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Having got the roof up and the floor down, it was time to turn attention back to the walls and start filling in the gaps there. We decided we’d use up the rest of that Pergo flooring we’d got first and then take it from there. Another marathon session of measuring, cutting drilling and sanding ensued. That Pergo stuff is as hard as iron and eats jigsaw blades for breakfast. Slowly but surely, however, Herman is starting to look a bit like a hovel-from-home these days.
Incidentally, in this shot you can see the floor we completed yesterday, but which i forgot to photograph at the time.
Such a lot of wall to cover!
And there’s one on the other side too.
First job was to put batoning across all the walls, so we could screw the boards on
Finishing off a section
Back to “Operation Floor Botch” today.
Several more hours cutting, tin-snipping, hacksawing and wire-brushing and I’d cut out most of the rust that was cuttable out, without resorting to heavyweight equipment. I then gave everything a damn good going over with the wire brush attachment on my drill to get it all down to as near bare metal as I could and lathered the lot with Vactan to hopefully stop any new rust forming.
That done, I cut out some mild steel patches to cover the holes [and hide my guilty botching shame!] and rivetted them in place.
It’s quite depressing to have not been able to do this job properly, but at least I’ve had a go at stopping it getting any worse and at least the end result ‘looks’ OK.
After I’d done that, we started measuring out and cutting the insulation ready to put down the new flooring at the back of the van. You may remember that we’d previously re-floored the front end but the back end was still covered in the original smelly, dirty carpet and rotten plywood, that was there when we bought the van.
Mazza in floor measuring action
After the insulation was down, we cut some of our remaining sheets of heavy duty MDMF to size and laid down Herman’s new floor. Unfortunately, being a goyp, I forgot to take any photos of that particular job.
Against my better judgement, I thought I’d clear out the back of the van today and take a look at how bad the holes in the floor around Herman’s wheel arches were. Not a pretty sight. This is a notoriously rust-prone area on LTs and Herman’s not been standing at the back of the queue when it came to getting his helping.
Thankfully, because these old LTs have a separate galvanised truck-like chassis, none of this is structural, but I thought I should make some kind of attempt to treat it before it spread even more.
I spent hours hacking away with various tools including tin snips, mini angle grinder and hacksaw, trying to cut away the worst of the rust and clean up the rest. I’d originally planned to cut it all out and weld new plates in place, but unfortunately I just don’t have the time to take on such a big job at the minute. Besides which, I live in quite a small block of flats with the carpark in the centre courtyard and I dinnae think my neighbours would take too kindly to me angle-grinding huge swathes of the floor out of my van, while they’re trying to enjoy their weekends. Oh for the luxury of a garage to call my own!
No, I’m afraid that, until such times as I actually have some space of my own, where I can tinker in peace, this is going to have to be “the botch to end all botches” as I just treat this rust, patch it and hopefully stop it getting any worse in the meantime.
A bit more internal tidying up today. I thought it was about time the leisure battery and split charge system had somewhere to live, instead of just sitting inside the side door, getting in the way. So I knocked up this crude but ‘does-the-job’ leccy cupboard from some of the spare timber I had left lying around.
Leisure battery and split charge system
Let’s see what we can knock together out of some bits of leftover wood…
…Mazza finished of carpeting the back wall around the doors. It’s starting to look quite cozy now!
Today was the day I finally solved the niggling problem of Herman’s alternator. The astute reader will remember that it has been giving me gyp since I first bought the van and I’ve made at least two abortive attempts to sort it out before [exhibit A, exhibit B].
Having a split charge system and hence a spare battery has ameliorated the problem somewhat, in that I’ve got into the habit of swapping the batteries round every couple of weeks and charging up the one I’ve just taken off the ignition circuit, but it’s a pain in the arse carrying a heavy duty battery up two flights of stairs, every time I need to put it on the charger in the flat.
So today, I vowed to have another go:
First off, I swapped the brushes in the alternator, which did sweet FA. Then I traced every bloody lead coming out of the damn thing as they weaved and meandered around Herman’s nice oily engine bay. I removed various of these leads in turn and bypassed them temporarily with lengths of known-good wiring. No matter what I tried, the alternator stubbornly refused to output more than a feeble 6 or 7 volts.
wish me luck, skip. I’m going in!
Eventually, after about an hour of cursing, swearing and generally having a whale of a time, I happened to trace the lead back from the battery to the starter motor and found that the connector on the starter motor end was so loose, I could undo the nut by hand.
The culprit!
After a good wire-brushing
I undid the nut, whipped off the connector, which was covered in oil and gunk and gave it a brisk rub down with a wire brush, then reconnected it good and tight and fired up the engine…
Halle-fuckin’-leujah! Turns out, the problem had nothing to do with the alternator at all, but was down do a dodgy connection between starter motor and battery. Dontcha just love auto-electrics?
At least with electrical jobs, you dinnae have to get your hands dirty!
Trying to elicit some sympathy from the cat
A few days ago whilst visiting that little corner of Manchester, which will forever be Stepford [ie. B&Q in Old Trafford], I came across this packet of six brass downlights in the bargain bin, for a fiver. How could you go wrong at that price? Just the right look to complement Herman’s rustic timber interior.
Only one problem tho’, the lights were 240v only. Still, I thought it would work out cheaper to buy them at this knock-down price and convert them, than to splash out on some 12v versions.
I found a place called TheLightBulbShop.co.uk were I got 5 x 12v bulbs to fit in the light housings [£1,62 each] and also 5 bulb sockets to hold them [76p each]. Naturally the 12v and 240v versions of these bulbs have different fittings to stop you putting the wrong ones in!
240v version on the left. 12v version on the right
12v fitting socket
Next, I drilled out the existing 240v fittings from inside the light housings and replaced them with the 12v housings. Unfortunately there was no way to arrange the 12v housings so that I could screw them in, so I opted to use a hot glue gun and seat them in with a blob of that.
240v fitting removed
12v fitting substituted and hot-glued in
Testing [at 4v to begin with, but I worked my way up eventually, when the house didnae burn down!]
In a final heroic effort today, me and Mazza finished off panelling Herman’s roof and the last sections of the upper side wall panels. Not much else to say really. Cut, cut, drill, drill, screw, screw… rinse then repeat until complete:
Before
After
Mazza, putting the finishing touches to the day’s work
After all the misery and death of blow-outs on the motorway, niggling electrical problems and too long throttle cables, it’s nice to report a bit of fun with Herman, for a change:
Off to Anglesey for the weekend for a bit of summer solstice shenanigans and camping out in Herman on my mate’s farm. The boy didnae miss a beat there and back, his new shoes allowed him to get on and off the field, without so much as a wheelspin – and he also doubled as a scrumpy cooler, when the weather turned ridiculously hot.
Herman relaxing in the Anglesey sun
Me making a suspiciously healthy looking breakfast
Herman keeping the sun off my scrumpy
All the hassles of those annoying jobs are forgotten, when you get days like this
