Back again, again

Once more there has been a huge hiatus in my reports but that is not to say that I have not been doing anything.

Since that last post I have done the following :

Finished prepping the O/S rear and side, fully sanded apart from some prepping higher up but there might be more work to do when the windows come out (I have no safe place to store them at the moment so am doing around the bottom first.

Refitted the O/S front wheel arch, managed to get the tacks off in the end, the but welds (three of them) I could not drill out... no matter which drills I buy they seem to be crap... any advice on buying decent steel drills will be appreciated. After a bit of hammering, a little more grinding and jacking up on strategically placed blocks of wood it seems to have a reasonable fit now... not as good as the original though.

Replaced the lower front panel. Not a nice job at all, removed the existing one without any dramas only to find that pretty much all of the flange was constructed of filler so I merrily set about rebuilding this. I cut a new lip and welded it on but welding onto a 90 deg corner from the otherside with a large wobbly panel was not too easy so it is not actually weather proof so will have to remedy that later. There were two holes below that cab floor that I fixed as well.

The new panel was cut and let in, welded and has a rough skim of filler over the ground down seam... there are still a couple of repairs to do but as they are located around the N/S front wheel arch I cut that off instead.

N/S front wheel arch removed, Cutting this back was more difficult than I remembered from the other side but I got it done just in time for my second angle grinder of this project to die. I was going to buy another but my good friend James French gave me a cheap one he had bought for a job.

There are virtually no fixes to do here apart from tidy up a couple of patches that are already on the bus here and a repair where the seatbelt mounting plate repair panel was not big enough. The bottom of the B-post has gone but I really need the sill's off to do that so no sooner thought than done.

N/S sills, I started by cutting off the outer sill and was amazed to see that the tin worm had only really attacked the ends. With the replacement of this inner sill looking to be a particularily difficult job I elected to repair the corroded ends of the sills to retain the original sliding rail, the original having an extra guide at the top.

I ground away all of the remenants of the outer sill and cut down to good metal the inner and central sill's and last night cut, shaped and welded on badly a new inner sill pannel at the rear end. I also created a blanking plate using an unused one as a template (£8.25 + p&p saved).

About this time I realised that I was out of gas again (which is why the welds were not that good) and that the new welder was making funny noised already.

Oh well, buy cheap buy twice, thrice or four times as this will be. I would not mind but the grinder that just died is a Draper which was not that cheap. Works fine for ten minutes and then cuts out... any clues out there.

And a quick poke around the window frames shows a few jobs for the future!

Something is nearly finished

Wow, what a weekend... Friday and saturday were family days but Sunday and Monday were reserved for the beige beast.

Sunday

Firstly I needed to finish the door off so I let in the remaining repair sections and made it good and after a liberal smattering of 'Zinc 182' and 'Stop Rust' I fitted the new door skin.

Although awkward doing it on my work bench it seemed to go well enough getting the internal strengtheners rewelded and silicon sealed to the door skin.

I proudly refitted the door which did not look too bad only to find that the top back corner is sticking out... I don't see how it could have deformed unless the weight of the door resting on it bowed it out slightly before it was welded... bugger, we will see if it can be manipulated back into shape.

Ran out of wire this morning a luckily I had one in reserve, my what a difference I am welding on speed now... well until 2pm when I ran out of gas... The problem with Argon/CO2 is that it is compressed gas whereas the CO2 is liquid... a years worth of welding on CO2... 1 days welding on Argon/CO2.

Had a walk into town Wilco carmasters shut (Damn them and letting their workers have time off) and Halfords (large chain motorist store in the UK), true to form only exist to sell shiney things.

Easter Monday

After buying a new gas bottle for £8.99 (I though it was £9.99 last time) I was away with my new speedy welder, really is like a different machine on the new gas and wire.

I thought also that I would finish off all of those domino jobs, like tack this on and not weld until this next bit is in place, finished on one side to show some progress.

Starting at the rear corner I worked forwards, cut trimmed and fitted the repair panel to the rear of the rear wheel arch. Cut, shaped and fitted a blanking plate that is inside the wheel well. Finished welding the repair section to the front of the rear wheel arch. Fitted the outer sill... as others had said on other forums I bent out the profile of the panel so that I could plug weld through holes I had drilled (got to get some decent drill bits) to the panel above.

Yay, that worked but the GSF panels were so thin that the welds started to tear out as I reformed the panel to weld the bottom in... poop tin foil.

Anyways that went in okay and I fitted the B'post bottom repair panel but although this looked fine when offered up against the wheel arch it is slightly at an angle. Not enough to worry about but not perfect.

Next the dreaded wheel arch... again a GSF item guess what the fit is not great and I dont see how it can be made to fit any better, there is a gap at the bottom of the door panel of just over a centimeter when it should only be about 5mm... anyway I fitted it as best I could and have just tacked this up for now until I can think of a way to improve the fit.

Moving around onto the front panel, the lower flange had rotten off so I cut a new one and have 70% welded that in when I ran out of welding wire... Only fitted it yesterday.

