Front beam chassis repair

After taking the front beam off I ground out all the rust hiding under the beams upright. Here are a few pics of the repair patch.

Fitting Cargo Floor

I started the floor replacement by making a new lower strike plate using the dimensions from the one I cut from the original floor, I know you can buy these but for the sake of £12 and a couple of hours I could make my own. It actually took two attempts and about 6 hours. As I don't charge myself hourly labour this is a bargain.

There were a few places around the floor that needed trimming, including one of the holes for the heater tube. This was about an inch out so I cut and welded a patch to move the hole to the correct position.

The sill repair had the joggled part of the panel poking up inside, so I trimmed this off and ground the welds flush.

I then painted all the cargo bay chaise the classic rust proof Ork Blood Red to keep away any evil spirits.

Picking a hot clear day as I'm a fair weather welder, I got the van out of the garage to get it jacked up as high as it could safely go, then a bit higher.  I decided to weld the floor from the underside, this meant I didn't need to grind down each weld between the corrugations, just work upside down. I marked each position I needed to weld and rubbed the paint off.

I set the two pieces of floor up on anything I could find. This being a cheap B&Q pasting table that's not very flat when it had the weight of the floor on it. I spot welded down the center as far in as I could, then tacked the rest of the centre together, This was hard to get both parts flat then welded without leaning on them and their very wobbly stand.

I clamped up my hand made strike plate and spot welded it on. Did I mention how much fun it is welding pieces of steel together with big copper probes that glow and spark all over the place. (I'd now put a smiley here if I had one handy)

With the floor in one piece I donned my leather apron and gauntlets and crawled under the van to start tacking each piece of bare metal together. With help from my (nameless!) girlfriend inside the van pushing the floor down I starting welding from the centre working outwards. We then got to enjoy for the first time in a long time a solid floor in the van (no not in that way)

The next evening I finished the last few places that were either too hard to get to or were not able to push down with just the weight of a single person. So I put on my bodgers' thinking cap and came up with the ingenius plan to push the floor down with my 1.5t jack and some left over decking poles,

This worked OK for the back welds but when I took the contraption apart to move it forwards to use it on the forward places that I needed to weld, I discovered I had pushed my window and door frame up (who would have guessed using a trolley jack inside a van...) This was a very silly mistake to make. The door frame I managed to persuade straight again but I'll need to make a dolly up to fit between the window frame skins.

I then tacked welded the edges around the floor and finished carefully with seam welding the back joint below the engine bay bulkhead.

Clean up and paint, Job done.

Long Panel Outer Sill Repair

The outer sill repair is an old repair I had my uncle help me do when I first got the van to keep it on the road, this was in the last century by the way! This ancient repair was done with a panel that didn't quite fit and needed re-doing. So using the top quality Autocraft outer sill repair panel I measured and trialled it on the van, marking along the top edge and using tape as my guide and allowing for an over lap, I cut away the old repair and rusted outer skin.

 

I unleashed a new tool as recommended in a Volks World employees project car article, this tool is used to joggle the top edge of a panel, this is called a roller joggle. After reading the instructions and trying a few scrap bits I proceeded to roll the tool along the length of the new panel. I wasn't satisfied at first with the depth of the joggle so I adjusted the wheels closer, this gave me a deeper step (still not what I needed for the thickness I was using) and it stretched the material giving the top of the new panel a nice wavy edge that any child's play ground slide would be proud of. After a few $£%^ and &*£$ got thrown around the garage, I often let rip with a F Bomb when I'm alone, but more importantly without buying a new panel or shrinking hammer I'd try and salvage the situation with a few small cuts down to the joggle line to relieve the stretched material.

 

Knowing that these long panel repairs can turn to chaos if you're not patient with your welding I decided to try and give myself a helping hand. I used a couple of bits of wood clamped either side of the panel to help keep it flush and flat (although shielding the light it also helped keep my welding torch straight) even though the repair panel did had a few wobbles here and there. This only worked up to a point, as the wood would still bend. So I tried a piece of angle iron, this was OK until I snapped the arm of one of the clamps, and the skin still moved when I released the clamps. F Bomb time again.

