Full bare metal Dormobile restoration

[subheatadey]

As out American cousins would say -AWESOME!

 

[Retro Restoration]

Great work! Just a quick question - when you spot welded the side panel to the outer sill what kind of arms did you use on your spot welder? I have this same job to do soon but can't get the arms in to get to the combined "flange" of the two panels.

Cheers for the comments guys

The spot welder has one arm with a small curve, and one with a bigger angled piece. It was a tight fit, but it worked. I'll get some pics of the spot welder when Im back at work next week if I remember.

Anyway, got a bit more done today.

I finished getting the remains of the battery tray out ready for the new one to be fitted. I also needed it out before I welded the rear arch panel in as there was a dent on the rear corner seam section that I want to hammer back into shape ready for the arch. So, out it comes, and most of the corner is good, needs repair by where the D post is and around the light hole:

The side panel welds to the lip on the rear arch panel down the C post, and the lip on the inner B post. The C post is repaired ready for the arch to be welded, so I wanted to repair the B posts so I can get the rear arch and side panel welded on at the same time.

So, I started removing the remains of the old B post until it I was left with the single skin from the bulkhead.

You can see the rotten B post where the top of the arch fits. The shaped section is missing, and it has had a bad repair in the past. We found a good arch cut with B post to use to repair this... but its from a LHD van so it had the remains of the sliding door sill and door seal strip fitted. I cut all the crap off that I didnt need:

You can see in the pic above where I removed the bulkhead section on the donor piece, ready to be fitted up to the bulkhead section on the van that I cleaned up earlier.

The sliding door seal lip was removed, and the B post back to bare metal. All solid, but the arch has a dent at the bottom to sort:

I measured the door gap and cut some more of the B post ready to trial fit the donor piece. Getting there, bit more needs to come off, but it seems to line up nice

The bulkhead section fits nice on the inner B post too:

Got the side panel on, and the B post looks a little low:

So that needs some more work, but, its starting to look like a van again at last... on the drivers side anyway. Just a shame none of its welded yet haha:

While I was doing all that, I had some help from the old boy today. I got him on bare metalling duties... He spent a while using the roloc pads and we ended up with this:

Pretty pleased with it. A few dents to sort, but its nice and solid. Ill finish the corners off then give it the once over with the DA...

Thats all folks

 

[Retro Restoration]

Bit more done today...

I got the battery tray spot welded in place first:

Then made a start on the drivers side rear window frame. It was pretty bad, the outer skin was really rotten, but the inner skin was bad too... You can see both panels are rotten here:

Made a start removing the outer skin:

The lower lip thats spot welded to the inner section was really rusty between the spot welds, so I decided to remove the section of the inner frame instead of repairing it as I had originally planned - This way I could clean the rust off between the join before spot welding the new section back in place:

I cleaned both sides of the lip up ready for the new section and started marking the donor section up:

Thats as far as I got with it today.

 

[VeeDubMan]

Great to see another Dormie being rescued. They all tend to be rot boxes don't they

 

[Retro Restoration]

VeeDubMan - Lol, but you gotta love a Dormobile.

The inner repair section needed cleaning up, was fairly rusty inside Before:

Back to bare metal before a coat of primer and paint, nice and solid:

Did the same with the outer section:

In place:

Welded in and cleaned up, notice the repair needed:

Got the rotten section cut out and a new piece in, then fitted the sliding track cover channel:

Thats it for now...

 

[Retro Restoration]

moved onto the front end of the van. The original metalwork around the whole front of the van was really rotten, so we decided it would be best to remove it all and start with a Californian imported front body cut:

We made a start cutting out the chassis rails and cab floor etc that were not needed, and found some rot on the lower inner panel and A post bottoms:

Once the panel was back to bare metal and we were happy the rot was gone, we trial fitted the front panel, and both front arch donor cuts to the van, and hung a pair of original doors to check the door gaps:

Getting there. Door gaps not 100% yet but the arches, B post etc all line up nice:

Once we were happy that the front panel was fitted in the right place, and all the gaps etc were good, it was tacked in place before final welding while we moved onto the chassis rails.

