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.

Promise of Earth implied ... reality meh?

Having followed up with the vehicle restorer I had spent so much time tracking down, and diligently taking pictures, of every ding, scrape and smear of rust at his request. Then mailing him said pictures and descriptions as requested. I finally reached the point at which I thought we needed a proper chat about schedules, time scales and costs. I got costs with no trouble at all. However (and I was cross about this ... not the reason, but the outcome), our restorer man is going through the adoption process, this is tying him up and he is not taking on anymore work this year ... unless he can find someone to take on a full time role (he is advertising for a semi retired individual on a part time basis, but that’s a long shot and I don’t live in hope of a return call anytime soon).

This pisses me of for one reason and one reason only, he could have told me two weeks ago. In which case I would have kept on looking for body workers, with facilities large enough for a van and a real desire to do the work other than “it pays the bills” or “it’s all I’m trained for”.  As with all things it’s got to be someone who loves what they do and requires the work because they need the challenge and or satisfaction of doing it.

It’s not that vehicle painters are hard to find, they are easy enough to track down in the yellow pages, but if you look, and I have, you find two types. Crash repairers ... in and out high turn over, like Chips Away on steroids; a bit soulless and cost driven. And then there are the specialists ... takes a year to get sorted, costs and arm and a leg, and is the province of the Porsche, Aston and Ferrari driver. I need someone in between (that’s  someone in between, with a big workshop), it’s like groundhog year ... need a workshop need it big.

I could of course, (given that the rust I need dealing with is hidden ... do it myself to a point), but I’ve been down that road years ago with a Cortina Mk5, an Escort Mk2 and a Triumph Herald. It’s a slog if you only have an hour here there. So as much as I’d like to wait to get the bodywork done by the guy I’ve already found, logistically it not possible. I’d have to wait until September at the earliest to get the rust sorted and I’d have to defer the internal fit out until at least then, or beyond.

So this evening I shall be on Yell.com looking for body workers in or around Essex with a large workshop reasonable rates and obvious signs of a little passion.

So until next time, ttfn.

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.

March Marches Past ... again.

We are coming up to the target date for leaving on our grand tour; 21^st March 2013 ... which by my calculations was supposed to be today. Best laid plans of mice and men and all that. It’s over a year since our first post and nearly a year we’ve had this date in mind. Who could have known what slog it would have been ... and some may say “all to nought”. My analogy is Snakes and Ladders, we got to No 98 and had to drop all the way back to the mid thirties. I say mid thirties, not zero or one, because you have to include all of the process that got you to the point where you were ready to “go a travelling”. If it was as simple as getting in your vehicle and driving off into the sunset, we would have been celebrating the anniversary of setting off, and our first year on the roads about now. There are two things barring our way forward at the moment ... albeit ... substantial hurdles on their own: The house hasn’t sold (but we got to enjoy all our labours all winter long), and the big one: we haven’t got a working motor home right now ... but we have that in hand.

Below are some more pictures of Mk2. I’ve already binned the seats from the rear. I was going to try them on Ebay, but then I decided to check Ebay to see how well they sold given their provenance ... it’s a spade is a spade moment ... to whit the seats are possibly piss smelling, bacteria ridden arse breakers that go on Ebay for .99p and then sit there without even a watch for the next ten days. I have no sense of smell so I couldn’t tell about the Pee smell, however I did do the release mechanisms to get the seats out, and after loosening the first one, I retreated to the bathroom for a hand wash and nitrile gloves. Cleary they’ve been cleaned as have the floors, after all it’s an ambulance, but once you’re in the grooves on the floor that the seats lock into, and scales that were small, become perceptively bigger, those clumps of hair and gritty crud in the dark crevices at the very bases of the seats become phage ridden bacteria swarms looking for a new kind of host to infect ... and that’s how Zombie apocalypses start. So the seats went to the dump where all the other phages live and die in a microscopic war of attrition that doesn’t usually result in Zombieapocalypsitis.

Having taken the old seats to the dump, I went in with the big gun ... that’s right total war scorched Earth Armageddon on dirt ... sounds exciting, in laymen’s terms ... hot Domestos on a traditional mop head. Never mind all that thixotropic sticks to the rim even after you’ve flushed shit shit ... what you need to weaponize bleach is hot water and a raggedy mop, followed by some deft footwork and plenty of foam. Needless to say, the water came out black, and my only regret was not wearing a facemask when I was down in the pube knotted micro world of sick or injured people’s faecal matter and bacteria ... possibly.

