And Breathe.

All good things come to those that wait. Mohomoho is back, however I think Big Yellow is a better nick name: See pictures attached.

I’m 90% happy with the finish, though I have been spoiled in the past with flatting and polishing to a mirror finish; so maybe my expectations were a little too high. The welding is great and all the structural internal rust is gone. I have some tiny internal rust spots to deal with but these are entirely cosmetic. There are a few other bits for me to do, a soapy wash and wax, and fitting of the external body fittings (bump stops for doors). The insides are filthy with dust from paint over spray and filler rubbing down, so a wet wipe inside is due.

The old emergency light cluster at the rear has been removed, the blue roof light from the front is gone, and the windows on the side are re-fitted, there is a minor problem in this area highlighted by the external power wash, to whit; if you force water round the edges at high pressure it will get in. This isn’t too difficult to sort out, it just requires a bead of non setting windscreen mastic to be pumped into the seam. I am also going to replace the Herzim Strip (screw cover strip) that runs around the entire window edge (I did nearly 30mtrs of it on the old Moho, and is purely cosmetic in this instance).

Faults: one is mine for sure, I didn’t mention that the front door and wing offside were rubbing, they didn’t notice until after they sprayed and closed the door and some while later found a scrape on the door runner. There is a minor run at the top of the sliding door, on the bevelled part of the panel (you can only see it from a certain angle, and not direct on). Other than these obvious bits it’s fab, and Garry has asked us to pop back if we find any real snags.

So that’s it ready, sealed for conversion. I have to stuff out the internal skeleton with micro fleece, pre-line the sides with an ecofoil type product, and pull out the last of the redundant emergency vehicle electrics. Then on the third weekend of June it’s back down to Devon to be converted and we can sit back a bit and relax, save some cash, and enjoy high summer living by the seaside ... is the plan.

Body Shops

It took a while (as per previous post) to find a body shop where it looked like passion came as standard, but find one I did, and as providence would have it, practically on the doorstep. He and they are Garry Lee Panel Craft or www.carbodyrepairsrainham.com.uk. The giveaway that he was more than just a car sprayer, was the spray painted grand piano in his websites gallery and a string of custom minis (the originals not the modern version).

I dropped him an email, and he called back, and that is a first. All other mail enquiries have been responded to with email, either auto “we have received your mail”, or terse “we don’t know how to write an email response and we don’t have time anyway” ... this is common place in the non-typing all day practical industries, if you don’t know it or don’t see it I think you would get the wrong impression of most trades. Most trades are not that email savvy, however most trades also seem to have forgotten how to pick up the phone as well ... I’m not being a hypocrite. I order my thoughts into a set of logical questions and write them down. They are for an expert to read and respond to. I believe I’m doing the trader a favour because if I tried to orate what I write, it would take a month of Sundays. If I write then phone ... or they phone me, we have a script to work from. Am I wrong?

Garry and I had the “is it worth it chat?”, after all its thirteen years old. We chatted about ballpark figures £1500 to £2500, it won’t be less than £1500. We did the usual client/seller sniffing each other out chit chat. We had a brief discussion about colours, I favour a Volkswagen Camper/beetle yellow, Amanda is coming around to the idea, but she also likes dirty pale metallic blue. The Jury is out, because Garry said if you paint it yellow it will look like an ambulance, an AA van etc. Suddenly colour becomes more than a snap decision, based on some nostalgic whim. To clarify that, we are creating a camper van, not a motor home per se, (there are fundamental definitions laid down by the DVLA as to what makes a camper van), the yellow is a nod to the classic VW, which people  do live in on their travels ... but ... there is always a but; for me the sleeping space is just too small for two people long term (especially if you’re a bit of a spazzer like myself). Finally, Garry and I talked about booking it in to commence the work ... this should be 22^nd April.

