My '76 Microbus / Camper : Landyn

and after a bit of a nervous day....





MOT PASSED!!!

There was something acock with the rear lights, I think the earths were a bit messed up, so the MOT garage have put that right as well as tuning the carbs to get the HCs right... will need doing again after 500 miles and an oil change, but it's all good for now! Dead chuffed!!

The only downside is the fuel guage isn't responding which probably means a poor connection behind the firewall! pah!!

I guess this is the beginning of the rest of the rolling resto...

 

very cool, well done

 

Since putting the engine in I've managed 50 miles and the carbs have started playing silly buggers again. I'm sure it's either a bit of rubbish in the system or the bits settling down heavily so I've booked it back into the garage for them to give it a little more of a fettle. While everything is fresh I'd prefer those that know to sort the tuning, once it's settled and I have a good benchmark I can start playing myself... may even plump for some twin 40's before too long!!

I've acquired a deck cut to sort out an access hatch for the fuel sender, but it hasn't arrived just yet, so to keep myself out of the pub I decided to exercise some of the thoughts in my head and crack on with.... arm rests!! I know, a bit random and certainly out of sequence, but they've been keeping my thoughts busy for a couple of weeks so best put into practice so I can think of something else!

So, the plan is to take the principle of the original door ducts and modify it so that it incorporates the door pull and looks like it might have been done that way by VW!! I always thought that the kink in the original clashed with the curve of the wheel arch and looked a bit naff!

I've been doing some work on cad, printed templates, transferred to 9mm ply and cut...



Stacked up a piece as a packer...



Some 25 x 25mm batten that will form the handles and elbow pad...



Cut a nook out for my hand... and the misses hand. The nooks are the same size... out hands aren't



screwed the battens down and offset the top ones too allow for foam and material to wrap...



And then added a skirt to the upper batten, which forms the shape of the elbow pad...



Which can then be removed!! The screws are temporary to keep things straight and aligned...



Close up from above... The double layer of ply will be either painted L90D to match the upper part of the van and the dash (eventually) or wrapped with vinyl, whilst the elbow pad will be contrasting fabric and foamed backed...



Roughly rounded off the battens and lined everything up on the door and aligned the window winder... or which there is just enough room!



Swapped the screws out for captive nuts...



And added some tubes to feed the screws from the underside...



Luckily, the pipe clips from B&Q were just the right offset... certainly luck and no judgement whatsoever! That shot also shows the elbow pads sanded and rounded... not the final effort, cos there's some filling to do, but good enough to get a feel for the overall shape.

I drilled the mounting holes which use the original handle holes as well as the odd two other mounting points in the door and offered it up... and realised that the panel needs to be bowed!! I cut some grooves in the ply and cut through the battens to allow the arm rest to bend. I've glued the battens with PVA, but don't expect it to stick... will probably use some resin instead as the build progresses....



And that's where I left it for the weekend. The plan is to build the body of the duct using foam and a coat of resin, bit of filler and paint... if it isn't straight enough it'll be vinyl The Mrs has suggested I may be able to get the foam milled to shape at her work. I've built a 3D cad model of it already, so as long as the price is right and the files can be transferred appropriately it should alleviate any of the shaping... which would be great!!

And last but not least, I just won a pair of Porsche Tombstones on ebay; for not much more than it would cost to buy new seat pads for my original seats... happy days!!

 

Nice idea, looks a bit tight on that winder when you allow for using it siting down...
s

 

Had a quick play in the van when I got home, just to satisfy those nagging self doubts!!



The elbow pad section isn't sitting correctly - its a few mm high, and the whole lot will be space out on the door card, but I still think it works... Just!!

Besides that, I sat back and had a good look at the shape of the whole arm rest in the van... and I very much likey!!

 

Let's not keep this all in one order shall we...

Tonight's task was to sort a little hatch out for the fuel sender....

Started with a very big offcut...



Marked up...



Cut up...



Aligned...



Stacked...



Bolted (asymetrically for some reason)...



Will have the nuts tacked tomorrow and the corners of the support plate tacked and then hopefully carry on on on Saturday... van should be tweaked and tuned back up tomorrow too!

There's enough metal to do three more hatches this way and the engine access hatch is up for grabs if anyone's interested?

 

That's a nice neat solution! Mine looks like it's been gouged out with a tin opener and an axe!
Great thread!
S

 

Great work dude

 

A bit of a mixed bag of a Saturday...

First, got going early this morning to cut the hole for the fuel sender before the sun cam round the corner and boiled the van. All went well, marked out, drilled the corners, cut the hole and offered everything up







And that's pretty much how i left it for today. I've grabbed some sticky stuff from halfords for the support section, but before doing so I'm going to get a coat of paint on everything and maybe a little filler... and may even make it authentic with blue underneath and white on top! :0)

Following that the mrs dragged me to the local fabric shop and i think we've found one of the seat fabrics! we're going for a two tone approach with pale vinyl combined with a coarse wool type fabric... in a magnolia colour. The aim is to acheive something similar to the jaffa bay on the front of last months C+B... including the Porker seats!!

Then, I moved inside to hide from the glowing orb and cracked on with the armrests. I got the bad news that the possible milling would be £120 per side, so I'm back to plan A using Kingspan and a bit of care!

Firstly, i committed to screwing the arm rests to the door panels and offering them up to the van to check the alignment of the fitting holes and so on...







Then back onto the farbrication... I cut out 8 little fillets which will help form the foam and add some extra stability (not that it's needed). These were cut out and clamped together and sanded to match each other...



Then glued them on...



