The splitster wrote:

The roof had obscene amounts of filler on it. Using a heat gun to soften the stuff and a gasket scraper it took 125 man hours to scrape it off the whole van. I reckon thats £5,000 of work at £40 per hour - lol.....

Now that looks very familiar - an absolute ball ache!

I've Got a nice roof section you might need......

Bloody Hell!!
That filler! I bet you weren't happy when you started uncovering that! :O

Best of luck!

~Lee

Jesus...... ive just had my pals 59 ghia sand blasted and i thought that had filler in it but your bus beats that,,,,,,
good to see it hasnt put you off.
great work so far fella

Digging deeper under the filler



This section rusted out due to the fridge - however it was deemed appropiate to, yes you guessed it, bodge with filler!



This shows the roof after all filler removed - actually some quite solid german pressed steel underneath.

New inner sill on the n/s ready to weld in. I could have plated it as the rust was minimal but in for a penny in for a pound!



New inner wheel arch / tub - to be honest the fitment is good but the metal thickness is sub standard compared to original.



Rear end now IRS'd - The angle on the driveshafts at standard height is really acute. I will have to dismantle and drop a spline. Apparently type 181 thing CV joints have a 21mm angle where as standard T1/2 CV only have 19mm, anyone run IRS split at stock height and overcome this problem?



New outer floor section, inner, middle and outser sill all done.



Closing panel in, filled, sanded and primed. Must admitt took me 4 attempts at filling and sanding to get right. The good lady could not believe that I was adding more bloomin filler after all we have removed



Must show this pick as I owe credit to the better half for scraping most of the filler off - now there's devotion!



New long side panel offered up for a much needed boost



Just a test photo as flickr want money to now upload more pics where as m/soft give 25GB for free!

Man that thing was caked over in bondo

I love your "Get R Done" aproche, it'll be done in no time by the looks of it.
Keep the pics comeing please.You are doing it justice

Eric.

Managed to find a break in the weather to fit the new long side panel today. I have bonded the top edge with modern car adhesive as they use on the Audi R8 new Jaguar XK etc. Seems ok so far but will take 12-24 hours to cure fully. The rest of the panel was bonded with Polymer master bond. I am going to weld along the sill.



Unfortunately teddy found the whole process very dull and decided to hang himself from the indicator stalk!



The inside is clamped with multiple welding clamps whilst the glue sets.



As above but another angle.

Wow, you guys are doing a great job there!

@ teddy ending it all!

Cracking pace of work so far - keep it up

OH SCHNAPPP wit the filler !? Thats madness !? Still the lower the better that must have taken the bus down a few inches !?!

Pic of the new wheel arch from the inside of engine bay. Will apply some seam sealer to make the joints water tight in due course.

Started to build the engine - 1776 using mild cam & single port heads with a pair of 34 ict's



It is vital to check the oil pump to cam shaft clearance before the case bolts together.



The crank, flywheel & clutch has all been balanced. The case drilled for full flow and line bored. I used proper assembly lube as it is key to run the engine at 2,000rpm for 20 mins on initial start up in order to break the cam shaft in!



After a couple of hours work - voila! One assembled bottom end.



Fitted a Pertronix ignition module - not cheap but ultimately will help reliability due to having no more points to set. DO NOT go for the Ebay Chinese copies. They are known to fail almost always at an inconvenient moment

Slight change of topic but you need somewhere shiny to locate the engine so blew the engine bay over with some 2k



This was mixed up using a spectrometer on a piece of my blue seat pipeing. I must say the colour match was superb - very pleased with the result!



I am too scared now to place a dirty great lead acid lump on that lovely shiny battery tray



'Nick's Camper Blue' is the colour if anyone is interested. lol

Your unusual engine is coming on nicely

I do like a shiny clean engine bay

Spent a whole day sorting the brittle n bodged engine bay wiring loom out, repairing where necessary and re-wrapping in propper loom tape once the west coast hardened plastic had been cut off. Also put in the shiny new fuel tank, new fuel line, and engine bay seals etc. All looking very lovely.



Not the most interesting picture in the world - but the new seal, original VW logo fuel cap and a bit of 2k blue paint all makes me happy!



Van all in 2k primer now except the roof - which still needs replacing