As others have found when tackling a supposedly small piece of localised rust, it has turned into a full restoration which I frankly did not expect. Started a month ago when preparing it for first MoT under my ownership and knew there was a problem at the offside B post, and didn't take long to realise I had a much bigger problem.
A previous owner had used "torch on roofing " to cover the floor section in front of the seats, gutter bolts to attach cab side to patched floor, and rivets elsewhere, all covered of course with the obligatory black goo.
Have now stripped whole vehicle down and discovered chassis was also in need of major attention--so much so that I took the plunge and collected a new GB made chassis from ESM.
Have also assembled all the other panels together that I think I need and am busy preparing them all for priming with Zinc rich Electrox before glueing it all together. My welding skills
will not be used as having taken the decision to go this far,and taken advice from others whom I trust, I know that it is critical to align the cab to body flange that impact on the door fit etc, and need to get this as good as possible. Therefore I am contracting the primary build stages to a well known(and personally trusted) LCV specialist to carry out. I will however be completing the rest myself including bringing forward the planned upgrade of 1275 Marina VAN engine mated to a Midget gearbox.
I will try and update regularly.[frame]
. Budget is on course so far but not any where close to the original hope of owning a nice van, due to buying the seemingly decent base for £5500 to start with--which was only £50 more than next bid on Ebay with a years MoT.
