1970 Dormobile - First ever attempt at a resto

[Fisher]

Posted on Volkszone, but thought I'd pop it up on here as well.

After looking at a lot of the resto projects undertaken by others on here and Volkszone I've finally decided to bite the bullet and have a go at doing the resto myself. Now this has been a big decision for me as I have never attempted welding before and have never exactly been that good at car mechanics in the past! Still, the desire to save a great deal of money has outweighed my fears of completely cocking this up :lol:

So, after managing to find a decent space to work in for the huge sum of £30 per month, my girlfriend and I last night began the process of stripping the van back to the shell.

Now remember as this thread goes on that I am a complete novice so any advice will be greatly appreciated. If you spot a complete cock up, feel free to shout....though please refrain from taking the piss!!

Here's what we started with and where we're up to so far:

 

[Fisher]

An interesting 'repair' by the previous owner

 

[gninnam]

Good luck with the resto and good choice with the Dormy :wink:

 

[sparkywig]

Good luck with the resto, nice to see a UK rhd van getting some tlc for a change. :wink:

 

[bushyboy]

Good luck with the resto, I too am doing a 1970 Dormy, have a thread on here somewhere. Progress is slow but loving every minute.

 

[Fisher]

Thank for the replies all.

So here's a few more pics after having spent yesterday stripping everything out and seeing what we have to play with.

Quite surpised with the condition of the floor, only some surface rust to sort out and a few patches here and there

The deck cleaned up quite nicely:

Bit more to sort on the rear arches:

The window frames, particuarly round the front screen where in places the filler is at least a centimetre thick

 

[Fisher]

And then a few holes here and there that had been hidden with filler:

One of the sills:

And here we have how he stands now, all windows out except for the cab doors...next off, the roof!

All in all I'm pretty happy with the condition he's in as for the most part everything is pretty solid. Just a few areas that have been lazily repaired in the past and now need to be sorted properly.

 

[surfbus]

Good luck with the resto!

 

[VeeDubMan]

Why do all 70-71 UK RHD Dormies look the same when they're in nead of TLC? This one is almost identical to mine (see link in the signature below).

 

[Rikki James]

Why do all 70-71 UK RHD Dormies look the same

What. cool! :wink:

 

[poprivetracer]

cool looking bus 8) good luck with your first resto .you will be glad you did it :lol:

 

[pinheaduk]

youll have a all mate, my dormobile was a right mess and im still going, but dont let it get you down, if you get stuck walk away from it for a few hours or so and calm down hehe or you end up kicking panels and them more filler is needed

but have fun with it

 

[easy]

UK RHDs rule!