Chapter 3 - Somebodys taking the biscuit

A bright new weekend has dawned upon me, giving me glorious sunshine to work on my project, and its a new dawn, a new day and a old van.......I'm feeling good............ (insert Nina Simone music here)

Loaded up with enough coffee, sugar and milk to see me and Lee over the next 4 weeks, I descended  upon his driveway, popped my keys in the ignition, and my beastie burst into life!
Rolled it back away from the doors, got the grinder out and started my weekend of butchery!

I started slowly, checking out the rear seams to find out how far the rot had actually spread, and if i was going to need entire side panels including the arches, or just the lower arch panels.

First signs have been promising, with the few scabs on the seams grinding out, without any holes, which I'm going to treat with a chemical to stop the rot.

I've cut all four wheel arches off ( i could have saved one, but if i'm doing the other 3, there's no point fillering the last one only to have it come back in a few years time.

Kind of before and after shots - I'm concerned about the drivers door, a lot of the rust has bled through the other side, and while i think we'd get away with fibre-glassing it, I'm going to start looking for a good drivers door, however I've been told early wedges have different doors and tailgate's to the later T25's, and ones I've been offered haven't been much better then the one i have, and with new doors costing £500,  I might be repairing it for now, and see if one presents itself (cheaply!) in the near future

I've taken a hell of a lot of horror pictures of the bits of rust that need treatment, , the worst point of the rot was behind one of the arches i cut off, and was totally hidden behind filler & biscuit tin stuffed into a fist sized hole, right above the trailing arm mount., so far we've found aluminium door strips, metal ice-cream tubs used to patch up holes etc.but at least i think I've uncovered all the horrors

 

 

 Lucky for me, the outrigger this is fastened too, is rock solid with no rot, however, I'm going to cut away most of that attached to the inner arch and fab a heavy duty plate - When i fit the scooby power at a later date, i dont want this tearing out when i lay rubber with my heavy right foot, lol

After my cutting and grinding, I've been using a zinc based primer to help keep the rust off the clean edges, until i treat, weld and fit all the new panels.

When cleaning up the arch's i discovered a small rust spot with near the seat belt anchor, and when i dug in, there was more of the biscuit tin :( I'm not going to piss about with factory panels for this, nice rectangular plate over the anchor point, and the hole will fix this, and as this is covered by the rubber mate, wont be a eye sore

One of the lads though he'd test the integrity of the impact resistance panel, give the fact that there is a little bit of rot at the leading edge of the front panel, he thought he'd catch a ride while the van was being rotated.

Seriously cant wait till pay day to get some panels ordered, and get them delivered to get this van back on the road.!!!

Tomorrow weather permitting, we might weld up that trailing arm mount, and start work on some of the scabs on the tailgate and doors, and get some filler in.