Mike Smith 73 Camper Van Restoration Diary

Me and Cathy have been after a camper van for ages but what with the rising costs of camper vans, it has been out of the question!

Just before last xmas, when one turned up on ebay only down the road in Weymouth and still at only £100 we had to go and take a look. Well, after seeing it close up, it seemed as if it had let more rain in than a tent! To say it required a bit of work was slight understatement. But it started up and drove, so we bid on ebay and won it for £750 - whether it was worth that much is another matter!

At the time I was still working on my type 3, so the van was put to the side and parked up on the drive for a few months much to some of our neighbours' dismay.

In the meantime, Cathys bugs engine decided it was the end of the road, so the poor bus was minus an engine now.

Well last week, it finally came to have a good look at it and get started, work wise.

The aim is to get it done for next summer maybe, but that all depends on how much time Cathy`ll let me spend in the garage fixing it - a familiar story, I`m sure! So here`s a sort of diary which`ll be updated periodically with the work in progress.

Wish me luck!

Cheers,
Mike

On the day of collection

And now

Basically it needs a lot of welding, an engine of sorts, electric's and I`m sure lots more will appear as I go along!

Starting work~ 19-05-2006

Well, first things first, its got no engine in and to move it about, in and out of the garage etc., I`ll have to remedy that.

I`ve still got the old engine from Cathys bug which last time it was running was pluming thick blue smoke when going round corners.

After a look, it turns out that some of the spring washers on the head over cylinders 3 &4 had broken allowing the rocker arms to move laterally - I guess the valves were not closing properly, allowing oil to burn in the combustion chambers.. or something anyway!

I replaced the spring washers today. I`ve reset all the valves, set the timing statically and I`m just waiting on a secondhand manifold for a carb I found in the back of the van.

Engine in tomorrow!

I also looked at the wiring in the engine bay which looked a real mess.

There were loads of wires not connected to anything and its been converted from a dynamo to an alternator at some point.

I got rid of all the dodgy wire connectors, tied all the unused wires up and out of the way, I`m guessing they were for an alarm or something and got the needed wiring in a reasonable shape ready to connect up to the engine.

Next day Cont..... ~ 20-05-2006

I got the engine in yesterday morning and today built it up and got it running after a couple of probs!

the carb i got out the back of the bus was missing the fuel cutoff which i got hold of from a friend , then managed to get hold of a manifold too. Once i got everything in place, it wouldn`t fire first time so i took the carb off and to pieces, gave it a good blast with the air hose and then it started up - excellent! bit noisy, but its only for shifting it around.

I also cleared all the rubbish out of the van and took it all to the tip; There was about 6 dead batteries and 3 or 4 started motors in there!

If anyone wants a sink for their bus, let me know!

I have also taken some photos of the main bits I`ll have to fix (below)

A: The roof guttering which I have to admit, I `m dreading fixing, but I`ve got some donor pieces ready.
B: The front bumper mount area is knackered, but I`m going to put earlier bumpers on anyway and the earlier panel repair section is cheaper anyway.
C: As will this bumper mount section under the step.
D: A front arch on one side
E: An outer and inner sill as well as part of the side panel here.
F: The chassis is surprisingly not to bad, although this jacking point will have to replaced.

Moving her... ~ 21-05-2006

after i got the engine running this afternoon, it was time for the test of getting into the garage!

If I can`t get it in, then I`ll have to lower it on the drive - the back is not a problem, but the front would have to be beam off and some adusters welded in, there`s the added cost of this - I`m on a budget here!

Well, here we are, lining it up. I`ve let all the air out of the tyres and removed the garage door mechanism - what do`you reckon!?

Phew - that was a bit tight! I let all the tyres down, then removed the door mechanism. I had to have some one moving the door up and down while I drove it in. there`s also the added problem of a 2 inch step going in which isn`t great with flat tyres! I put a bit of board down to help but I still needed to give it some to get it in! we would never have been able to push it in.

Next job is to remove all the windows - I learnt the lesson the hard way here - if your grinding near glass - it leaves tiny shards of metal in the glass which pit it and then they rust. I`ll then get the wire brush on the angle grinder to that hole in the roof!

I noticed yellow crayon on odd bits - the tax disc says it was last on the road in 2002, can`t wait to get the angle grinder with wire brush on those gutters later this week!