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.

just a brief tinkering session on herman today. there’s not really much else major i can be getting on with, until i get some sheet steel and a bit of welding practice under my belt - and then i’ll patch up the holes in his floor, so we can start panelling him out. it was such a lovely day tho’, that i just wanted to get out of the house for an hour or so - especially since it’s back to work tomorrow, after my two weeks off for easter!

anyway, just in passing let me mention that the panelling [and more importantly insulation] is going to need doing ASAP and deffo before herman does any serious summer camping expeditions. when i got in the back today, it was like a fucking sauna. that black paint really absorbs the sun! [and i expect it’ll be equally adept at sucking in the icy cold in the winter]

however, i digress. today was mainly about pootering around and enjoying a bit of sunshine.

the first job i decided to do was straighten herman’s steering wheel. after the work i did before on the steering column, i just made sure the front wheels were pointed straight ahead and put the steering wheel back on in the proper position and assumed that was all there was to it. however, it’s not as simple as that. apparently the steering box can get ‘wound up’ [or words to that effect] if you’ve done a lot of recent tight turns [such as reversing into a tiny parking space for instance!] and, even if you turn the wheels straight again this does not ‘unwind’ the steering straight away. you need to drive in a straight line for a fair distance to ‘clear the custard’.

i discovered this to my annoyance when we went to angelsey last week. when i was driving herman in a straight line, the steering wheel was turned at almost exactly 90º, so that the ‘spoke’, which should be horizontal, was vertical and obscuring my view of the dials. i had to keek* round the wheel to see them.

[*keek in the irish sense of peeping round a corner - not the irish sense of having a shit!]

so today i took herman out on the straightest piece of road i could find near me and ran him up and down a couple of times to ‘unwind’ the steering. then slid him [at as shallow and angle as possible, so as not to turn the wheels any more] into the side of the road and, with hazard lights blinking, took off his steering wheel and put it back on straight again. people passing by must have thought i was the most blatant or most inept car thief ever, as i sat there in broad daylight, at the side of the road, with the engine running, my hazard lights on unbolting the steering wheel of a giant black van.

aha! - that’s were the gauges were hiding!


anyway, it’s a lot better now. if i was being anal about it, it’s still just annoyingly very slightly off the horizontal, but at least i can see my dials and gauges while driving now!

when i got back home, i attended to another small but niggling job; the windscreen washer on my side is loose and also at the wrong angle - it only squirts a couple of inches up the glass. i took it off, cleaned behind it and araldited it back in position. then when the glue had dried i used a pin stuck in its ‘pee-hole’ to adjust the aim of the jet, so that it now hits the top of the glass instead of pathetically dribbling along the bottom. not only will i be able to see my gauges when i’m driving. from now on i’ll be able to see through the windscreen as well!

pathetic dribbler - and my van’s windscreen washers need adjusting too!


i then did a couple of other minor twiddles; tightening up the winders for the door windows, which were a bit loose. unfortunately i didnae record this thrilling repair for posterity, so you’ll have to use every ounce of your imagination to summon up the mental image of ‘me’, ‘tightening’ a ‘screw’ with a ‘screwdriver’… exciting stuff!

next up i decided to have a crawl around underneath. i bought a big tub of VACTAN rust cure a couple of weeks ago and i thought i might give some of the side panels underneath a quick going over with that. [as you’ll know from previous episodes, some of the side panels are suffering a bit from the oul’ ‘tin worm’]. i wire-brushed down a bit of one of the side panels and painted it up with the VACTAN and then, while i was under there, i idly started wire-brushing the crud off one of the chassis cross-members beside me. the chassis is actually in really good nick, for the age of the van, but i thought i might find another bit of surface rust to vent my chemical spleen upon, while i still had a bit of VACTAN left in my yoghurt pot.

when i brushed down the cross-member tho’ i was in for a surprise - and a pleasant one for a change! - there was barely a dot of rust on the thing. in fact, underneath the layers of dirt, the cross-member looked practically new. either it has been galvanised at some point [it has that galvanised looking grey-silver colour about it] - or the VW people know a thing or two when it comes to mixing up a rust resistant underseal.

methinks i shall have to ask the chaps down the brickyard and see if anyone can shed any light on that one.

typical chassis cross-member. covered in muck and likely pretty rusty too - right?


not so! - after a quick wire brushing it looks like it’s only just left the factory.


that’s yer lot for today!

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.