 

With the clamp repaired (a bad craftsman rewelds his tools?) I tack welded along the length and tried to patiently space my welds along the whole length of the panel. I couldn't get a good penetrating weld unless I held the welder for long enough for the panel to get too hot, so there are a few places where the sill is a little buckled. I then straightened what I could and spot welded the lower edge.

That spot welder is not light and is hard to handle when lying on your back. With the welds ground down the panel looked reasonably straight, I'll have to come to terms with the fact that I'll be buying a XL pot of filler to get that flat panel look. I like the word joggler, I'll be dropping it into polite conversation every chance I can!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fitting outriggers and jacking points

I've finally started to see some progress with the endless task of repairing the cargo bay chassis. With a bit of cutting, measuring and banging with a huge mallet I was able to fit and weld the outriggers I'd made with the new jacking points I definately did not make. I thought I'd made some real progress with my welding until I started doing it against the laws of gravity. Guess I've still got a few things to learn!

A few tack welds hold the outriggers in place untill I can get my hands on a spot welder.This is the right side fitted. I levelled and positioned it with a spirit level clamped across the beams like the Professional I deep down am. (Yes in the picture the spirit level is actually invisible)

Although I still needed to spot or mig weld the forward support section to the bulk head so I can fit the front outriggers and centre cross member, I couldn't help trial fitting my new cargo floor before I got called in for tea. No I don't still live at mums but I did eat fish fingers and beans.

Re fitting cargo floor chassis rails Pt 2

Once both sills were fitted I cut the chassis rails out any way I could, trouble is I needed the tubes embedded within the rails. With a tiny 1mm cutting disc I delicately cut them free from the welded frame brackets.

I also removed the brackets from the centre of the I beams that securely hold the gear link tube in position. To do this I again unleashed the 1mm cutting disc very carefully and gingerly (see what I did there?) using plenty of light to see what I was doing cut away the weld, wobbling the I beam regularly to break the weld. Once each rail was slid off the tube I drilled the 8 spot welds off each side.

With the main chassis rails cleaned I placed all the cross members in their positions and using the datum marks and laser I marked out the centre and handbrake cable tube holes. When I hastily cut and folded all these parts originally I didn't order enough material to fold all three top hat sections, so the other two I picked up from the Autocraft engineering stall at Van Fest, the quality of these parts is spot on, and surprisingly fitted perfectly between my new fitted sills.

I had originally decided to manufacture many of my own parts and save money, this was decided before I knew what parts if any were available, or the quality of the ones that I could buy, and also because of my previous crap panels I'd bought before. This meant I created for myself a few problems- marking and cutting a 31mm tube hole without a pillar drill accurately in bent 2mm and 4mm sheet is not easy, requires patents and can be very time consuming, the only tool I thought was available for a pistol drill was a tapered drill bit. Backed up by wood I started drilling slowly, straight away skidding off my markings, then unable to control the awesome speed of the cutter I burnt out the drill and hardened the sheet steel, like an apprentice fitter I once was. All this trauma and it was still my first hole! I was having a bad day, it felt like I was wasting precious garage time on these parts that I'd made and I was getting really grumpy. I decided I would bit the bullet and order all the chassis parts I needed. The prices online came to over £200, again I changed my mind and decided that my local machine shop would save me, and do the drilling for me at £10 a hole (over £40 total). They sent me away with the advice to try an electricians' hole saw and come back if I had no success, or produced yet more warped glowing red sheet steel. With a good lunch and large bottle of Coke (other brands of pop are available) inside me and my new tool in hand I tried one more time. I was surprised how tough and accurate the hole saw cuts were but I do need to ask Santa for a pillar drill (if you're in New Zealand it's pronounced Sinta by the way). It's all about using the right tool for the job. Or buying one.