carry on herman

July

11

2010

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

February

20

2010

more of same

today, i finished off panelling the underside of the roof with the big sheets of hardboard. nothing much to report in the way of anecdotes or incident - unless you count the fact that i broke one of my 3mm drill bits as worthy of comment?

…nah. i didnae think you would

anyway, here we have it:

at last the mighty hardboard expedition reaches the back doors

view from front to back

view from back to front

well, that’s it for now. nothing to see here. move along please!

February

18

2010

i’ll be ceiling you…

freshly armed with my new stash of wood, i thought i’d strike while the iron was hot and crack on with panelling out herman’s roof. i’m going to start at the top and work down, as i’ll need to get some welding done on the holes in the floor, before i start boarding over the lower regions.

anyway, we’d already insulated the inside of the roof with that bargain bucket fibreglass we got a few weeks ago. we’d made into waterproof pillows by wrapping it & taping it up in thick polythene from cut-up garden refuse bags. it was all held in place, temporarily, with lengths of old telephone cable and was sagging everywhere. so the first task was to put some wooden joists up, to hold the insulation in place and to give us something to screw the boards onto.

starting to put some joists in. note the sagging fibreglass pillows

it wasnae too bad a job, apart from the fact that it’s feckin’ agony having to work with your hands above your head. so after about an hour of drilling and screwing [fnar! fnar!] my wee shoulders were aching.

nearly there…

still, once the joists were on, it really made a difference. with all the insulation held in place and a nice row of roof beams, the inside of herman started looking a bit ‘home-like’ for the first time, since we got him.

job done - all the joists in place and it’s starting to look like a real roof now!

after i’d got all the joists in place, i couldnae resist sticking a couple of the hardboard squares up there too, just to get the ball rolling. so the long process of boarding herman out has taken another tentative step forward. when i look at how much is still to do tho’, i sometimes wish i’d gone for a slightly smaller van.

putting a couple of hardboard roof panels in place

August

6

2009

overheads

today, i decided to do something about the bare plywood ceiling herman’s cab has had, ever since i ripped out the skanky old headlining material.

i had two big pieces of blue coloured, quite heavy canvas type material, that had previously been covering one of those portable partition type thingies which you get in offices and which was in my wood stash for a while - before i realised i’d never use it in herman and binned it. after getting mazza to sew the two bits of cloth together on her sewing machine, we had a piece big enought to cover the ceiling.

t’would have been a piece of piss of a job, were it not for the fact that [as previously mentioned in the post linked to above] i’d not been able to find a way to remove the plywood ceiling from above the cab, so we could work on it in the open. thus we had to somehow attach the cloth to it in-situ. cue about an hour of absolute keystone coppery of the first order!

first i had to paint the bottom of the ‘ceiling’ with some PVA adhesive. you can imagine how much fun that was; the stuff was dripping everywhere, my arms were aching from painting above my head and, by the time i’d painted all the way across, the PVA on the side were i’d started had dried, so i had to go over loads of it again - and needless to say, the more i rushed to get it all coated before the glue dried, the more i splashed and dripped the feckin’ stuff everywhere!

anyway, eventually the board was all coated in tacky PVA and it was time to manouevre the cloth into position. lots more clownish behaviour as me and mazza wrestled with trying to stick the cloth to the ceiling from underneath, without it wrinkling to buggery, and all the while getting covered in glue and fluff. and of course there were the obligatory moments when a bit you thought was stuck would suddenly peel off and drop on your head.

but we perservered and things were helped a bit when we got near the edges and could pull the cloth up around the corners of the board and then weigh it down from above, so that at least it was held in place while it dried.

if only you could have seen what a feast of laurel & hardy antics were involved in the supposedly simple task of gluing this piece of cloth to a piece of board!

the end result ain’t the prettiest thing in the world, but it looks better than the bare board and, given the amount of hassle such a tiny job cost us, we’re quite pleased with it. i’m still not sure what to do about the gap between the sill over the window and the bottom of the board tho’. it could make for a very tiny storage space, but i dinnae know if i could be arsed with the hassle involved in boxing it in and putting some kind of doors on it.

