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…

today was one of those one ‘no steps forward and several steps back’ days.

i noticed that, after my shenanigans, pissing about with the steering column the other day, i had no electrics at all. not even a cheery red light on the dashboard when i turned on the ignition. so i spent the best part of the day hoking round the wiring for the ignition circuit and checking my fuses, before i eventually resorted to removing the dashboard to be better able to follow the ignition wiring and see if anything was amiss.

dashboard removed, i found a possible cause for my troubles and an explanation for the fact that herman makes a series of beeping noises after his ignition key is removed; there was an immobiliser secreted behind the dashboard. obviously not a factory job, it looked like it had been fitted by stevie wonder. the wires in the ignition circuit had been hacked apart, the immobiliser crudely wired in and the whole lot crappily wound with elctrical tape, which was hanging off in places. there were also several wires emerging from the immobiliser which were just snipped off and didnae go anywhere.

hiding behind the dashboard - an ‘unnanounced feature’


as regular readers of this shite will know, i’m extremely mistrustful of other people’s wiring in my motors. i’m not making any claims to be a great auto electrician, but at least i only do what i know how to do and i make sure that the connections are well made and well wrapped. so i spent a good half hour or so, painstakingly removing the immobiliser from herman’s ignition system and temporarily splicing the wires back they way they would originally have been. unfortunately, when i tried the key again, herman was still - electrically speaking - as dead as a dodo.

i was just on my way back up to the house, to grab a bottle of guinness export and think things over for a bit when, on a whim, i decided to check the battery. now, i know you’re probably thinking “why the feck didn’t you test the battery first, you eejit?”

well, dear reader. the reason i didnae check the battery first was because it’s a new heavy duty battery only a couple of weeks old and, as i havenae been running the van i assumed it was fully charged [yes - i know ‘to assume makes an ass of u and me’. dinnae feckin’ get smart with me, boy!]. anyway, lo and behold, i had 2,9 pissy volts in the battery. so something had run the fucker into the ground in the couple of weeks or so it’s been since i last turned herman’s motor over.

so, it was out with the battery and onto the charger with it for a good overnight trickle charge. let’s see if actually having the full 12 volts at his disposal, instead of just under three, will inspire herman to spring back into action once more!

i almost forgot:

i got herman insured today - £330,16 from the post office, who i’ve got my existing insurance with. i’ve also about £60 refund due back for the cancellation of GULG’s insurance - which i’ll get without any cancellation fee, since i’ve transferred straight to a new policy - so that works out a pretty good deal. the best quote i’d got from the various online comparison websites was £357. i said to mazza, when i put GULG on ebay, that i’d be happy if we made enough on him to cover herman’s insurance and tax. so we probably just about got there. i’m not going to tax him til the end of the month tho’, since there’s no point giving the taxman his pound of flesh for the whole month, when it’s half over already.

not the most productive of days today.

on the positive side, my new ‘next day delivery’ battery that i ordered four working days ago, finally turned up. so herman has at last got some decent amperage behind his ignition system. mind you, even with the new battery installed, the glowplugs were still only getting about 9volts through them when i turned on the ignition. so, sommit’s not quite right there.

out with the old. in with the new [batteries, that is]


what was a real pisser tho’ was that - far from leaping into life when cranked over on the new battery - herman refused to start. so it was the by now tediously familiar ‘up with the seats, off with the engine cover’ routine again to find out that, once more, the fuel line into the injector pump was full of air and the pump itself as dry as the proverbial nun’s chuff again. so i had to go through the tedious priming process again to get the fecker working.

it’s really weird - once he’s fired up he runs fine and the engine revs great [my trooper, when it’s had an air-leak in the fuel lines will start OK but refuses to rev at all] and the bubbles in the fuel line clear after about five mins. but if i leave him standing for a couple of days, it’ll be back to air bubble hell again and the system will need re-bleeding. it looks like a really slow leak, which is going to be an absolute bugger to track down. at least with a big leak, you can spot it fairly easily. i’ll have to leave the detective work to the weekend tho’, as i havenae time during the working week to be crawling round underneath in the muck, checking out fuel lines.

downhearted by these symptoms of fuel troubles, i turned my attention to one of the other niggling problems; that of the windscreen wipers not working.

an adaptor set had also come in the post today, which would allow the 24mm socket i’d mistakenly bought in 1/2” fitting, to fit onto my 3/8” socket set. said 24mm socket being needed to remove the steering wheel to get at the windscreen wiper switch. under the steering wheel, the switch housings were extremely filthy and a bit dodgy looking, so i separated them out into the main parts and had a hoke round with my circuit tester on the windscreen wiper section - to no avail. there was one lead feeding 12v into the switch assembly, but it didnae seem to be coming through anywhere inside and, with darkness about to fall, i dejectedly decided to call it a day and reassemble the steering column again.

steering column after removing wheel - skanky, or what?


sigh! - another one for the ‘when i’ve got more time’ department!

today when i got home from work, i dragged marie away from the internet so we could make a start on the epic task of covering herman liberally in luvverly black hammerite. rather than try to paint the whole forth bridge in one go, we decided we’d do a section at a time, to try and keep monotony at bay. the thought of having to sand down an entire van that size is enough to send anyone flying from the room screaming.

so, we decided to start off with the rear doors. i removed the numberplate and some rubber stoppery type things and we got down to giving the doors a good going over with 240 grade wet-or-dry. terribly tedious, but as any good painter knows, preparation of surfaces is half the battle.

after we’d finished rubbing down the doors, we noticed that the ghost of the lettering was still visible across the top, mocking us. it seemed that even tho’ the letters had gone, the glue which originally welded them to the paintwork was still there, raised up and in the shape of the letters. i was minded to just leave it as it was and trust to the thick gloopiness of the hammerite to obliterate any last vestiges of the signwriting but, in the end i decided to take no chances, so we got a couple of bits of rag, soaked in hammerite thinners and managed to scrub the remnants of letter glue off with that.

sanding away like a beaver cheese


mazza the smurf, havin a break and a brew


with the boring prep out of the way, we could begin the comparatively ‘fun’ task of actually getting some painting done. with the two of us dolloping it on, it didnae take much more than about 45 mins to get both doors painted. looking at herman now from a narrow angle at the back, you can get the first hints of how he’s going to look when he’s completely ‘blacked out’. should be pretty cool, i think.

mazza back at work



so far, so good - only another 3 sides and the roof to go!



one downer today was that, just before we headed back up to the house after our painting session, i decided to turn the engine over, just to see if it would fire up. as i half expected, it didnae. unfortunately the half-dead car battery that came with the van is just too weedy to turn the engine over fast enough and for long enough to get him started. it died after a few seconds of turning the engine over. so that’s going to be more shelling out, as i’m going to have to add a good beefy heavy duty battery to my ever-growing shopping list.

let’s hope that a heftier battery will be all it takes. i’m still not 100% certain that there isn’t a leak in one of the fuel pipes somewhere, which could be allowing air into the system…. or of course, it could be that the glow plugs are on their way out… or the injectors… or all three. still, i’ll need to get a decent battery anyway, as i wouldnae trust the one in him at the minute as far as i could throw it. if he’s still a reluctant starter after that, then i’ll do some more detective work on the fuel supply side of things.