his favoured past time of Olympic pizza throwing and the spent these long humid evenings with nothing to do but drink copious amounts of 4 star, and set fire to local forests with his farts.....

This has left him believing that he can indeed fly on the power of his farts, here you can see the horrid moment where he realises that he has actually followed through in his shorts

 

The smell of rotting gearbox oil and diesel, burned my nose, and much time was spent clearing the air,

The concentration was so pure at ground level, even poor Scuff passed out

If it wasnt for my towering size i too may have fallen to the ghastley smell

Anyway, back to the project........ 

Chapter 16 - Big Audio Dynamite

Forgive me my followers for i have sinned, its been well over 2 weeks since my last confession, and i have much to tell.

First up we have the tale of a "crazy crazy night" (or day) where one of the neighbours gets up on the wrong side of the bed, and takes out 30 years of pent up frustrations out on some poor unsuspecting soul, or his car, however no VW's were injured in the breach of the peace, so the van has emerged unscathed.

However, one of "Wally's" auto-mobiles didn't favour so well, and ended up missing some of its windows, which has delayed the work on the dub.

Good news is that i decided it was time to get my sh!t together, and pull my finger out, and get a move on the project. we have 4 weeks and counting till bus fest, and there is still much to do.

First of all i've started fitting the replacement parts i've been piling up, like the mirrors, and the indicators, which i've replaced with some nice smoked ones to match my future paint scheme of orange.

Must get some nice stainless screws from the lads at Brickwerks, before i repaint the van!

Now that the repairs to the rear valance, and rear lower quarters have been fitted and zinc'ed, i started refitting all the bits wally, has ripped off that was in his way, this way once the welding is complete, the van should be ready for the MOT.

Talking of which, i bought some new rubber brake hoses, to replace the ones on the van that were splitting (i'm replacing them all as 2 are splitting and it just makes good sense to do them all now, however, typicaly the minute the shops are shut, disaster strikes, and the metal brake pipe split whilst undoing the hoses, and now I need a new pipe as well :(

I started refitting stuff back in the engine bay to, as its been over 2 months since she was started,

we seem to have misplaced the bracket that holds the plastic junction box (in the left of the picture next to the coil ) so we knocked up a quick replacement ,

as this will all be stripped out when i get round to my scooby upgrade, but this will suffice nicely.More good news is the van started first time, or rather it would have if Wally hadn't decided for the audience that it would be clever to nick the king lead from the coil, and see if i could spot what was wrong (which i did in the first 10 seconds of checking the engine bay! - Insert expletive here!)

You might remember seeing the horrid rusty speakers in these doors before, but they simply had to go, and as that would have left a nasty hole, we've opted to fill it with.... a bigger speaker!

And that fabulous little original radio, has made way for some thing capable of taking on my Ipod, and receiving DAB signals, so I splashed the cash on a tidy Sony unit (remind me to slap shaggy, the pictures of this are shocking and dont do it justice, in fact the last 4 are all blurred! lol)

I've got some timber for the tailgate, so i'm fitting some 6x9's in here

So I took the templates, drew around them, drilled a hole to insert the jigsaw......

And repeated the process on the other side and ended up with this

I'm planning on covering these, but i've got some foam material, that I'm going to apply to it, the same as I'm going to uses for the inside of the roof. In future when I recover the interior, i'll do this panel to match.

Time flies when your having fun, so at half 8 we called it a night, I'll try and sneak over after work (weather permitting) and get the rest of this done..........

Chapter 15 - 8 Days a week

My apologies to those of you sat on your seat awaiting my updates, however i have been burning the candle at both ends, and the bills for panels and parts roll in, payment for these goods is needed, so I've been working longer hours and weekend's gathering the finances to complete the project, but secretly working away in quiet suburban district of Liverpool, is my very own super hero.....

Some say his second cousin twice removed works for the BBC, and is refereed to as the Stig, but all i know is he's called Wally the welder, and he's stuck under my van :P

So while Wally's been busy cutting out the rot and patching things up, I've just acquired a new company vehicle, a T5 no less, so to say i'm pleased would be a understatement!

Right back the project,

Few problem areas are:

I'll grind the welds down later,

Needless to say the rear valance is a bit more re-enforced ;)

As with the other side with cut out the rear box section, and are fabricating our own

Although the rear chassis leg looks a bit rusty, it's really not, and I'll clean it up with a wire brush when the time comes for treatment, and paint etc

Were making great progress on this side, with only the rear arch panel, sill, front arch and step area's left to complete for the MOT - Its my birthday soon, and i'm hoping some nice van related presents land in my lap ;)

Chapter 14 - Rome wasn't built in a day

So my last stab at getting some work done on the van this weekend, didn't get off to a great start, I awoke to the sound of heavy rain, splashing down on the window sill, opened the curtains, and many dark clouds loomed over head - Not good!

My other half decided to cheer me up by taking me to breakfast, before picking up some bits from the shops, however by the time we'd left Frankie & Benny's, the clouds were gone, and the sun was just breaking through the clouds - Game on!

I flew around the Asda like a contestant on supermarket sweep, only pausing at the isle to select some refreshment for the match tonight (Come on England!), before tearing home to get changed, and picking up a old Audi rim.

Here's a shot of our Carl, I asked him to clean up the inside of the arch and the surrounding area.
You'll notice the masking tape on the outside of the rear panel, this is the line we intend to cut to insert the new arch panel into.

This is a case of measure, then measure again, check and double check before cutting it out. I used the masking tape as my line to cut along.

