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- 2 days to go..... So plan B. Time to convert the shop's work van into a camper...so enter the '68 [or maybe a little later] Devon [Bradford on Avon] VW [Mercedes] T2 [Rusty Vito] conversion. It looks like at least 2 hours well spent and has made Rachel quite happy as it used up a lot of...

- 3 days to go..... So despite a Herculean effort on Martin and Nathan's part the night before the van is almost, but still not quite ready for paint. At the moment were still thinking we'll be able to sort that out, so with a slightly fuzzy head today is all about getting the van ready...

- 4 days to go..... This was the day of my friends wedding, also the day of my quick update post in the extraordinarily tight trousers :shock: I drove the bride and her father to the wedding in another friends old Merc. This had just passed it's MOT the day before after a long spell off the...

5 days to go..... Back from work, a few final bits sorted rapidly and then it's time to get the van on the back of the transporter to take it over to my brothers work place to get the primer and paint laid on. This turned out to be a bit hairy, I was advised to get the van on the transporter...

- 6 days to go..... We needed to get the van back together so it was drivable and actually so it started to resemble something more like a van for the benefit of the MOT inspector. Everything is back to front at this point as because we weren't ready to paint we were going to have to get the...

- 8 days to go..... A lot of time over these days was spent doing small repair work, with Nathan on hand again doing filling, shaping and generally making things that were far from smooth, smooth. Generally speaking apart from the major damage area's that we encountered on the rear quarter...

Well we're off tomorrow so now we know, but first a quick low down of the missing last days.... - 10 days to go..... Gearbox seals done to stop the leaks, all the cv joints were shot so replaced all around which was just one of the expensive boring things that we've needed to put this back...

Sorry I've been a bit slack in my update duties.....traveling now so time for a quick update on the phone. It's all still going on, the days have consisted entirely of work, van, sleep and pretty much nothing inbetween. So it's a friends wedding today, more prep tomorrow and back home in the...

- 15 days to go..... If I have enough filler left I'll make a filler castle and take it with me, that should be pretty funny when somebody tries to kick it down on the beach :lol: Bro's been over tonight to lend a hand again, we started off pitching straight into it but over an early coffee...

Damn.....how did I miss that? Must have had eyes full of filler, thanks sparkywig ;)

Obviously I took the 2 bolts out, I was then expecting it the lift out. Even getting the small pry bar behind it there feels as if ther is something still fixing it in place. Is there a third fixing or hidden clip or do I just need to lever harder?

- 16 days to go..... I did make it up the barn yesterday perhaps against the odds given that Saturday was spent in the presence of beer headed up by a man dressed as the blue thing out of avatar.... I would have liked to have got a bit more of the noisy stuff done yesterday, it's a bit slow...

- 19 days to go..... This has been the latest one so far, the birds have just started singing outside, that's bad..... I'm not sure I accomplished that much tonight (probably just because my evening revolved around stripping and sanding again) but my bro and his friend came around to help...

- 20 days to go..... This evenings progress..... There was paint..... Now there's no paint... Less paint than there was before.... No paint on this.... You get the idea. I realised that 3am would be a stupid time to be still be stripping paint on the van....so I left the barn at...

- 21 days to go..... A bit more of the same tonight, but finally an element of 'reconstruction' rather than strip, smash and remove. My brother popped around again along with a colleague of his to lend a hand, two sets of hands last night was good, 3 tonight was even better. As we left it...

- 22 days to go..... Another evening of stripping paint and filler, my bro' came over and gave a hand tonight as well, everything definitely moves quicker with two. I worked around the rear corner and Martin stripped the front clip which revealed another event in the vans history. All the...

- 23 days to go..... Well, with new grinder in hand I spent the evening taking out the [known] filler around the van, took a lot longer than I thought it would; OUCH! The camera does nothing to highlight the contours in this panel, you can see where a previous owner has staved the panel...

Given more time I probably would take the panel out and replace it, at some point somebody has run the van down the side of a gate or similar as there is a long horizontal groove that's pushed it all in. We'll see what it looks like with all the filler removed. I was actually grinding that lot...

- 24 days to go..... Not such a productive day today, primarily because my grinder caught fire which halted play on getting the remaining areas that need welding cut out and prepared. So I painted [myself] the rear chassis with por15 and poked some holes in the front chassis instead. Not so...

- 25 days to go..... Well I could spend as much time as I like getting the body of the van sorted but it's going nowhere without a motor so I thought I should probably spend some time getting this thing back together. My bro' came around the other evening to take a look and lend a hand and...