Our 76 Holdsworth Conversion is in need of quite a few bits so I'm taking the extra time available at the moment to crack on with as much as possible. Its a decent van, but definitely needs quite alot of TLC and updating of tired parts. The current plan is - full new or re-furbed interior; floor, bed, cooker unit, re-panelled and carpeted -window seals all round -Fix speedo -engine out; fuel tank and lines, engine clean and spruce up. -re-install heat ex-changers. -chassis strip....and at least a bit of welding. -repaint poptop -install 2nd Devon bunk. Plus anything else I find along the way.
I have already done a fair bit on the cab area. -Fitted some nice black leather electric Boxster seats, re-done the carpeting in a nice light grey, the kick panels and fixed the washer bottle. Stripped and serviced all the locks, removed the decades of grime! The interior is currently all out while we do the window seals. 2 days worth of welding, prep and painting on one rear window surround, and with 4 hours help from the good wife, we eventually got the first seal and window back in today. Its a panel conversion, and to say it was a pig is an understatement. In hindsight I think the cutout is probably slightly too small in one corner. Hoping the other 3 are going to be a little easier. I'll add plenty of photos as we're going along.
Looking forward to piccies. Mine was a Holdsworth conversion and I haven't seen another since. Shame I had to remove it as it was falling to bits! Sent from my SM-T813 using Tapatalk
Good luck! I don’t think we’ve had so many new resto threads as we’ve had in the past few weeks! Some good from the s-storm!
Not done a great deal the last couple of days apart from removing the slider window. Pleasantly surprised to find very little corrosion round the edges; a little treat and paint and then put it back in tomorrow. Hopefully easier than the first rear one! Also got a new sliding door seal to go in, as the old one was predictably dropping to pieces. I've decided on a new full width M1 bed, with built in 3 point belts; it won't be ready for 6 weeks, so that gives me some time to sort the rest of the interior. Also ordered 10m of black diamond stitch leatherette vinyl to do the seat cushion and panelling, and I'm re-carpeting in a light grey, which should give a nice tidy contrast.
Decent day on the van today. Removed the cab rubber mat, ready to be sold; and treated a little bit of minor rust on the cab floor, a nice new cab carpet to go in later in the week. then the sliding door window rubber went in like clockwork.....getting it warm in the sun for a few hrs made ALL the difference. Spent a bit of time on the new cooker/sink unit I'm building, and even went out for a little spin. Big job starts tomorrow, rear drivers side window out and alot of new metal needed around it.....
I could be interested in the cab mat Mine is a bit shabby in places, particularly round the gear lever hole. Stirlingmoz
Window out..... Surround is marginally better than I was expecting! I was expecting a horror story.... But its only medium-bad!
Some patches and a corner to weld in. I've managed to salvage more of the original metal than I thought. I thought ahead and made a template of the remains of the corner to make it easier to cut a new part from sheet. Progressing OK so far.
All in good time! I hadn't decided if to cut out the middle as a separate piece... But in the end just made the corner much longer.
Cleaning the engine bay..... There's some serious gunk! But under the various layers of paint, underseal and gunk there is some quite nice original blue paint! Does anyone know which vw blue it looks like, I'm going to do the engine by in the original blue. Cheers