This shows how the original chassis rails looked when we got the van back from blasting:

As both chassis rails were rotten from the beam mounting area forward, we decided it would be best to replace them with rust free imported body cuts. The first thing was to remove the rotten sections:

We cut the donor sections down to the right shape, making sure there was a good overlap for strength:

You can see the overlap from the inside of the donor chassis rail:

When fitted we will remove a small section of the outer skin to seam weld the inner strenthener up, then weld the outer section back in place so the repair looks factory, and the inner, middle, and outer sections are all fully welded for strength.

The donor section tacked in place before welding to check everything fits as it should:

Then the same on the drivers side. Old chassis rails out with bracket and cross section repaired and cleaned up:

Donor section cut so size:

I think I will get some blasting media for the small blaster and give them a quick clean up before final welding.

 

[Retro Restoration]

Not much of an update, but the replacement chassis rails are welded in place

The cuts were tacked in place, then the beam bolted on to check it was all OK. Three of the original mounting holes are used so it was only really one mounting hole that could be in the wrong place, and the outer skin of another... but it all lined up nice and square

So I started welding it up:

And the other side:

Once the beam is off I will finish the welding

I then modified steering box mounting area on the drivers inner chassis rail. On one side of the chassis rails the 4 mounting holes, and the central holes were all in place, but the other side of the chassis rail they wernt there... So i cut the factory welds out and cut the same part out of a repair panel from Schofields, then welded it back in as it was from the factory:

Still got more modifications to make the LHD chassis rails the same as the RHD originals... but, its getting there. I'll post pics of the modifications once all complete

 

[VeeDubMan]

Before you get the cab floor back in, be sure to sort out any issues with the accelerator linkage that goes through the chassis legs. Much easier to do it now while you've got space.

Nice work btw

 

[Retro Restoration]

Got quite a lot more done on the Bay. Here goes...

Now the front chassis rails were repaired, I moved on to the A posts and front inner valance. The donor front cut was pretty good but parts of the inner front panel and A posts were rotten.

A post repair section in place:

With both front A posts repaired, they had a coat of weld through primer and the inner front panel was lined up and fitted:

And the chassis rails were welded to the front end:

Next up were the front tubs. They were plug welded to the arch, and spot welded to the bulkhead:

Ground the welds down nice and flush:

Then I did the same on the passenger side. Now the tubs were in place, I finished off a couple of bits of the LHD to RHD conversion on the chassis rails before I moved on to fitting the cab floor.

Bolted the floor to chassis section where the gear stick bolts to get everything lined up properly:

Fitting:

You can see in the pic above that I forgot to drill a few holes to plug weld it to the section of chassis that runs from the left to right chassis rail, so I added those before final welding.

Then I moved on to the cargo floor section. The top hats and I beams were cleaned up, and coated with weld through before welding. This pic shows the floors being trial fitted in place with the panel between tubs replaced, and the tubs being repaired:

Then I moved on to the passenger rear arch. The old arch removed:

New arch offered up in place:

Fitted the outer sill to check everything lined up nice before final welding:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/25351215/Website/Andrew%20Turner%20Early%20Bay/Passenger%20rear%20arch%20and%20corner/DSC_0227.JPG[img]

Tacked everything in place and got the new Klassic Fab rear corner trimmed down and in place ready to be welded:
[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/25351215/Website/Andrew%20Turner%20Early%20Bay/Passenger%20rear%20arch%20and%20corner/DSC_0233.JPG

At the same time I fitted the new battery tray, but I forgot to get pics of this.

Once I was happy everything was in place, I started the final welding:

I measured the spot welds across the bottom to get a nice consistant row of welds, and seamed up the arch panel:

There is a couple of bits of welding to finish to the body, but the chassis is finished so we got it in the booth and gave it a coat of epoxy:

Then we masked up and seam sealed all the joins before stone chip:

Followed by a coat of stone chip:

Then a few coats of L345 light grey:

The inner arches:

Then we made a start on the re assembly

I welded CSP adjusters into the replacement beam, and we chose to paint the running gear in Por15 before being re fitted with new hardware. I used new beam bolts and washers from Buttys bits: