Body Repairs 4 - Windscreen wiper hole

Many years ago the area around the driver's side wiper arm started to rust, and water eventually started to get into the cab in rainy weather.  I had no idea why this corrosion might have started in this particular place, as the centre wiper arm was unaffected.

I made a temporary repair using a bit of fibreglass, and it worked for a while but without being able to get at the complete area properly to remove all the rust it was short-lived.

The problem is that the wiper arm assembly is behind the dash and the inside fascia panel, and these are difficult to remove.  The rusted area also extended up into the windscreen rubber.  The area was therefore virtually impossible to repair without removing the windscreen and the entire dashboard.

Now is the time.

Having removed the old windscreen and the entire dashboard and fascia it is now apparent why the area has rusted away.   This is the passenger side are of the front.  The lip is where the windscreen sits, so the top half of the photograph is outside and the lower half is inside the van.

The dashboard / fascia bolts to the area that is showing surface rust.  This is where condensation that has run down the inside of the windscreen collects, and it runs to either end of the opening, where it is supposed to drain through that large hole and drip onto the floor.

It has corroded this side of the windscreen opening.  On this side it is only surface rust and will clean up, but part of the lip is rusted and will have to be rebuilt.

At the driver's side this water has accumulated around the windscreen wiper pivot and bracket, and caused major corrosion.  The rusted area was cut away but the lip which reatins the windscreen, and the inner plate onto which the dashboard is bolted has completely disappeared.


Two replacement sections had to be made to patch up the area, one for the outer surface, and the other for the inner surface.  These are tacked into place and plug-welded along the top to rebuld the lip.  This is how the original lip is formed where the front panel and the inner plate are spot-welded.

Body Work 3 Rear Panel

The rear section of the T25 is mostly taken up by the tailgate.  It's the section beneath this containing the lights and number plate which tends to corrode.

The number plate is fixed to a drop-down flap which gives access to the dipstick, oil filler and the coolant system expansion tank.

The flap is sprung closed on a pair of hinges. A bit of effort is needed to remove the screws but the complete assembly does come off.  I found it was too difficult to get at the screws holding the hinge brackets to the rear panel, and the solution was to knock out the hinge pins so that the two parts of the hinges sprang apart, and then it was easier to get a drive onto the screws.

This shows one hinge removed.  The two holes above the removed hinge are for the screws which retain the collant expansion tank.  I really need the whole area clear to get all the rust off and respray it.



Beneath this opening is the dropped lip that covers the exhaust muffler.  All the little square holes in this are also corroded.  The whole area soon cleans up with the wire wheel on the angle grinder.

The areas that appear black are actually shiny, it's just the way the light catches them.













Once cleaned up it is apparent that there are several perforations along the lower lip, which will clean up on the back and then repair with a fibreglass patch from the reverse side.

Once repaired, rubbed down and primed the section looks quite good.  There are some uneven edges around the little square holes where the old paint has not feathered properly. We might fix this before the final respray, but all this section is behind and below the rear bumper, so not subject to close scrutiny.

Body Repairs 2

The side door slides on a runner concealed behind a removable panel held by a couple of screws, and along a bottom rail which is part of the sill.

It's a real bugger to get the side door off, the workshop manual is not much help, but with two brains we managed to work out how to do it.

We didn't really care whether we scratched the paintwork getting it off, we'll have to be very careful putting it back on again when the job is finished.

There looked to be a lot of rust behind the side panel, but it was all just flaking paint and nothing that had corroded through.  Some work with the powerfile and a few coats of primer soon sorted that out.

We were more concerned about the bottom runner, which was badly rusted and at first it looked like it was an integral part of the sill.  The main problem was the channel holding the door rubber.

Not so, the u-shaped channel is spot-welded onto the sill and can be removed and replaced.  Simply drill out the spot welds, clean them all flat with an angle grinder, drill holes in the replacement runner and plug weld it in the right place. We used the rubber surround that was taken off the opening to locate the exact height for the replacement.

That wasn't very painful at all.  Unfortunately, while doing this we noticed that the bottom corner of the 'C' pillar was rusty, and that was a real fiddle to repair.

After cleaning it up we had to make a shaped repair profile to weld in place. The shape of this pillar is complex as it has both a u-channel to hold the door rubber and a channel that forms a drain, and that is not a profile that we could make out of one piece of metal.

This shows the repair section in place ready to be welded.  It is in two pieces, the shaped part shown in the previous picture, plus a flat plate (with the blue 'o' on it) which completes the u-channel that retains the door rubber down the side of the pillar.  There's no way to clamp it all in place until it's welded, so it's clamped up by the self-tapping screw.  Once it's all hammered to a close fit and welded up the screw could be removed, but it's doing no harm, so we might as well leave it in.










This repair secion also butts up to the newly-replaced bottom channel, so that could all be welded together.




The result is not the prettiest repair but will clean up, and it's all hidden behind the door rubber anyway.






The remainder of the sill is fine and it cleaned up really well.  The upper channel is the door runner, the lower one is the replacement one for the rubber.  In fact, the door runner section doesn't get exposed to long-term road salt and dirt because it's on the 'inside' of the door rubber, which is probably why it's survived so well.

So, that's pretty much the back half of one side of the van repaired, at least in terms of the bodywork.

Body Repairs 1 - Updated

From the outside it has always seemed that the problems with the van were just 'a bit of rust'.  Once we started taking it to piece it became obvious that this was far from the full picture.

The bumpers on this T25 are resin-composite ones rather than the metal versions on earlier models.  The rear bumper is made up of three sections, a long one across the back, and two end-cheeks.  The rear section is bolted to a couple of long 'arms' which in turn push into the box sections forming the sides of the engine compartment.
The end cheeks bolt onto the ends of the rear bumper section and also bolt to the lower corner panels in two places.


The nearside rear bumper cheek had been drooping for a few years, so we expected that the bolt location holding it to the chassis would be corroded, and so we expected to need a new panel section for that, and also perhaps the wheel arch section too.

I believe this corner cheek got pushed into the side of the bodywork about seven years ago when someone borrowed the van and parked it at the top of a hill without putting the handbrake on properly and it rolled into a ditch, where it had to stay all night until they could get a farmer to come and pull it out.

We were right about needing both those panels

The big hole is where the bumper end-cheek bolts through the panel from the inside.  The bumper comes right up to the swage line, and wraps round to the back of the wheel arch, so none of this corrosion is visible until you remove it.

Replacement panels are easy to obtain, and need a bit of 're-shaping' (hitting with a big hammer) to fit properly

A bit of work with a hammer in the wheel arch also revealed that the whole area around the back corner was corroded as well. There is a box structure in the back corner rearwards of the wheel arch, and the horizontal and vertical joint lines visible in this photograph are not just joins between two panels, they are actually joins where three surfaces meet to form the front and bottom of the rear box.

A large section of this was also corroded

This photograph is looking up through the floor of the van into what is effectively the left-hand side of the engine compartment.  The metal panel at the top of the picture with the blue line drawn on it is the back of the wheel arch.

This corrosion is partly due to bad design. Above this section in the side of the van is a ventilator that allows heat from the engine compartment to escape.  It also allows rain to get in and collect on the floor of that box, which is actually formed of two overlapping metal sections that are not welded but only sealed together with compound.

Combined with road salt and dirt on the outside of the floor this is a recipe for disaster.

In effect the entire lower rear corner of the van needed rebuilding.  The blue line was part of the area which we drew to cut around, where the existing panels were sound enough to weld to.

Once that had been cut out it looked like this

The triangular section rising from the corroded floor forms part of a vertical box section rising all the way to the roof to strengthen the corner of the van and to help direct the air upwards to the ventilator in the side.

Some scraping that we did on the rear dropped lip showed that this seemed to be ok.  All this is covered in factory-applied rubbery sealer, which appears to work well until water gets underneath it.

To repair this corner we had to make an 'L' shaped metal panel to fit inside the box, matching up to the  flanges.  This would seam-weld to the cleaned inside of the box, and the replacement rear bumper panel and wheel arch sections would plug-weld 'through' the partly-corroded flanges, trapping them in between.

A smaller 'L' shaped bracket was constructed to weld the bottom end of the vertical riser to the new floor of the box.

When all welded up it looks like new.  Photos to follow.

The repaired panels.

Feech away!

Now that we have everything off the van we need to get rid of all the old and dirty (feechee) fabrics. Brown was obviously a popular colour on the 80's.

The worst stuff to remove was the brown furry fibre matting which seemed to be everywhere. The glue that it was stuck on certainly did the job. After some research we had a few things to try to get rid of the feech.

We tried steam and that was a failure, next a hair dryer again a failure. WD40 was the next suggestion again no movement.

Finally we tried petrol (don't try this at home) and success it came off.

It was a slow process but it was worth it to have it all off.  

The last stuff to remove was the backing cloth that was behind the wardrobe, that was not too difficult to remove, it pulled off.  

