i’d been planning to get straight into painting the last white side of herman this morning, but when i had a closer look at the panel running along the bottom, which had been previously [and badly] painted blue, i decided that - just to be on the safe side - i’d strip that down as well. after my experiences with the roof, i didnae fancy painting straight on top of some other paint of dubious origin.

as it turned out, it was a good job i did. i’d always been a bit suspicious of that solitary blue panel and - sure enough - when i stripped the paint off, i found that it had been hiding a multitude of sins; most of them rust coloured.

blue side panel, partially stripped down


hmmm… so that’s why someone decided to paint this panel blue


the rust on the horizontal seams is actually the outward manifestation of the rust along the edge of the floor inside. funnily enough, although it seems obvious when you look inside the van, i’d not realised up til now that the floor level was quite so high up the side of the van. that horizontal band of rust is rusted right through, but is earmarked for cutting out anyway, when i do the floor. the vertical seams should be OK without welding. they’re nowhere near as bad and havenae rotted through.

this is actually floor level - there’s a long hole in the floor up against the inside of this wall


in an ideal world, after stripping down that side panel and uncovering the rust, i’d have left off the painting until i’d cut it out and welded up those seams. that’s in an ideal world, where i’d have a large workshop, with wall-to-wall tool racks. but in the real world, herman has to stand outside in the interminable manchester drizzle, so i had to paint the side up anyway to stop it getting any worse. of course this means i’ll have to strip it down again, when i start on the welding jobs and then paint it up once more afterwards - but such is life when you choose to practise car maintenance in the great british outdoors.

i gave the seams a good going over with a wire brush attachment on my drill to get the rust and dead metal off - and then gave them an extra thick dollop of hammerite…


…then i painted up the rest of the side. the seams will have to be stripped down again when i weld the floor, but at least this should stop the ‘tin worm’ getting any worse in the meantime.


if you’re wondering why the strange harlequin pattern on the side, it’s because i found an area in the middle which hadnae been sanded down yet, so i left that - and then i ran out of hammerite halfway up the front door.

well…. ‘of the van’ actually.

i sprang eagerly from my foetid pit this morning and ran outside in one of those wee willy winkie nightgowns, with an ebenezer scrooge nightcap on my head, clutching a candle in a candlestick - to see whether herman’s roof had accepted its latest coat of paint or not. to my delight and delectation it had done. so, at last it was time to turn our attention to the previously neglected passenger’s side of the van.

i turned herman round so we could get at the other side and then, while i heat-gunned the old paint of the roof [as a pre-emptive measure], marie roughened up the side panels with sandpaper. then we gave him a good rub down with white spirit.

the problem with working outside at this time of year is that it starts going dark about three or four o’clock, so by the time we’d finished sanding him down, it was time to call it a day and head back to HQ for some stuffed peppers and wine.

me and mazza - looking over the moon at the prospect of another afternoon spent sandpapering and paint scraping


the white side before our afternoon’s hard work


the white side after our afternoon’s hard work [what a difference!]

today, when i got home from my half day at work the sun was shining and the ground was dry [although still bitterly cold after the snows of the last couple of days] so me and marie went oot to start the tedious task of removing all the vinyl lettering from the side of herman.

the task was indeed onerous. in fact far more onerous than we’d expected. with one of us working with a hairdryer and the other a blowtorch [not held too close!] we managed to remove two or three of the big letters and a handful of small ones in about half an hour. the vinyl stuff the lettering is made from tears, cracks, crumbles, stretches and generally does anything it can to resist coming off the side of the van without a fight. so, with hands numb with the cold and a whole side and the panel above the backdoors to do, it was looking like it would take us at least a day or two to get it all off.

took us feckin’ ages to get this much done!


“sod it!” i thought and said to marie that we might as well just go to crappy B&Q and buy one of those hot air paint stripper guns to make the job easier. so off we went and bought the cheapest one they had; £19,99 and with the same spec as the £50 bosch one, apart from lacking a 50º setting, which it seems to me you’d only need if you were trying to dry your hair with it! we also nipped into the equally crappy halfords on the way home, where i picked up a 24mm socket for the steering wheel nut. when we got back we resumed our attack the accursed lettering once again.

me, brandishing the heat gun


marie brandishing the heat gun


the heat gun made all the difference and we got tore into the signwriting on the van with a vengeance and had all the side done in about a hour. at this point marie went indoors to start making the dinner while i got up on a chair and made short work of the lettering across the tops of the backdoors. that only took me about another half hour or so.

all nakeded up and ready for sanding


mañana if the rain gods spare us again we can start another tedious job; that of sanding herman down, ready to start painting.