July

17

2009

dripping and ripping

another attempt to find the mysterious source of the indoor lake, which laps contentedly round the vast and lonely shores of herman’s bleak passenger side footwell.

owing to the fact that LTs are notorious for leaking in at the corners of their windscreens, this looked the most likely candidate. however - unlike most LTs - herman’s windscreen surround is pretty much rust free, which makes it difficult to spot anywhere that rain might be getting in.

i did a bit of home-made endoscopy, by sticking my camera in behind the fusebox in the passenger side footwell and taking a couple of pictures, pointing up the way. they showed the telltale rust trail left behind my the constant dripping, but no obvious point of origin. nor did my groping round behind the bulkhead turn up anything, apart from a wet finger-tip.

hmmm… a bit disorientating, ain’t they? these photos are both taken with the camera in the footwell, looking up behind the dashboard. the curved box-sectioned bit is the bulkhead, which sits just beneath the windscreen. you can see where the water’s going to, but where it’s coming from is just too inaccessible to pin down.

well, even tho’ i cannae find the exact source, it looks pretty nailed on that the drips are getting in round the bottom corner of the windscreen somewhere. i’ll have to give it a good dollop of silicone sealant and see if that cures it.

next up today, some [not so] wanton vandalism:

the header material in herman’s cab was pretty minging; really grubby and dusty and smelt like a sock full of old fag-butts. so i decided, in the interests of health and safety to rip it all out. i’ll find something else to cover the ceiling, when i’m panelling out the inside.

ripping out the header material from the cab - a horrible, smelly, dusty job. you wouldnae believe how much cac and cobwebs had accumulated up there over the years

afterwards. not quite as stylish looking perhaps, but a lot cleaner and - as an added bonus - we seem to have acquired an extra inch or two of headroom

those LT owners like myself who tend to throw about half a ton of assorted crap in the storage space above the cab may [depending on your optimism] be frightened or comforted to find that all that stuff above your head is suspended there by a nothing more than a large plywood board, supported on three small metal struts.

ideally i’d have liked to have taken the ceiling board out and covered it with carpet or sommit, but i couldnae suss out how to get it out; the roof narrows in above it, so you cannae lift it up more than about an inch or two, before it wedges and you cannae slide it straight out backwards as the bulkhead gets in the way. looks like you’d have to lift the whole roof off to get it out.

this means, when the time comes, i’m going to have to cover it ‘in-situ’, which will be fun!

March

21

2009

white stripes

with a bit of thumb-twiddling time on my hands, while i waited for my repair to the steering lock to cure, i decided i’d turn my attention to herman’s roof once more.

those of you with a memory exceeding that of a goldfish may recall that, at the end of the marathon painting sessions, herman was left with a white stripe down the centre of his roof - owing to the fact that i couldnae quite reach to the middle from either side, while painting it. i had hoped that the intervening weeks might have seen my arms achieve the necessary length, but i’ve had to resign myself to the fact that, at my age, i’m unlikely to undergo a late growth spurt. so it was on with the white coat and off to my underground laboratory

[yes. of course it has one of those machines out of the frankenstein films, with the two wires and a big spark moving up and down between them!].

after several hours of brain-wrenching research, during which i pushed back the frontiers of science, filled several blackboards with complicated equations and grew a really sticky-out-at-all-angles ‘professor’ hairstyle, i was finally ready to unveil my patented ‘distance-paint-o-tronic mark I’ - manufactured from finest quality plastic tubing, with the aid of my ever-useful turboflame.

the ‘distance-paint-o-tronic mark I’ - ideal for painting things far away [or around corners!]

armed with my new invention i made short work of filling in the blanks up the middle of herman’s roof.