Now the inside of the van is all clean ready to start with the addition of the cupboards.

Gutting out the inside

We've spent a couple of nights working on the van and we're amazed by the progress.

Firstly we got the headlights off the front and also the tow bar off the back of the van.

Next on our attack list was the other side window. This was a lot easier than the other one as it had metal frame to it as the window opened. We also learned from the first one how to remove it.

We also removed the front seats which was very easy.

Stevie had problems getting one of the bumper brackets off as it had rusted through the panel of the van. After a lot of WD40, wire brushing and angle grinding he eventually got it off.

Our next task was to remove the interior cupboards and the back seat. Getting the seat out was very easy and only took a few minutes.

Next on the list was the cupboard above the bed, again it was very easy to remove.


The big cupboard which included the wardrobe. This was harder to remove due to some of the screws being tricky to find.

That just left the long cupboard which has the sink and cooker in it. Surprisingly there were hardly any screws securing this to the van. when we came to take it out it was very heavy, some grunting and groaning we soon got it out.

We were amazed by how much space there was in the van once everythng was removed.

Doors and bumpers

So after a long day on Saturday, we had a lie in on Sunday then headed up to the workshop.  We had to go via B&Q as we needed a 13mm spanner.  That was easier said than done, we went to the nearest B&Q and found empty spaces, so off we head to Wickes which was nearby, nothing there either.  So back in the car and off to a bigger B&Q, thankfully success there so then it was off to the workshop.

Our plan for the day was to take the rest of the doors and the bumpers off.  Stevie then said let's try and get the window out, so we tried to get that out from the side panel.  After a long time and lots of soapy water, we managed to get it out.

After a cuppa we then tackled the front doors.  It was easier than we had expected given the hassle we'd had with the other door.  The only surprise was the weight of them, not a one person job carrying them about.  

The next task was to remove the bumpers, this was where we needed the 13mm spanner for.  Some of the bolts were so rusty that they snapped, so now we need to find replacement bolts.

While Stevie took off the bumpers Bunchie took off the back lights, indicators and the front grill panels.  

Once that was finished we called it a day and went home having done a good job.

Getting started

Hurray the weekend arrived and we've finally got our lease and keys for the workshop.

Now the fun begins and we've loaded up the van with tools and equipment to get us started.  The workshop was a bit dusty so our first task was to clean it out.  Stevie started sweeping the workshop while Bunchie nipped off to B&Q to get another pressure washer as the one we brought from home didn't have a lance with it.

While Bunchie was away Stevie started washing the van as he'd finished sweeping.  The van had been left under some trees and was covered in moss from that.  Using the hose he went over the van first giving it a good scrub.  When Bunchie returned she was amazed to see a clean roof on the van and helped finish that off.

Stevie also removed the panel off the sliding door runner and ventilators off the back.

Once the van was finished, we put the power washer together and we started power washing the workshop.  We even washed the walls down, it was amazing the dirt that came off the workshop.

With that finished we left the workshop to dry out and went over the van with the power washer.  As we power washed the van we were amazed to see that it not only removed the dirt but also some of the rust and flakey paint.  It also proved effective at removing the stickers from the back.

Doing this did however leave the glue on the paintwork ;)

After a well deserved cuppa (yes we did remember the kettle, tea bags and milk) while everything dried out we worked out what we were gonna do next.  Let's take the side door off Stevie suggested, up for a challenge Bunchie agreed.

Stevie then got in the van to reverse into the workshop.  Slight problem as he'd removed the wing mirrors while Bunchie was away.  Guess who had to guide him into the workshop without causing any damage to the van.

So onto the task of removing the side door.  Well that was not as easy as we'd thought.  We removed the catch then the bottom runner and thought that getting it off the runner would be easy, there must be a gap for the runner to get out.  Well that was wrong.  Add to it that the door was heavy, we were getting tired and that we could not just figure it out.

We tried unscrewing the bolt that held the roller but that did not work.  Bunchie wondered if we could get it off the far end so we tried that and failed.  A lot of head scratching and thinking took place, eventually we worked out that it could come off the start of the runner with a bit of manipulation.  Finally we got the door off.

We put it on some cardboard against the wall and left for the evening.

Workshop

Well we've identified a workshop and are waiting for the lease to be sorted out for it.  It's about half an hour from home and has electricity, light and water.  It looks like it has enough space for us to be able to take the doors off the van and work on the with plenty of space to walk round and do other things.

Hopefully we'll have the lease this week and can start work this weekend.

We're both excited about this can just want to get started on it.