After having the van for some time (maybe a year or so), I started to notice the odd bit of rust here and there. This is not unusual for an old van, so I just thought I would try to tidy it up a bit. As is often the case, when you start digging you just uncover more and more. This is a set of pictures taken probably over the period of one year. As you can see there are some interesting discoveries.
The Windows
There were a few sections of bubbled paint appearing around the windows and during one particularly heavy rain storm we had an indoor water feature. I remember seeing the water running from the bottom of the window inside the van door, then back into the door and out of the bottom. We laughed when we first saw it.
So eventually, I thought I had better replace the window seals. Of course, taking out the window seals and the glass revealed things like this:
Clearly there was a bit more work required here than just replacing the window seals. Once I’d discovered this, I thought it was worth checking the rest of the windows.
Probably the worst one was the windscreen.
This was after getting rid of the initial rusty areas and treating with rust eater. As you can see there are some substantial holes but the biggest problem was that in some sections there was virtually no lip for the window seal to hold on to. As a result, both the driver and the passenger would sometimes get wet feet when it rained.
I had to cut quite a lot of this metal out in the end and make L shaped sections of metal to replace the lip around the windscreen.
Some of the other windows were a little bit easier to cope with.
However, one thing I would say about putting the glass back into these frames is – expect pain! Even with specialist tools to do this it takes a long time. It wouldn’t be unusual for a single window to take an hour. They are meant to be a tight fit!
The Doors
The doors were suffering from a similar water path as the windows, so as I dug deeper, it was obvious the bottom of the doors were pretty rotten. Also, the passenger door had a huge dent that had probably several kilograms of filler in it.
A fair bit of fabrication and welding was required.
The Cab Floor
I also noticed that the cab chairs were moving a little bit more than they should, so there were a few repairs required on the cab floor. Some of the brackets were only held in by the strength of the rust.
The Wings
Most of the van was in pretty good shape but for some reason the front of the van had really suffered. The wings under the door in particular were pretty bad. I guess that is where the water collects. I think one of the wings had about a foot thick of filler.
The Rest…
After I’d done all this work on the body of the van, it became clear that it was impossible to match the original blue colour (as it was a custom colour), so I ended up making a new shade of blue, tidying up any remaining rust spots, spraying with zinc primer and then respraying the whole van.
There were some other parts that needed welding that I didn’t get photos of. There was some welding on the frame underneath and on one of the rear wheel arches. Considering the age though, underneath was not too bad.
My partner decided she wanted to decopage the ceiling with van man cartoons, so she did this and then patched up the holes in the canopy with stick on flowers.
We also put a luggage rack on the front which turned out to be very useful for carrying the tent!
After all that work, I was really pleased with how the van turned out. A few years later (as we had outgrown the 2 berth) we sold the van for about twice the price we bought it for. Of course, that doesn’t mean we made any money on it, these old vans can require a lot of maintenance. I was pleased when I checked this year (2021) to find out that it is still on the road. Hopefully all that work gave it a few more years of life.
It had become part of the family in that time and we were sad to see it go. We still talk about “Jaffa” and which one of the children would be on hub cap duty (they were responsible for picking up the hub caps when they fell off!). There are loads of pictures of the van on family holidays that I won’t include here.
Here are some pictures of it at the end.