the inventor puts the ‘distance-paint-o-tronic mark I’ through its paces

the collossal reach of the ‘distance-paint-o-tronic mark I’, when running at full power

while i was teetering at the top of my ladder, i noticed that the alien life-forms i had previously decimated, when first i set hand on the vast unchartered territory of herman’s roof, were starting to crawl forth from the primaeval slime and begin the process of evolution all over again. for the roof was covered with a thin grey layer of powdery dust, which looked like it was once again forming into round circles of lichen. just shows to go you - you cannae keep a good species down!

lichen: we’ll be back!

well, new life-forms notwithstanding, herman has finally got his new clothes on!

finished - at last!

and that’s about it for today.

after finishing herman’s roof, i got the oil-drenched foam lining of the engine bay cover out and squished a load of soapy water through that to dry and de-slime it a bit, coz i’m going to stick the engine bay cover back on tomorrow. then i packed away my bits’n’bobs and repaired upstairs to enjoy an export strength black irish beer, which i’ll not mention by name this time, as neither the vast sponsorship deal cheque, nor the case of free samples have arrived yet!

February

28

2009

the dark at the end of the tunnel

hallelujah! - today i finally finished the painting of herman*

[*terms and conditions apply. other monotonous activities are available. further touchups may be necessary]

now, i dinnae want to encourage pedantry, but the quick-witted amongst you may have noticed that there’s a thin strip of white down the middle of the roof, which still wants painting. this strip bears mute testimony to the length [or shortness] of my arms combined with the feeble altitude achieved with my crappy, rickety B&Q stepladder and shall be taken care of by attaching a longer handle to a paintbrush - just as soon as this lot is dry.

but, as near as dammit, he’s finally all painted up.

ta-da!

so, let’s see how far we’ve come:

before and after

next job: sorting out the windscreen wipers. and then i can move onto the welding of the floor - after which the camper conversion proper begins!

February

20

2009

roofhog day [2]

yes. i know what you’re thinking:

‘he’s already used that ‘roofhog day’ title before. he must be completely bereft of ideas!’

au contraire - dear reader. nothing could be further from the truth. the fact that i’ve used this title before and have nevertheless chosen to use it again is actually an indication of my collossal wit - a wit that works on so many levels it may be mistaken, by the ill-educated, for a lack of originality and imagination.

now, speaking of originality, gather round and i’ll tell you an interesting story about ‘sanding and painting’. eyelid matchsticks will be handed out in a moment and my hired heavies will be on standby with cattle prods at the ready - for anyone careless enough to fall asleep at the exciting bits.

*********

having discovered that herman’s roof had been painted by ‘blahhhdy cahhhboys, innit’ and would therefore have to be stripped down and done again, you’ll remember that we left our hero retiring, wet and bedraggled, to the pavilion on wednesday afternoon, after ‘rain stopped play’. thursday brought more of the same delightful weather, so we fast forward to friday morning to find our intrepid hero balanced at the top of the cheapest ricketiest step ladder B&Q had to offer for £21 [it’s amazing what they can make out of recycled tinfoil these days!]. armed with his heatgun and trying to remove from herman’s roof the vestiges of black paint that had refused to succumb to the attentions of the paint scraper.

it’s actually quite therapeutic, using the heat gun to roll off the old paint, like chewing gum

after about an hour of heating, glooping and scraping, i had most of the side panel of the roof down to what looked like the original paintwork, or perhaps a plastic coating over the fibreglass. whatever it was, it was very smooth and a slightly creamy colour. it was so smooth in fact that i spent another hour, giving it a good going over with a sanding block, just to roughen it up a bit. i then brushed it down with a scrubbing brush to get rid of the dust and wiped it all over with a rag soaked in white spirit. if the paint disnae stick this time after that amount of preparation, i’m giving up and letting the fecker stay white!

herman’s gutter full of crusty burnt off paint

gutters picked clean. roof sanded, scrubbed and white spirited, ready to try again

since the hammerite proved to be so rubbish on fibreglass, i thought i’d try something different this time. so while i was at B&Q buying my risibly feeble stepladder, i picked up a tin of black gloss sandtex. it didnae specifically say it was for use on fibreglass on the tin, but it did say ‘wood and metal’ so that’s good enough for me! the sandtex also had the advantages of being five quid a tin cheaper than hammerite and having a picture of a lighthouse on the tin, which obviously means that, as far as paint goes, it’s as hard as fuck and will kick the crap out of herman’s roof if it tries any funny business like rejecting the paint’s sticky embraces.