So today 21^st of March 2013, instead of driving off into the sunset, I’m instead going to go back in, to remove: plastic plates that tell you how to release the seats, a laerdal suction unit mount, clips and tubes that used to pass oxygen from one end to the other, and hopefully the wheelchair access mount (I say hopefully because it’s a big lump of metal held on with many bolts that have been worn so that the bolts may be difficult to hold with a spanner). I’m also going to remove one main ply panel to see what state the insulation is in. Once the insulation is inspected I’ll make a decision about replacing it, augmenting it or just leaving it alone.

On Monday I’m driving it to our usual mechanics, Benchsound in Stanford Le Hope, Essex (www.benchsound.co.uk) for a full service and a Cam Belt change (the first painful bill). I said in the last post that the unit had been well serviced and that it had a lot of service history which I read more thoroughly on Monday, Timing and Cam Belts have been changed previously as have brake pads, wiper blades, oils, coolant etc. However in amongst the lines of service history I did find one thing that concerned me a little, that I didn’t spot on the first run through; at around 200k miles it had a new cylinder head. There are two ways of looking at that; it’s had a new cylinder head that is 100k miles younger than the rest of the vehicle (this is a good thing), or it’s had a new cylinder head how are the pistons and rings? (That may not be such a good thing). However one has to look at the positives. Were the unit to require a full recon, the head should be pretty sound, with new belts and the frosty eye of the guys at Benchsound we should know by Monday Evening if we’ve “bought a pup” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_in_a_poke for those interested in the origins of that particular idiom ... clearly I was J ).

More later.

The deed is done.

On Friday 1^st March after a haggle I managed to get the ambulance for £2500. Pictures below; they are rough as I had to use my phone because I’ve misplaced the charger for my snapping camera … (one suspects it has been boxed in error, and placed in the lockup). They will suffice for examples sake. I didn’t get a second test drive, as the dealer thought my absence since the first look more than a fortnight ago, meant I’d decided not to buy it, so he tucked it back into a corner.

I had hoped to get it for £2300, however he’s done his research as well as I have, so he had a fair idea of the value of the blown air heating system and panelling to someone like myself, and therefore wouldn’t budge. He even had the cheek to say he was going to advertise it as a conversion option on Gumtree … now we’d suggested it. It has sat in his yard for just over a year, and no one could find a use for it. It has too few seats to be a minibus, and too many to be a van, couple that with the panelling and the only person likely to show an interest is me … or a serial killer looking for some sound proofing … hmmmm.

Do I think I’ve got a good deal? The jury is out. We are taking a risk, quite a big one in fact. The equation breaks down like this.

For:

Van already panelled with high quality materials (could do with a valet, but it’s by no means shabby).

No major rust, no rust inside doors seals

Easy access to the rears of the sound proofing/insulation panels, for augmenting the insulation.

Floor already floored.

High level cabinets (not wipe clean medical white … this is a good thing).

Diesel blown air central heating (needs to be shifted.

Four tinted sliding windows in the rear panels

Semi High top with full height rear opening doors

3.6 metres of internal length

Sliding side door (unglazed)

90% of the body is in very good nick (bubbly rust round one rear window, not a biggy)

Secondary 12v systems installed and adaptable

Five pages of service history

Years MOT

Roof light fitted already, direct replaced by the ones we bought for Moho Mk1 last year.

Clutch, Alternator, starter motor, Disks and pads, Cam belt kit all easily available, and relatively inexpensive (and looking at the layout all relatively easy to access).

Parts generally available widely, some Nissan, and Renault parts are 100% like for like (the Renault Master and Nissan Interstar are the same vehicle).

Our man Paul at Blackdown has converted at least four of these units and thinks they make a great base vehicle (as Renault, Nissan and Movano … The unit he’s just built is a 2012 Movano).

Against:

300.000 miles on the clock.

Bubbly rust round one rear window (badly patched up … see line above, to do it properly I need to take the window out).

Poorly removed blue light near and offside rear, and poor patch up of area (needs to be done properly and it’s very visible).

A ding that looks like it could be part of the sliding door run at the bottom of the sill (it would fool a stupid person … ahem).

Air suspension, compressor (this may have to be removed).

One could say that one has a bias towards the for’s (rose tinted glasses), however if one looks at the Against then purely in terms of cost they probably cancel each other out. However if the 300k miles bites us in the arse it could get quite expensive short term. If the worst came to the worst I will just have the engine reconditioned top to bottom no questions asked.

I hope to pick it up on Saturday 16^th march, I’m off for a week after that and I shall root through it with a fine tooth comb, book it in for a service and cam belt change and give it a clean and wax.