Once we'd cut along the lines, the spot welds along the edge were drilled or grind'ed out as needed

Once we'd cleaned up the dirt and debris from inside the hole, it was ready for us to fettle the panel into place

A couple of spot weld were used to pin it in place while we checked the aligment

Time was getting on, we'd spent that long measuring and marking out, cutting etc, that it was nearly half 6, so instead of doing all the grinding work, we cleaned up the area with a wire brush,

And gave it a nice coat of zinc primer, to keep the rust away.

A quick brush and tidy up of the tools, and it was off home for a lovely roast dinner, a few beers and the match. Was hoping to get the lower rear quarter on, but, as they say, Rome wasnt built in a day!

Chapter 13 - Unlucky for some

You just know some days are going to better then others, like Mondays, generally a awful day, the start of the week, the return to the grind, etc, etc., Fridays though, you tend to look forward to, if you have big plans for the weekend - Me?  I had huge plans for this weekend, but as i drove home from work last night, the pouring rain reminded me how the best laid plans, often go astray.

Saturday arrived, and the dark skies the weather man had promised me, where missing, in fact i could just make out a little tiny bit of sunshine breaking through. Time to ring Lee, and tell him to get the kettle on!

My big plan's for the weekend were about to unfold, 

Take one rust step, minus a front arch,

Get out grinder, and remove offending rusty step, like so

I've covered the arch removal and repair to the inside of the "A pillar", so i cleaned up the rest of that area with the grinder and power file

Prepared it with some galvanised paint

Just in case your wondering, the clean spots are for welding the arch into place

Popped the arch on for a trial fit, so we tacked it on, so we could go back to playing with the step

This is from underneath showing the step fitting into the hole  we cut out.

You can see the lip of the arch in this shot isn't welded into place, this is because we had to get the alignment between the step and the arch right,

A lot of time was spent, opening and shutting the door, and clamping the two together, until we were happy, then we had to cut the bottom off the arch as both panels, have the bottom corner of the arch / step, and require one to be cut back, and as the step was thicker material, the arch was chosen, for ease of fit.

Once Lee had finished wielding his dark arts, i attacked the area with the grinder to smooth out all the welds

I went over some of the harder to reach parts with the power file, this was taken after the first pass with the grinder (the grey primer is covering the join between the two panels

No that's not some sort of poor product placement advertisement, the "CIF" bottle contains water, and is used to put out any little flames that appear whilst welding, as you can see, the arch gets the same treatment as the step, as that was finished after the step was completed.

Its been a busy day for us, dodging rainy showers, but the trick is:

Chuck it all in the van as soon as it starts to rain!

It feels really good to stand back, and to realize that were finally putting stuff back on the van, as opposed to just cutting stuff off it.
If i get a clear day tomorrow, that the rear arch is next on the list!
I love it when a plan comes together ;)

Chapter 12 - Getting Jiggy with it

Got away handy from work today, and figured i'd make the most of this warm evening to get a bit done on the van, but sometimes things just don't go to plan. On arrival i was informed work had stopped due to a broken jigsaw, so, some would say, "buy another, they are cheap enough", but by the time i'd gone out, in rush hour traffic to B&Q etc. to get one and returned, I'd actually stripped it down, and fixed it!

We've built our own "bender" to aid with some of the larger and thicker sections

 Here you can see Foggy and Lee putting they're backs into it, however it they put any more into it, they'll need to change they're shorts!

Work has finally begun on the "boxes" at the bottom of the air ducts in the rear quarters of the van, hopefully I'll have some nice finished shots soon.

The weather has been particularly poor lately meaning its seriously messing with my schedule for the welding work, we had hope to have one side finished by this weekend, but i know now given the current forecast that's not going to happen 

One final tip before i go, if you decide to fabricate your own like we have done, please ensure you allow for drainage, otherwise you'll find your new boxes have become water storage areas, and will flood your engine bay!- I'm going to look into this design more in the future, and see if i can improve on the original setup

Chapter 11 - Happy Fathers Day!

Bit of a slow day really for me today, had a very laid back morning with my son, we chilled, had breakfast, played xbox, and he gave me a fantastic T shirt with a splitty on it .... Sweet!

Called at my mates Daz's and ruined his Sunday giving him my tax returns to work on (Like he doesnt do enough of them mon-fri , lol)

By the time i got around to my van, we'd normally be packing up for the evening, but i was determined to get something done, so out came the cardboard, scissors and pencil, and i made more templates.

Seems my remarks in my last post about Lee being camera shy have backfired on me, now our fire marshal Shagmeister, has taken on the mantle of capturing the project, when i'm not around.

Lee felt this was a good opportunity for me to model my new fathers day present.

I started cutting out the outline from my template, It's a noisy job, but someone's gotta do it ;)

Here's one that Lee fabbed from one of my templates, he'll later claim that its all his own work, and possibly burn my template evidence to prove it, lol - In all seriousness, even after making the templates, and drawing and cutting them out, normally, they still need some fettling, sometimes we leave a couple of mill, just in case, as it can always be trimmed off, easier then it can be added ;)

When its finished that plate will end up in here, we cut out the original box as repairing it would have been a waste of time,  and i intend to fit a extra battery back here -  maybe two, one on either side, so we've beefed these up with heavier grade of mild steel

Told our Lee to keep his eye out for a set of period spotlights (80's style)  and he turns up with this set of gems from his loft - What a star! Lee, your a diamond ! Cheers buddy they'll look ace!

Unfortunately I forgot to charge the camera up, so that was the last of the pics, so I'll call it a day,
I'm going to have to squeeze some work on the van after work this week, so I'm sure i'll have lots more soon.