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.

today, to give my arms a rest from working overhead for hours at a time, i thought i’d set my sights a bit lower and rip up herman’s carpet and filthy plywood flooring and see what horrors lay beneath.  from having lifted the carpeting and boards at the edges, i already knew he had a couple of hefty holes in his floor, around the wheel arches –a common problem with LTs, apparently– but i’d never seen what the centre of the floor was like.

so i piled up all the rubbish ‘precious things’, inside, towards the back of the van and got to work wrestling the carpet and plywood off the floor at the front.

herman’s floor revealed for the first time

i was actually pretty pleasantly surprised; there was a small amount of surface rust here and there but, otherwise, the floor was pretty solid and sturdy looking.  i also really like the corrugated style panelling of the bare floor, which makes him look a bit like a kübelwagen inside but, unfortunately i dinnae think it would be very comfy -or very warm- as the floor in a camper wagon

early LT35 flooring prototype

once the stink carpet was out and safely dumped in the nearest wheelie-bin, it was time to measure up for some more substantial flooring.  at last a use for the large sheets of half inch thick MDF we bought from the timber recycling place.

this should be a bit more sturdy than the flimsy plywood that was originally under the carpet.

next, i gave the floor a good scrub out with white spirit, to remove any dirt or moisture and then got to work with my old faithful bottle of vactan rust converter.

white spirit and vactan.  that’s as near as herman’ll ever get to being valetted!

that should keep the rust at bay, should any moisture seep down through the carpet and MDF, when mazza inevitably knocks something liquid over on the floor.

once the floor was vactanned up and dry again, i cut to size, some underfloor insulation that came along with our pergo flooring, and laid that down.  then on with the MDF and the job was a good ‘un!

underlay cut to size. forgot to take a pic, after i laid the MDF on top, but i’m sure you can imagine the scene - just picture this, but with wood on top!

at the weekend mazza sniped a load of pergo flooring plus underlay on fleabay for £21. apparently this represents good bargain hunting, as mazza assures me that pergo is the dog’s bollox, when it comes to poncey interior decor and all that. so scoring a load of it for a pony [as del boy might say] was a bit of a steal.

we went to pick it up tonight from some posh gaff out towards didsbury way. the couple in the house looked delighted to see us disheveled scruffy looking gits turning up in our prehistoric van to collect their former arm & leg’s worth of kitchen flooring for twenty measley quid.

luvvly jubbly!