The van formerly known as "Tootle"

Managed to chop the rear cross member out today in between jobs, the left hand side that is missing was just made of bodge! You name it, it was in there, filler, silicone, fibreglass and a nicely shaped plate that wasn't even welded to it! Don't know how people sleep at night.

I have a new technique for keeping up morale when chopping out all this crud and rust, when I get bored I go to somewhere solid, scrape the old under seal off to see nice solid parts that still have the original paint, then I go back to the boring tedious chopping out and the cycle continues!

 

At least you havent found any expanding foam yet

 

Or have I

Sliding door is full of it, and I don't think it's for insulation purposes either! Leaving the doors for now until I get the chassis solid, I will post up pics in good time though, mainly for opinions on to fix or not to fix!

 

Its a common bodge on busses and should never be used for insulation either as its open cell foam
Are you up north dude?

 

Yeah from Billingham in Teesside, a few miles past Middlesbrough when heading north.

 

I used to go ice skating up that end
Im in northallerton so not a massive distance away

 

T

That's good to know, I saw some upstanding hoody wearing citizens queuing up for skating earlier on when I came out of the gym!

 

Lmao
Ive not skated since 2001

It is nice to see that were getting more members up this end

 

With the sills, jacking points and outriggers removed from the non sliding door side I thought I would check the top hat sections on the other side, anyway cut a long story short, I'm not happy with the front top hat section, the rot extends past the chassis members towards the centre so my thinking (hoping) of just repairing the outer parts above the jacking points is now out of the window.

The crossmember underneath it isn't to bad really, but I expect cutting the top hat out without damaging it is gonna be a pain so I think I will probably replace this too.

Anybody got any pearls of wisdom for when I'm tackling this one?

So based on the above here is my latest incision.......

 

I had that to do on mine
Just unpick it carefully and if memory serves me right the replacement top hat needed cutting in half to fit round the gear shift tube
It was also slightly too long

The worst part was welding the cargo floor section back in

 

Chop the rest of the floor out. Makes doing the top hats and sills a lot easier

 

Contemplated this but the floor and middle three top hats are pretty solid and should clean up well

 

Got a few hours in here and there over the weekend, chopped the front top hat and cross member out, bit fiddly but all came out easy enough



Also chopped some more rot out of the floor, the piece left is fine as is everything underneath, anyone got opinions on if I should go new floor or patch what's been removed? Bearing in mind the front 250mm is also cut out so I could do the front top hat and crossmember. The front piece should go back in after a good clean up though.



The pile of grot is getting bigger!



It's amazing what a dust mask collects after a couple of hours playing with the grinder!

 

Depends on how you want the final floor to look
Also remember the new floor panels aint as thick as the originals

 

Yeah that's what I heard so thought I would ask the people in the know

I want it to look decent but in reality it's going to be covered up so as long as it's straight and strong I wouldn't loose any sleep over it being made of patches!

I would at least get the floor repair panels with correct rib spacing though

 

The genuine floor halfs are pretty good but need adapting to fit RHD vans

 

Dont worry the dub world is pretty chilled out and accepting dude
I came into dubs after being into fords and have built a couple of concourse fords

We dont count the number of spotwelds along seam lines

It took me an eternity to get my head around rat look vehicles

 

I agree! My bus cost me £825 and I found out I had bought exactly that, an £825 bus not something that cost me £3k and was full of filler. Honesty is sometimes worth paying for! .........it was still full of filler!

 

Only getting spare hours here and there to work on the camper but it's still moving forward, albeit a little slower than I would have liked!

New rear cross member getting a lick of paint and weld through primer at the edges




Top hat prepared ready for new member



Here it is the first new part I have welded to my bus, the first of many!

 

Not had much time spare lately but even if I have half an hour I try to spend it on the bus, so the accumulation of half hours here and there and I have a little more done.

Took the dash out, couldn't believe how easy it came out



The heater lever closest in the picture didn't have a cable or even remains of a cable attached, am I correct in thinking this one is for diverting air from foot wells to dash vents? If so where do I get a cable?



Next up was another order from schofields



Then the new front top hat going in



Then the new front crossmember and heater tube connector thingy getting a lick of bonda primer (really like this stuff, it goes on a treat)



Then fitted to the van, lots of swearing and molten metal down my neck!






Next up will be repair the outer edge of a couple of top hats at the rear then the sills, outriggers and jacking points can go on, managed to borrow a nice little spot welder for the sills so hopefully there will be less swearing