Tuesday

Popped down to Wilco Carmaster in Wellingborough and got some more wire, had thought that the £9.49 for the last one was a bit steep but I noticed that this one had the shiney coppery one like I had before and the silvery one that I bought before... the one I had was for gasless so no wonder it was happy in my welder. I bought the copper coated one as I had before and I sincerely hope that it will work as well as the last one... got another gas just in case... £9.99?

To the reader that posted some comments, thanks but I have no idea where they went as I am sure I approved them and then they were gone... good luck with your restoration.

Cab door exposed

After much head scratching and asking around (The Haynes manual only makes sense now I know how to do the job) I have stripped all of the gubbin's (apart from the lock) out of the door and am ready to start cutting off the door skin.

Since deciding to do this it has become obvious why people buy imported doors

Door skin £29.50 (I got mine cheaper)

Window channel £32.95

Seal kit £56.95

Might see what I can salvage, the aluminium trim was so difficult to get off without bending but I should be able to reuse that (I hope).

Not time to work on bus again until Tuesday so TTFN

Battle of the Bulge - Victory

Well, I spent some time on Sunday and Tuesday cutting and grinding some more and welding in some metal to attempt and rebuild the bulge under the front deformation panel/bumper mounting panel.

I recreated the profile in three peices but with 20/20 hind site might have done it in four next time due to the multiple bends on the outside edge of the panel, the middle and inside bulge bit's were quite straight forward in comparison.

There is a bulgy bit on the outside bit but I can live with that :o)

I have ordered the last few panels that I know that I need to complete this project

Lower Front panel bottom to lights but comes with old bumper mounting panel attached

O/S rear of rear wheel arch repair

O/S Outer sill, drilled old on to butt weld and found the replacement inner is not long enough

N/S front of rear wheel arch repair

Wow, nearly half way there now :o)

Battle of the bulge part 1

Back in the garage last night with the aim of repairing the N/S deformation/bumper mounting panel which to remind you looked like this after trimming:

I had pre cut some repair patches and after a couple of hours of triming, welding and grinding it looks like this now:

With a small addition of some filler that will look as good as new, there might be some repairs that need doing to the lip but can not really tell until the panel is cut out and I have no money for a new one at the moment :o(

I welded in a plate to start fixing the plate at the bottom but the profile went a bit Pete Tong when it was bent in to meet the bottom lip of the 'Inner front panel'.

After the 9 O'clock watershed (The garage faces OAP sheltered accomodation) I decided to have a go with the new Black and Decker 'Bullet' drills to get the single screw out from the table mounting plate on the floor... 3 seconds to drill it out... so much for the 6 Titanium coated drills that I had tried to use before.

The first corner

After my grinding session I had spent some hours cutting out repair panels for the N/S front err... VW Leprocy and have a lovely mosaic of panels to rebuild it with (No Photo yet).

First things first though, as I am working on the O/S I should fix that corner first. I ground away the remains of the small closing panel between the door and the bumper mounting after making a template for the new cheap hand made replacement. After triming back any other corrosion I made a template for a new bottom of the A'post (door hinge pillar) and then fabricated myself a new one.

After a bit of trial fitting and many adjustments with the grinder I started to weld it in, true to form I struggled with the welding again with it just spitting all over the place but the end results of the welding, once ground back were good enough for this area.

I have let in another little repair patch to the bottom of the bumper mounting panel andground it all back, it is now ready for the shutting panel to go in but I will leave this until the front wheel arch goes on to make sure that the panel lines are okay.

Things seem to be steaming along at the moment and Mr. Savage might be required again very soon.

Up front and personal

After my exploratory incursion into the nightmare that could be the front panel there was only one thing for it... to show me the metal (if there was any). Fitting for the first time the twisted wire attachment that I had purchase a year ago, but hoped that I would never need, to my grinder I set about the front panel with gusto.

First I needed to remove the spot lights that looked as if they had seen better days, yep, true to form the backs had rusted out completely so they are nothing more than scrap either.

I set about the front panel and my heart sank as the billowing clouds of white dust never seemed to subside. literally from side to side and from the lip of the front panel/bumper mounting panel to the bottom of the front panel bulge was solid filler. The lip was mainly constructed of filler and disappeared slowlt but surely.

At the end of this I vowed to buy some better face masks which I did on Sunday from the overpriced, rip off Britain, lowest quality product possible "HomeBase"... along with some bullet drills (Black and Decker so might not be up to the job) to remove a screw that has blunted 6 of my titanium coated HSS drills and some HSS jigsaw blades for cutting out the all too numerous repair patches having got through 3 cheap blades this week alone.

When I had finished the grinding my heavy heart actually lightened, although the damage was extensive the Inner front panel was solid (£97 saved) and the bumper mounting panel was solid apart from localised corrosion at the sides where the little shutting panel in front of the cab door meets the side of it and so with a fair bit of fettling I reckon I can make all the required patches.

One gets to wonder how far the Isopons filler actually travelled to get onto this local bay, the filler (used to at least) be made in Wollaston by Scott Baders which is about 17 miles from my house... I bet the filler must have travelled at least 2-300 miles to get here though ;o)