sandtex. it must be hard, coz it’s got a lighthouse on the tin!

by end of play, i’d managed to repaint that side of the roof and also about halfway across the top. i’m going to need a new tin of sandtex tho’, as i’ve used about two-thirds of the tin just doing that much. i actually quite like the look of the sandtex. it dries a lot glossier than the hammerite and makes herman throw off some interesting reflections. maybe i should have just used sandtex in the first place. it would certainly have saved a few bob.

still, before i get too enthusiastic, let’s see what the morrow brings. i’ll probably go out there in the morning and find it all peeling like the wang of a masturbating leper [to coin a phrase!]

finished - now stay on this time!

February

18

2009

paint on… paint off…

unfortunately for aficionados of thrills and excitement, the past couple of days have been spent mostly… wait for it… yes, you got it; ‘scrubbing and painting’.

just before retiring to the pavilion on tuesday [yesterday] i took off herman’s grill and headlamp surrounds and - after sanding the odd bit of rust i found lurking underneath - i painted his fizzer for him. again, using the slightly diluted hammerite seems a lot better than the fully gloopy stuff out of the tin and the finish was a lot less treacle-esque.

beginning the front of the roof

various bits of ‘face furniture’ removed, ready for painting

low light stopped play

*********

fast forward to today [wednesday] and i leapt eagerly from my fart sack at the crack of 07:45, ready for another day’s painting and decorating. unfortunately, sometime over the past few days, word has obviously leaked back to god that i’m off work this week and itching to get tore into herman, for i opened the curtains on one of those special manchester mornings where the ground is damp, the sky is grey and - although it isn’t actually raining at the minute - it looks like it has just finished doing so and is merely waiting for you to have the temerity to stick your nose out of doors, before it starts again.

i ventured out anyway and spent about half an hour refitting all herman’s frontals, that i’d taken off to paint his fizzer; indicators, number-plate, bumper, headlamp surrounds, grill. with everything back in place, he was looking quite cool from certain angles and with each additional brush-stroke, it’s getting easier to see what he’s going to look like when he’s all finished.

refitting the bits i took off the front yesterday

i forgot to take a pic when i’d put the bumper and number-plate back on. this is his front, nearly finished

since it was too wet to embark on any new painting, i decided i’d tidy up a couple of wee jobs in the intervening time. before re-attaching the grill, i repacked with fresh grease the various joints on the gear linkage that i’d had in bits when solving the mystery of the recalcitrant gearchange. then i switched my attention to herman’s pert rear and re-attached number-plate and rubber door-stops, which were still languishing in the back of the van from when we painted the back doors.

then while i had the back doors open, i tackled the minor-but-annoying problem of the fact that you cannae open the back doors from inside; the handle just turns round without doing anything. closer inspection revealed that the central square-sectioned metal core in the handle [which goes over the spindle in the lock] was just spinning round inside the handle. so i drilled a small hole through the side of the handle into this metal core and screwed a wee ‘grub screw’ into it, to stop the core swivelling inside the handle. not the prettiest repair job in the world - but it works!

inner back door handle. now with subtle ‘grub screw’

while hoking about inside the panelling of the back door, i also came across what, at first glance, i thought was an old poker, lying down inside the door. when i extracted it, i realised it was actually the long bar that descends vertically from the lock through the bottom of the door and latches into a catch in the floor of the van, when the doors are closed. it had come detached from the bracket on the bottom of the lock it connects to and had fallen down inside the door. as luck would have it, the screw which holds it in place was also lying amongst the dirt, dust and assorted crap inside the door. so it was a quick ten minute job to reconnect the bar again and herman’s back doors now open from the inside and also lock more securely.