The started on the Kingspan!! B&Q only stock 50mm in the small sizes, so I'll be shaving of about 13mm off the depth of it! That's where the fillets should come into play to allow flat shaping and sanding. There's a few stategic gaps, but all should be taken care of with the resin coats and filler...



Tomorrow holds a lot of shaping and hopefully some resining

 

Nice work mate ,liking the door build

 

Another day of bit's and pieces... some quite exciting!!

Firsly, I bear metalled and prepped the fuel sender hatch and landing plate....



Etched and primed...



and a couple of coats of pastelweiss on the top & a light coat on the bottom...



The mrs spent the best part of yesterday clearing the garden and refreshing some of the plants so these photographs have nice context!!

I'll leave the metal work for a couple of days and paint the underside blue later in the week... no rush, the van still has shagged carbs!

Inside, I cracked on shaping the Kingspan on the arm rests. Very easy to over work!! I sliced the majority of the surplus foam off the top , but as you'll see below "sliced" is freely interchangeable with "butchered". After that I wrapped a long piece of wood up with 80 grit and flattened the rest of, shaped the ends and curved the edges. Here they are with an original vent and a fabric sample wrapped round the elbow pad.



Like I said above, these are overworked, but I think they need to be having lost a few foam slips over the tubes and cut into the foam in places. This will allow a couple of layers of fibreglass and resin to go on without adding too much to them dimensionally.



The slight kink in the main section seems to have eased off over the last few days, so I've cut back into them to take a lot of tension out of the ply, bent them and glued them again. Against my better judgement, the cut is quite deep and might make them a bit weak, but the next step is the resin, so should put the strength back in. A lot of smelly, dusty and hopefully accurate work to come over the coming weeks!

And the really exciting bit... we jumped in the car this morning and picked up the porsche seats!! Very happy!! I'm considering putting them in straight away without reupholstering as a) they're much more comfy than the originals and b) we don't have room for them in the house!!. We may do the easier flat panels as practice before doing the seats later in the year...





The damage isn't terrible. Obviously the fabric and backing foam doesn't matter but notably, the main foam is only slightly damaged....



and while I was falling asleep watching an expensive car procession in the principality, Nicki knocked up a test panel to see if her machine would go through the fabrics... and they did... and she tried a double stitch... which was far straighter than the guy on YouTube who recovered his Honda Jizz seats...





Got to get my head down and get the floors stripped and painted so I can get the floor in and stuff while Nicki sews! Lots of work to do, but carbs aside, we're picking up some real momentum, which feels good!!

 

great work.

loving the custom door cards

keep up the good work

 

So, have been tinkering away, but most of it has been fettling the arm rests and shopping!!

I think I've finally got to the point where I'm happy with the filler work on the arm rests and got the inserts fitting and working correctly. In all of the fettling I've decided to loose the forward most screw hole because it became misaligned after bending the front section.

Today was a final few little bits of filler and then out to the van with a drill and a screw driver!!





And a view from inside the van with the doors closed and the winder at 7.00 position... plenty of room!!



We've also been doing some shopping for the vinyl. I was a bit disappointed with all the vinyl samples I could get from ebay, the local fabric shop and a few online shops, they all seemed thin, rubbery or overly stretchy and most had "suitable for campers" added to the description just to make a sale and / or bump up the price!! So i did some more research and settled on finding a supplier of marine grade upholstery vinyl, which isn't as difficult as you'd imagine when you live in a port town!!

So, the cream vinyl I've used previously used for mock ups is now being replaced with Oatmeal Nautilex vinyl... which is nice stuff!! It has a slight marble effect to the colour, a good grain and perfectly compliments the tweedy fabric



I've had Nicki doing her home work with the sewing machine too, and she's bought a proper walking foot for it and been trying out a few more test panels. I was originally thinking we'd do a simple tuck'n'roll in the tweed, but it didn't really have a great effect with 4.5mm foam, so Nicki tried a pleated stitch (top) which looks great (and also makes the panels more manageable on a small machine)... so she's talked herself into more work!

We're also working out how we cover the main part of the arm rests; rather than trying to stretch the vinyl around all those curves, we going to try a reinforced French (?) seam but will have to pad the arm rest to avoid bulging stitches.


And the keen eyed may have spotted a change to the posterior supports...



I managed to slip the 944 seats in a couple of weekends ago! relatively simple with 4 bolts, but they are a bit close to a shaped bit under the wheel arch. Also, because I have the bulkheads in place, the seats can't slide back far enough to get easy access to the front bolts, which I've located as far forwards on the supports as possible... but they're done now! I've suggested to the misses that we upholster these later in the year once we've had some practice with the flat panels and rear cushions. I keep saying it should be easy cos Porsche supplied us with some patterns... she disagrees

And finally...

Fuel sender hatch installed.



Must remember that L90D is not always L90D!!

 

Quick update...

The last few weeks have bee a bit quiet, but that was shattered somewhat around 7.30 this evening!

As above somewhere, I've given up on the worn out factory Solex's and have invested in some shiney Webers.

Spent the last couple of weeks doing the necessary tweaks (servo take off, tank breathers, etc) and buying the bits that the kit doesn't give you and say you need (anti-pulse valve)... but then today was D-Day!!

With the better educated, little brother on hand to "comment" it was out with the old...



and in with the new!!



With a little help from my office pool car...



And then some proper smiles!!!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lazyandy/7577087750/in/photostream

Need to tidy up the fuel tank breather pipe and drop her off at the local for them to tweak and get her running properly, albeit she sounded pretty cool out of the box!! Going to see if I can get a rolling road session in a few weeks once I've bedded the engine in proper!

In other news... we have invested in a slightly heavier duty sewing machine to crack on with the interior. Week off after next so expect an update laden week!!