A restoration for Iris

Lol I've quite the collection now. Cheers, really enjoying the resto now I'm not just hacking it to bits. Should be pretty solid when I'm done.



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I'll need a new front panel at some point too. Where did you get yours out of interest? I suspect all of the suppliers use the same one?

 

Mines was fromJK,it's fine

 

I managed to get this repair welded in tonight. Clamped in place:

And welded in place. The welds were a little splattery around the torsion bar and blew through in one or two places as the metal was getting quite thin, but it should do the job. I cleaned up the welds a little after this too. The weld around the torsion bar will get covered with the circular cover plate I need to fabricate. I’ll come back to that once I’ve repaired the other side and got the outriggers in.

 

Today saw the front O/S outrigger go in:


Both front outriggers are in now. Looking good!


Before the middle and rear O/S outriggers can go in I need to repair the chassis section that they attach to (someone has repaired this in the past but it needs fixing again).

Marked up and rot chopped out (you can see the rear of the repair I made earlier to the other side of this section - I’ll get some rust treatment and epoxy mastic in there while I’ve got good access):



And I’ve started fabbing a repair section for it. This largely consists of beating the crap out of a piece of steel with a large hammer and vice to get the bends in the right position:


I’ve got the basic shape and just need to cut it down to size now:

 

For the small lip on this repair am I Ok to plug weld it to the chassis to replicate the original spot welds or should I seam? The rest of the repair will be seam welded.

 

Haha yeah I thought that too to start with

 

I’ve pretty much finished this repair panel now, I’ll probably spend a bit longer on it to get the front to fit slightly better:


While the paint on the inside of the repair dries I decided to give the front pedal belly pan a bit of attention.

Before:


After an overnight soak in a bath of Deox-C (it didn’t quite fit in the plastic box I had, but this shows how good the stuff is!). This should be useable once I’ve finished cleaning it up, patched a few pinholes and given it a coat of paint.

 

As usual if anyone sees anything wrong with bits that I've done, now's the time to shout out!

 

I'm after a bit of advice from those that have converted a new genuine LHD cargo floor to a RHD. On the driver's side floor I need to weld a strip to it to go up to the side panel. I ended up buying a conversion piece from Schofield's as I didn't have a piece of scrap long enough (and to be honest can't be arsed with the faff of fabbing my own).
However the floor has a slight dip in it that corresponds with the pressing in the inner/middle sills. How have others gone about attaching the strip around this area?
Do I attempt to bend the in-fill piece into shape around that section? @brothernumberone, @zedders, @davidoft, or anyone else have any thoughts?

 

You'll have to to match the new floor half and door threshold?

 

It's while since I've done one and I've had a few drinks so can't think straight, but I think I just stretched the metal into the dip by hammering it.

 

Ok I'll give that a bash. Hoping to get the first floor half prepped this weekend and in soon!


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I did one not long ago, can't remember beating it down, I probably trimmed it to the low of the next rib and welded it there

 

Odds and sods this week as I’m finishing up the bits needed before I can get the floor panels in.

Front belly pan out of the rust treatment bath and it looks pretty solid. There are a few pin holes in it that I need to weld shut at some point, but I’ve put some zinc primer on it for now.



Finished up the chassis repair that was holding me back from getting the final 2 outriggers in.

Epoxy mastic on the inside:


Welded shut:


And a coat of zinc primer on it.It looks miles better than what was there (note that it might look a bit short at the back, but its the other piece which is too large; you can see a nice patch straight over another rusty section. I’ll come back to do this). I’ve also epoxy mastic’d the chassis section where the outriggers will sit as I’ve done with the others. So I should be able to weld the outriggers in this week.


Made up a replacement tab for the clutch cable guide tube. The previous one had snapped off, and it was easier and better to make a new one (sorry about the blurriness!):


And finally I’ve got the RH floor pan trial fitted, and the in-fill piece to take it up to the side panel.



Next week’s job; drill a ton of holes in the floor panel ready for plug welding to the floor supports and sills, and weld the in-fill piece onto it. I made a start just before I left today.

 

The only genuine VW cargo floor panels available are designed to fit a LHD vehicle. As such a small in-fill piece is needed on the panel on the driver’s side to extend it up to the side wall for a RHD van (I ended up buying the panel from Schofield’s as it was easier).

I decided to plug weld the piece to the panel. I punched holes along the length of the piece, and gave both panels a few light coats of etch primer as once welded together no paint will get to these sections (the etch I’m using is weld-through, but I still clean up each plug weld hole prior to welding).


Clamped in place:


and plug welded:


I ended up hammering the piece down to match the dip in the floor panel; looks neat to me:


I’ve probably made more work for myself than I needed as I’ve decided to strip off all of the transit primer so I can put some zinc primer on. I made a start on this tonight, but removing all the paint on a panel this big will take a while (and it was 9:45 by the time I left so I’ll finish that up next time).

 

Not sure if I'm going overboard with the spacing between plug welds? I'm going for every inch. I guess it can't hurt to have too many.

 

Sounds about right.

 

@Diddymen or in fact anyone, what paint system did you use on the exterior of your bus? I'm still deciding what route to go down. The etch primer I've been using in a few places seems good so I think that'll be my base on bare metal. The epoxy mastic I've been using on chassis parts is hard wearing but seems too heavy for exterior panels. I assume mastic stuff is different to "epoxy primer". Just trying to get my head round it all.


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I'd stick to the epoxy mastic for the underneath bits

I started to primer mine in custom epoxy 121 from rust buster because it wasnt porus, with etch primer on the bare metal bits.

In the end I handed the van over to a paint shop for the finishing of the filler, primer & paint - paint was 2K as it is harder wearing than celly
I would have been tempted to paint it my self in either 2K or celly if I had a good clean area to do it in