A little about Garry Lee panel Craft, he has been in business since 1983, he’s had to keep his prices static for at least three years, though he thinks in real terms it’s been more like five, he’s not had to lay anyone off, but he hasn’t expanded either. Garry seems like the sort of bloke I want doing stuff for us; artisan, he will take on the quirky jobs as well as the odds and sods of accident repair (the bread and butter), but quite clearly he likes the craft and the challenge of a project. He has set himself a deadline of two weeks start to finish. The idea being that our van will become the main job for that period of time, this leaves room for odds and sods and condenses my experience of body work and spray jobs from a protracted three or four months down into what is, once you total up the hours about eight full working days including: pulling off trims, grinding, plating, first fill, sanding, priming, drying and hardening, sanding, Second fill if required,  top coat and lacquer, flatting, buffing/T Cutting, and finally washing and waxing. All made just a tiny bit easier if you use power tools and if you are not spraying black.

I have some pictures to post in the previous post, relating to the body work inside and out, and you can view Garry Lee Panel Craft’s website from the link above or via Facebook on this tiny URL: http://tinyurl.com/cqbyn8u Here’s to the little guys.

What a fortnight it has been.

So we bought the new van home and put it in for a service and Cam Belt change ... £2000 odd pounds later we have: a new Cam Belt, Oils, filters, Brake pads and disks (front), front wheel bearings, brake shoes and cylinders (rear), water pump, water pump pulley, crank shaft seal, x4 Injector seals and the offside indicator lamp cluster (front). So that was expensive. But it doesn’t stop there, there is a bracket for the glide-rite air suspension that has rusted through (possibly). I’m hoping that it isn’t too serious, or that it’s a false positive (our mechanics couldn’t be 100% sure having no explicit expertise in this particular arena). We are prepared for another bigish bill and possibly an overnight stay near to the installers workshop.

Are we regretting buying the unit already? Yes and no. The body work is spotless from the Cills up. Our mechanics say the engine is sound given the mileage, and that the service items mean that absolutely all major consumables have been looked after and are good for several thousand miles (oil needs changing every five thousand) at least.

I started tinkering with the internal space and trim and decided in a very short amount of time that the best way forward was to rip it out completely and start again. Now this may seem like a bizarre thing to do, seeing as one of the buying points was that it had been fitted out already. However, in ripping it out one has revealed pristine internal metalwork (except around the windows mentioned in the previous posts, and way down where the Cills join the main panel work). At this juncture there is rust, and frankly you have to wonder at Vauxhall’s manufacturing process and quality control, that this rust is effectively designed in.

At the points where the external bump trim fixing bolts penetrate the outer shell, they have not provided adequate rust protection, either by the physical fixing, or by additional coatings. On the old Talbot, which was seven years older than this Vauxhall, you could still see the hard glaze lacquer that formed a rim around every single body penetrating fixing, consequently there wasn’t a spot of rust on it. The visible rust doesn’t penetrate to the supporting uprights, but will require some grinding out and then either a  plate or some Isopon P40 fibreglass mat and a skim of Isopon P38 to finish. Fortunately the entire area of rust is under the bump trims that line the side ... not that that’s an excuse for doing a bodge job, it just takes the pressure off when t comes to painting and flatting.

If there is a big disappointment, then it’s the fact that the middle offside window rim is rusted right through and has been patched in a way that quite frankly makes me very cross: One because I’m going to have to fix it, and subtly underneath that, the fact that the unit was an NHS ambulance and we already paid for it to be looked after via the treasury ... and some lazy fucking turd somewhere just gobbed it up with some silicone, then layered on paint  with a trowel... and probably billed you and I for what probably looked like a proper job for a few months.

On from this I’ve made some grand discoveries: The heater is a Mikuni diesel unit, fully plumbed into the main fuel tank. There is a top of the line split charge relay unit and a deep cycle marine battery already installed. The battery provides the juice to the Glide-rite system and to all the secondary systems. There is an electrical distribution panel just behind the drivers seat that provides service to the blue lights, most of it is redundant in terms of terminations, but the board itself and its fuse carriers are re-usable (not that these are expensive items, it’s just good that they are not on a future shopping list). And finally for the electricals everything is run in flexible conduit.

I have now reached a stopping point with regards to what I can do, I need the air suspension to be serviced this is booked in for the 12^th of April. I then have to sort out the bodywork, before I can think about re-insulating and lining the unit with new ply. I can augment the under bonnet insulation and clean in the engine bay ... but to be entirely fair, these are nothing more than “keeping your hand in” jobs. So that’s March 2013 gone, on square forty hoping for a six next throw and no more snakes.