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.

Chapter 10 - The Arc de Triomphe

Now that the inside of the front arch was repaired, we moved on to the rear of the passenger side, the task being that i wanted to get all the inner arch repairs finished on one side before any exterior panels were fitted, plus this gives us sooo much better access to carry out the repairs then if the wings were in place.

 

 I mentioned earlier in this blog, that we'd encountered a small structural issue. On the drivers side, right above the rear trailing arm mount, where the mount is attached to the body, the panel had rusted through, and required attention. So due to the removal of the passenger side rear arch, i decided to investigate this one as well,

A bit of poking revealed some rust and a small hole, but once a large section in front of the arch was cut away, the extent could be viewed, and it became obvious that this too needed serious attention.
What we've done is get some heavier grade steel for these parts, 3mm thick (the original is only about 1.5mm) We're re-enforcing  these parts for added strength for when we have the EJ20K engine (Subaru Wrx STi )

We're quietly hoping this mod will give us added rigidity, and cut down in the flex suffered by these types of mount

Obviously, we couldn't just leave this big hole, and as we found out to our surprise, the new arch wont cover these parts we've cut out, so some serious engineering was required

Lee#s done a damn fine job at fabricating this panel out a bit of that sheet steel we got for patching up the van

You'll have to forgive lee, he's a bit camera shy, next time we'll pull his kecks down around his ankles and when he pulls them up and swears at us, maybe i'll get a good facial shot ;)

As you can see in this shot, This shows how short the new rear panels are

 Right, time to get this one in and finished

Sorted, get some paint on it to protect it,

now to the inside bit,

As you can see this too was a bit of a mess, so we cleaned up the area to prepare for a plate

Cut out the rot as per normal

Make a plate

Insert a new plate

WARNING - please don't stare for too long at my photographs, no responsibility will be accepted for any discomfort or temporary blindness from staring at the welding pictures :P 

Not sure if my caption should read

"Keep Britian Tidy"

or 

"Recycle"

or

"Keep Calm & Camper Van"

Chapter 9 - Obscured by Clouds

European football on telly doesn't help,

True, its good for my soul,

but its detrimental to my work on the van,

On the radio today, they stated that June is a write off as far as the weather is concerned, saying that i've got monsoon style weather to look forward too for the whole month, this quite frankly is bad news, especially as now all the new panels are starting to arrive, and if anything, working out on the drive means we are totally exposed to the elemants, and at the mercy of the gods.

If you've dropped in, expecting my usual haul of pictures, I'm sorry to disappoint,, but the camera is still at Lee's so he can capture any moments where he can weld up the van, without weather disruptions.

I arrived home from work to find the passenger side front arch and step had arrived, meaning i have all the panels required to finish one side of the van, if only we get the weather to fit them all........

Looks like my tea is ready, and the match is about to begin, so now that Poland and Russia have finished fighting in the streets (at least while the game is on), i'll sit back and enjoy the rest of the evening

Nie przejmuj się

Chapter 8 - Here comes the rain again...

Just a quick one today, much has been accomplished despite the torrid weather, due mainly to my buddy Lee,  who has been dodging the rain all evening to help push the project in the right direction.

Here you can see where we cut off the wheel arch, and the hole in the bottom of the A pillar

Here you can see the hole more clearly, we actually spotted a tiny hole the size of a penny, above the side of the jacking point, This is where i peeled the original arch lip away and started cleaning it up prior to cutting

 Unfortunately i wasn't around at the time to take pictures of the areas of rust, that Lee cut away, and cleaned up prior to the welding taking place, but as you can see its starting to shape up nicely!

And this is the same area, now patched up! We've coated it with some zinc primer, until we can get the time to grind the excess off the welds, and given the speed of the changes in the weather, this worked out great!

We've deliberately blocked this end of the jacking point to help aid rot prevention, this end normally has a hole so that it falls out, but ours was full of dirt and mud, this should stop debris from the tires being flung into this hole
We snapped the last of our power file belts, and i'm waiting for more to arrive via flea bay, if your tackling this kind of resto work, i recommend the black and decker power file, its handy for those hard to access bits the grinder cant reach