Door panel repainted

I left the door trim panel and interior trims off, after I had fixed the sliding door, as I wanted to respray the damaged trim and could do that in my temporary spray booth (back bedroom!)

I'd already ordered a batch of paint and was surprised that it came as a base and top coat plus lacquer. It is a pearl paint finish, and apparently body shops hate trying to match it, so I wasn't holding out high hopes for how it will look, although it will definitely be better than the scratched affair shown below. Basically, because the rollers were missing off the slider, it was folding in on itself and scraping on the paint (for a long time by the look of it.)

I rubbed all of the scratched area down and feathered it in then applied grey primer, base coat, top coat and lacquer. It looked good - nice and smooth.

Refitting the panel the following day showed that it's not really a great match to the 23 year old faded paint, but it's actually not as bad in real life as it looks here. I may put a "van life" type grapic on it at some point to disguise it a bit. Or I might not be arsed!!

 

Foggy headlights have seen the light

The last "cat-sitting" job I tackled was to refurbish the headlights, which were very cloudy and yellowed from UV. This was clearly visible on the photo from the For Sale advert. 

I had most of the bits necessary to sort this out from doing a previous car and just needed to order more abrasive discs. This isn't a difficult job to do - it's just tedious working through progressively finer grades of wet and dry using a drill mounted disc pad.

But the results were great! She looks so much happier now :-)

 

Sliding Door doin’ what it oughter!

Next up was to get the sliding door sorted. 

I had to take off the interior panelling so that I could remove the body panel covering the sliding mechanism. I was fairly sure that the rollers on the centre hinge had collapsed and, indeed, what I found when I removed the hinge was actually no rollers! 

What I didn't foresee was that someone has cut and removed the operating cables, which explains why the electric control isn't working! I have looked into replacing them but they aren't available as a separate part. I could probably make something up but to be honest it's no big deal to not have electric operation - one less thing to go wrong.

I'd ordered new rollers, whic were only £10. The posts they fitted to were quite corroded and I had to file one back into shape before it would slide on. Slightly worringly, the slot for the retaining circlip was too damaged to retain the circlip, so I had to peen it over with a hammer. It should hold it in place but means I'll need to source a second hand hinge plate if I ever have to do them again.

And so the door is back to doing what it should!

 

Cat-Sitting Service

I'd arranged ages ago to stopover at friends in Whitchurch and "cat sit" for a couple of nights while they were on holiday. This gave me a great chance to do a bit of work on the van, as they have a nice big concrete hardstanding and I have a one way street!!

I don't really have any idea of what sort of servicing regime has been followed, so I'm just going to work my way through everything over the next couple of months, but I prioritised the things that were easier to do while I had some off road time.

The most urgent was to do an oil and filter change. No great problem with that, although I found access to the filter was easier with the off side front wheel removed. As usual, it would probably take me half the time next time, now that I've done the learning curve bit.

Polly came out to help me!

Next was the air filter but, of the 5 bolts holding the cover down, only 3 would undo. The heads on the other 2 were just too corroded. I ended up finishing this job at home and had to grind the head of one of the bolts with a Dremel. The other one eventually snapped off. Even then it still took 15 minutes of persuading to get the cover apart from the body. God knows how long it is since that lot has been apart. Suffice to say that the air filter definitely needed replacing!!

First night away

I always like a deadline to work to and had one coming up, where I needed some accommodation after a "lad's night out" in Liverpool. The end of January is not exactly the ideal time, as I knew that I wouldn't have any insulation sorted out, but I decided to go for it anyway. 

I wanted to finish the deep clean before staying in the van, so hired a "Rug Doctor" machine and spent all day cleaning the carpets, upholstery and plastic trim. There were LOTS of tanks full of grimy black water that came out of everything, but it all looks much more presentable now, and definitely smells a lot nicer!!

The only bit that is really letting her down is the carpet in the back, which has some really deep staining. I may have another go at that sometime, or I may just get some other carpet to cover it (or I may just put up with it, which is probably the most likely for this year at least.)

I stripped out the "jockey seat" from row 2 and the nearside half seat from row 3, to make space for the future camper set up. I did advertise them on the forum but no takers so they ended up going to the tip 😒.

This was the bed set up for that first night. You can't see a carboard box under part of the bed which added a little support to the mattress in the gap alongside the row 3 seat. (I've since bought a couple of storage boxes which will fill that gap nicely for future trips.) 

I have bought a 3" thick foam roll-up mattress from IKEA, which sits on the folded down seats and then I had a double quilt wrapped around my sleeping bag. I had another sleeping bag in reserve and also took a thermos of hot water with me and filled up a hot water bottle from that as I turned in. 

So, I left Liverpool after the meal and drove for about an hour towards home, then parked up in some services on the A55. (This photo was taken the following morning.) These services don't have a limit on how long you can park as far as I can see, but what they do have is bloody great spotlights illuminating the car park! So I ended up parking on the access road to the petrol station which was fine.

I was toasty and didn't need the spare sleeping bag, but the light was a bit of an issue, as well as lots of condensation in the morning. I'll hopefully get the insulated window covers sorted before the next outing, which will address both of those problems. The bed was super comfy though and I drove home with a big smile on my face.

One slight disappointment was that I chose the stopover so that I wasn't too far from Conwy and could head to their parkrun on the Saturday morning on the way home. But when I woke, all of the local parkruns had been cancelled due to icy conditions. Shame, but I'll do it another time.