who’s left a poker inside my door?

i cannae believe i actually found the screw as well!

nice of those kind designers at VW to leave an access hole so you can screw the lever back into the lock again

at this point, i was still thumb-twiddling a bit, waiting for the day to decide whether it was going to dry out or not. so, for want of something more constructive to do, i thought i’d see how much air had got into herman’s fuel system again in the two days since i’d last started him up. to my surprise and delectation he started first turn of the key. however i did see a couple of bubbles sneaking up the pipe from the fuel filter to the diesel pump, so the leak’s still there. maybe my tightening of all pipes and joints in and around the fuel filter and injector pump has helped a bit tho’, coz he’s started first turn of the key the last two times i’ve tried. if i get some nice dry ground to lie on, i’ll have a crawl around underneath one of these days and check out the sections of fuel pipe leading from the tank to the engine bay and back to see if anything seems cracked or in need of tightening there.

then, things took one of their habitual ‘one step forward - two steps back’ down-turns. i thought i might sand down some of the horrible drips on the side of herman’s roof where the hammerite had run really badly, ready for repainting. as i started rubbing at one of the drips with a bit of sandpaper, i noticed the paint around it peel slightly, so i stuck my nail in, picked at a corner of paint and pulled… and a big piece of paint about 3 inches wide and four inches long just peeled of the roof like a sheet of black plastic. further pickage revealed that the story was the same all over the roof.

whoops! - not exactly what you’d call a durable finish

before painting the roof, i did actually check on hammerite’s website that it was suitable for using on fibreglass and their site said it was. so i dunno whether they were talking bollox, the rollable hammerite is different, the paint already on the roof is hammerite-repellent or there was damp in the air which stopped it sticking properly but - whatever the reason - the roof is going to have to be stripped down and repainted; probably with a non-hammerite paint next time.

so i spent a desultory hour armed with paint-scraper and fingernails, alternately scraping and picking away at herman’s roof, trying to remove the paint so we could try again. the one silver lining in this cloud of tedium is that, i have been leaving most of the roof painting until i can beg, steal or borrow a ladder from somewhere. so i’d only painted one side and the front. i’ve not tried scraping the front yet, as it was only done yesterday, so i want to leave it to dry properly and see if [being diluted] the hammerite will dry and adhere better there.

this is as far as i got in stripping down the roof again, before ‘rain stopped play’

as i scraped away at the roof with a face that would have turned milk sour, god decided that, having me down, it was an opportune moment to strap his steel toecaps on and take a hefty swing at my knackers - and i felt the first drips of rain begin to fall, trickling down the side of herman and making a nice sticky mess with all the paint scrapings that were clinging to his side. i scraped on stubbornly for another ten minutes or so and then decided to call it a day. so i brushed up all the loose paint scrapings i could, chucked them in the bin and then once more retired to the pavilion to wait and see what the morrow would bring.

February

8

2009

roofhog day

today was spent pretty much as yesterday was; mazza carried on scrubbing away at the gluey remains of the vinyl lettering, with hammerite thinners and sandpaper - while i decimated the alien lifeforms on the side of the roof that i had spared the day before.

so not much to report really. however herman now has a roof which is spic-n-span enough to start painting on.

white enough to paint black now

about an hour after i finished scrubbing down the roof and came upstairs to put the dinner on, it started raining with the odd lonely snowflake in amongst the wet stuff

PEDANT: it’s called ‘sleet’ you idiot

ME: no it’s not. i know what feckin’ sleet looks like. this was rain with the odd snowflake in the middle of it OK?

PEDANT: oh. OK then. sorry for interrupting. please feel free to continue with your rivetting meteorological discourse

ME: dinnae worry. i will

where was i?… oh yeah. it started ‘not-sleeting’ about half an hour ago and the weather forecast has promised snow on its way. so i’m torn between hoping it stays fine, so i can get started on painting herman’s roof tomorrow and hoping it snows like mad - coz i’m such a big kid at heart, i still get really excited when it starts snowing.