Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

We just wanted to wish all our customers and followers all the very best for Christmas & the New Year

Lots more to do on the van in 2012. Look out for some SERIOUSLY big changes in late January 2012 as we have a blitz week!

All the Best!

Cutting Corners.....!

Yep, we're cutting corners, and no, we're not cheating!!! We've been busy cutting the first corner off the van, ready for the new one to go into place:

Here you can see the corner missing. We first made sure that the RHS short side was perfectly aligned so that we keep the panel seem between the side and the corner perfect.

Not really much left of the corner now!

On the inside edge of the engine door upright are the small tabs that held the wiring in place for the number plate light and brake light in the decklid. These will be repaired where necessary and this portion of the upright re-used.

Offered up for a trial fit is the new rear corner.

Its very important for us to keep the alignment of any new panels in the exact same position as the original one. Ensuring that the panel lines up properly before its welded in place is essential for the finished van to look right.

Trial Fitting.

With the body back on the chassis (it did fit btw), we've started to trial fit some more body panels, just to make sure things are lining up or if some of the panels need some tweaking.

The rear valence is bolted into place to check the fit against the engine bay plates:

One half of the rear cargo floor is offered into place to check the fit of the 'C' post and also the fit against the bulkhead panel

We've also got the small rear 1/4 panel side in place here to again make sure that the cargo floor will fit against this properly too.

The Chassis is FINISHED !!

After months and months of cutting, welding, grinding then hours and hours of prep in the primer stage, the chassis is now totally finished and ready to go back under the van.

Here you can see the main central part of the chassis

From the back looking forwards:

Showing the gearbox cradle, rear torsion tube and the back of the chassis

Front view looking between the chassis leg frame liners - note the correct 5 ribbed fingers. These were used from approx October 1950 onwards, prior to that, 6 and 7 ribs were used.

So after months and months of work, the chassis is finally done and ready to be re-united with the body.

Chassis Gets Primer

After what seemed like endless hours of hi-build primer, flatting back, more primer, flatting back, we're now really pleased with the finish on the chassis, so its time for some proper primer:

You can see the yellow hi-build primer underneath and we're starting to apply the grey primer on top.

First coat of primer now applied to the underneath. You guessed it, more flatting back.......

More Chassis Paint

After the acid-etch primer has been applied, we then apply a coat of high-build primer. There's still hours and hours of work to do to the chassis in detailing it.

 You can see the underside of the chassis starting to look better now that it has some paint on it.

The high-build primer will show up any imperfections in the metal that we can then deal with.

Once all the chassis has been covered in high-build primer, we can then start to flat back using wet-n-dry sanding papers. Then we will start to get the level of finish needed for the main primer to go on. There will be several more stages involved in this high-build primer phase which all have to be flatted back.

 Here you can see the weld join between the front and rear chassis rails. This is how the weld detail will look when finally painted.

Paint !!!

Paint!! Well, its not really paint, its the starting preparation for the paint.

Firstly any bare metal is cleaned right back and treated to a coat of acid-etch primer. This eats into the metal and gives us a good base to work from.

You can see the grey etch primer being applied to the bare metal areas. We do not leave any bare metal exposed. It very quickly starts to oxidise.

Here you can see the the main chassis rail and now with etch-primer you can start to see the finished detail in the welding. This is the level of detail we want to see when the final paint gets applied.

Rear Valence

We thought it would be a good idea to have a test fit of the rear valence. We first fitted the rear valence brackets to the chassis legs. All looking good upto now:

The valence brackets over-hang the chassis legs slightly. They are not supposed to be mounted flush. Early rear valence has no cut-outs for exhaust tail pipe.

Front Chassis Parts

The last few bits of the front chassis are going in now and we've just some final detailing before the chassis can go off to be painted:

Here you can see the front piece between the chassis rails and the horizontal piece which forms the bottom of the tool chest. You can see the cable conduits for the choke and heater cables coming through this piece.

Underneath is like spaghetti junction!!! The conduits are all exactly in the correct places.

 The very far conduit is the clutch cable which has two tabs we have made to secure the conduit in place.

 Above and Below: the two tabs we have made to hold the clutch cable conduit into place

Detailing The Chassis

With the chassis virtually finished, we've started to do the detailing that we want to get it to the level we are happy with.

This involves putting on dress welds, grinding back welds so that when they are painted they look like factory spot welds.

Then we are going to carefully mask up each weld and seem-seal it for longevity, but again, when its painted, it will look like factory finish.

The front inner chassis piece you can see in the photo above will be welded in place later today to complete the chassis.

The Front Chassis Gets Done

We finally got our last delivery of repair panels and we have cracked on with the front chassis.

The front chassis rails are in place, the frame liners are in place (well, tacked into place) and we've check fitted the inner front panel and the bumper too

If you look at the bottom of the frame liner, you will see all the holes that have been stamped out - this is for us to plug weld these panels together. Spacing on original factory welding is approximately 1 inch apart, but this gets closer together on curved sections and near joints, so where the panel curves, we will have more welds.

After some tweaking, the inner front panel is offered into place and the bumper bolted up, again just trying to ensure that the gaps are looking right even at this stage.

All looking in line from the front now.

You can see here more clearly where the frame liner will be welded into place and the spacing we've taken from original factory welding patterns.

Here the front chassis rail is closed off and you can see where the front top hat and the front cross member all join together. The conduit at the top of the picture is the clutch cable conduit.

The return lip on the frame liner with the holes ready for welding - this will eventually join onto the bulkhead panel.