I have a couple of questions that some of you may have an opinion on. I would welcome any feedback you may have.
- Vic will be spending many years living on Grand Cayman island. There are always issues on the island with the salt air and the damage caused by rust. What do you think would be the best way to help ensure we get as many years as possible before the next restoration? Spray and coating recommendations please. What about spraying inside all the exposed metal tubes while they are exposed?
- What do you recommend for sound/heat matting inside the bus?

Thanks, Rob

For wax treatment it has to be Bilt Hamber dynax S50

I'd paint everything I could inside skins and panel ....

I used terason Aqua 3000 for the underside of my bus and it's also paintable and very strong so keeps the stone chips away
































then once ya have finished the bus get some long nozzles with your wax and inject it into every little hole / crevise you can see / get the nozzles into... behind panels / doors / chassis / tailgate





Mark

never get tired of seeing your lovely clean belly mark........
mik

wow mark, the underside of yours is stunning. I'm thinking of applying the underseal flat instead of textured and high building over it, but although it'll look amazing, its a fair bit of work for an area most people won't ever see and it may be an example of my OCD creeping in there. (need to remind myself to reign it in sometimes).

anyway, some more pics for you all to check out.

one of the problems we had was finding complete b-pillars for a 61, everyone we tried didn't carry them. we could however get the bottom 6", so for now we are making do.



this piece is made up of two sections, both folded in the right places and then one had the leading edge joggled to create a recess in the metal, this allowed for the two pieces to overlap and fit the factory look. then both pieces were stretched/shrunk appropriately to give the correct curvature of the panel. after that spot welded together and welded in place.

the lower section of the b-pillar was fiddly as it has the cut outs for the door catch and bump stop so basically the same process as above with a bit of measuring cutting and welding thrown in for good measure.











after all that was done we thought it may be a good idea to get all the panels on and line up the gaps. even though we fully braced the body before we started cutting, with all that heat caused by the welding there was always the slight possibility things may have moved a few mil. the front door was tricky, even though it was lined up perfectly in terms of up and down movement the gap against the b-pillar was 1mil at the top and 4mil at the bottom. we thought for a second that the b-pillar had moved but on closer inspection the top hinge on the door was found to be sticking, plus the captive mount the hinge was bolted to was rotten away. so when you closed the door it got within a few inches of closing and instead of the hinge folding flat against itself, it was sticking and then pulling away from the body, which accounted for the gap issues. we cut the mount out and fabricated a new mounting plate plus fixed the hinge and the door gaps are perfect. well, almost.

the other problem was that after we had lined up the door correctly i still wasn't happy with the size of the gap between the rear of the door and the b-pillar, it was even but it was just too big for my liking. again we got the rulers out and measured everything and couldn't find a problem, b-pillar was in the perfect place and everything was good. then we measured both the doors and found that the N/S door was 7mil shorter than the O/S one. I've seen this problem with pre-war cars that have timber frames but not on mass produced monocoque bodies. is this a usual occurrence?

its not a big issue really, we'll just lengthen the door edge slightly to compensate. weird though.



you can see in that pics the gap in the side doors is much tighter and nicer than the great big gap on the front door. I'm so critical about gaps, it really bugs me for some reason.

also you can see in that pic the arch is now fully welded on.

next up was to properly fit all the doors, every mounting point was rotten so we had to open them up and fabricate new plates with captive nuts so the doors would securely hang.



















and this was it this afternoon, i took some pics of the other side with the doors on and lined up but i forgot to transfer them onto my mac before i came home.

one of the next challenges we will be starting shortly will be the conversion from panel van to camper. I've got a battle plan drawn up for that but I'm keen to hear if any of you guys have done it before and the methods you used. obviously we will have to fabricate the window frames into the rear but i'd also like to keep the original side doors and modify them to take windows instead of swapping them for doors off a camper. my reasons are that i like to keep restorations as original as possible, so to me modifying the original doors that i know fit and work well makes more sense than replacing them with doors off another van that yes they have window frames but they may not fit in the hole as well as ours did. this also goes for repairing panels as well, i'd much rather repair a rotten original door than buy a repro one. is that just me begin picky or does anyone agree?

You gotta be happy with the progress, really looks like he's doing a good job

ah, thanks for the kind words ben (your tenners in the post )

andy

No money is required. Looks like you have a passion for the job, your works speaks for itself. Can't wait for the finished bus

I am very pleased with the work that Andy and his crew are doing. As they progress through the restoration process there will start to be numerous customization issues that will start to arise. Please keep in mind that there is no expectation that this will ever be sold and certainly not as a traditional restoration to vintage. My intent is to create with Andy's assistance a bus that meets a whole variety of practical needs and a few self saving wants. The bus had to be a '61 and I really wanted double doors and a walk through. That really, really narrowed the options. So now we start to add the things I want like windows. Some of the things we will endeavour to do over the next few months may offend some of you, sorry.
I am 100% behind Andy on the notion of keeping as many original parts as makes sense and modifying them to be what we need. So keeping the original doors would be my preference.
I believe that some of you out there have experiences that we would love to hear as to efficiencies and things to contemplate that make future steps easier.
Please throw in your thoughts at any time.

Pretty excited about what the next few months will bring.

Rob

.

looking great guy's

well done

you'll have a littile time off the bus for festive reasons ..... but I only see it at battery charging time and you'll come back to work ready to carry on kicking ass


keep up the good work guy's

Mark

Do any of you have experience with adding windows to a panel bus? Any suggestions would be great to hear.

rjy1966 wrote:Do any of you have experience with adding windows to a panel bus? Any suggestions would be great to hear.

Check out Ripper's build thread, "'64 LHD Panel to 11 window Devon", it's down on page 5 of the Rides & Projects section. Sorry, having trouble giving you a direct link to it on the ipad...

Nige

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=77633&start=45

steam driven laptop link...

cheers for the info guys, i'l check it out.

some updates now that we are back and cracking on with it once again..

they're coming as fast as photo bucket'll let me upload em, which is pretty damn slow this morning for some reason.

first, the opposite side b-pillar lower and chassis sections have been fabled and welded in, we've been waiting for one of the lower sections to arrive for ages but decided to just make it ourselves as it was holding us up. so, lower b-pillar and arch are now welded in place and everything lined up.

and now some fun stuff.

since the gutter most of the way around the van was severely corroded plus about 3" of the roof skin, we though we'd have a little fun repairing the front section. we decided to continue the sharp centre line of the front panel and the split window frames up into the roof and gutter. so the front of the roof now finishes in a sharp peak that will blend out into the flat roof skin. its a subtle enough modification but the finished look will be amazing.

before an eagle eyed forum member points it out, yes, its a shameless rip off of a chip foose mod but what can i say? the guys a legend.

so, the roof before, not perforated yet but way too corroded for us to possibly consider leaving as is..



first step was to fab up our replacement panel and test fit. we made this by cutting out the appropriate length of steel, folding the gutter edge up and then using stretchers and shrinkers to form the curve we needed.