its been ages since ive done a thread on a bus build since starting up irvs restorations 2 years ago ive been really busy with customers buses and building the business, i bought this bus of my mate matt smith at the volksworld show last march ,now i hadn't seen this bus but as me and matt chatted it was a case of heres a couple of pics on my mobile , if you dont buy it theres a guy outside who will, i had my mate gary parsons in my ear saying buy buy buy so i thought sod it lets go for it, how bad could it be , a couple of days later matt aranged to get it delivered to me direct from the port as it had just come in from malta , this is how it turned up at my place




at first i just stood there for a while thinking oh my what have i bought lol.
after an hour or so i had finished crying and decided to get it in the garage drop everything and do a couple of days on it to see if i could make myself feel better

Wow now that is a project

"after an hour or so i had finished crying and decided to get it in the garage drop everything and do a couple of days on it to see if i could make myself feel better"

And did you make yourself feel better ?

Andy

Never listen to garry you've seen the .... heaps he buys

ha , yea andy it did , once i had a good look i realised the chassis and bulkheads were in good nick and required little work it made me feel much better
first thing was to clean the chassis rails up so i had some where to start that i new was square seeing as the bus was hit in the front left where it had been dropped into a ravine i guess where someone scrapped it when they were worth nothing ,then there was the damage at the rear where someone had arse ended it as well








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Congrats 'irvmeister' on the purchase.

I am from Malta and I remember reading posts on facebook about this bus leaving the island last year.
I just can't believe I'm actually reading a post about where it ended up.

It does need a full resurection, but glad to see that it ended up in the hands of someone who has worked with splits before.

Good luck! I'll be watching closely to see all the progress

Regards,
James.

so i moved onto the rear next as this area was badly damaged the o/s corner was totaly smashed in so i decided to cut it off and the bus came with an opening rear hatch clip i decided to graft it in, this is what my battery tray looked like

Awesome Paul

its mad how bad it actually was , sorry for the way im loading the pics but ive been meaning to do this for months


after this point i thought onto getting the rof off as it was shot and peppered all over

Hey irv looking good
You make it look very easy sorting out rusty barndoors

so we got back from ben pon and id managed to pick up a nos n/s a pillar ,b pillar section so that helped alot ,then it was time to get all the rot from the front cut out




carefully unpicked the front roof clip







repaired the front of the legs , this is the only rust on the front chassis

time to repair the lower outer bulkhead


then unpicked a b post and grafted that in




i seem to have forgot to put the pics on of fitting the long side so here you go





now onto the roof gutters





i picked up these doors when i was out in america earlier this year for the octo ,i no ive got the handle recess to fit but they are mint so they had to go on



ive also fitted the o/s dogleg but forgot to take pics ,heres one of it fitted, i used an autocraft outer and one of schofields cheaper complete late doglegs welded together , no totally correct but certainly look spot on when done

so thats were i was up to for ages as i needed a roof but couldnt seem to find one or didnt have the money when one came up, but then one day talking to rick at schofields he mentioned he'd just had one come in from the states and at a price i couldnt refuse i jumped sraight in the van and down to manchester to collect ,it had some rather large dents in the top which rick said he was unsure if they would come out or not so take yor chances kind of situation ,i thought well its better than the invisible one i had so lets take a chance
what i found were the dents were right on the strenghteners so after i knocked them out they stayed out happy days





so after removing all the old gutter and cold air inlet it was time to try it on and boy was i excited ,this seemed like such a majorm milestone, would it fit after so much work ,was it straight?





and hey presto it fitted like a glove ,well happy ,thats as far as ive got to as ive been waiting for panels of gerson, i decided the tool chest area was to far gone and nobody makes them , i asked gerson and he growled a bit but agreed to do it as i had a behr scoop that he wanted so christmas eve and guess what turns up

Superb resto thread - keep the pics coming

Jeezuz!!
That's a project!!,!

This is absolutely awesome mate keep it up .

cheers for the comments everyone , should get the front on this month then it can go for blasting