Sunday, 28 March 2010

Stripping, dealing with rust, and scary power tools.


Good day today, stripped out the seats, window boards, plastic panels, and roof panels to get a good look at it. It's in pretty good shape throughout I'm glad to say. The floor on the drivers side has corroded a bit (quite a bit actually), and the passenger side a little bit as well. I've wire-brushed, sanded, and Hammerite-ed the floor, though it's probably a futile effort with rust. Hopefully it will slow it down a bit.

Glad to see there's so much space behind the panels for insulation, it needs to be a warm van for some 'extreme camping' in the winter. However, I can't put the insulation in yet because I need sort out the wiring. I'm intending on having a leisure battery (12v) a mains hook up (240v) and I'd like the alternator and mains to charge the leisure battery, but only draw from the main battery when starting and running (I've gone cross-eyed). I've really no idea how to do all this but I understand there's a clever little gizmo called a 'Zig unit' that effectively does it all for you. You just have to wire it up correctly (ulp).

Also, I got to use an angle grinder today. That's a scary tool. There was a couple of bits of metal welded on to the wheel arches accomplishing very little (I think maybe they held the jack or something), so, boom! The angle grinder got rid of them whilst simultaneously turning me deaf to the sounds of complaining neighbours (and everything else) for a short while afterwards: textbook.

1 comment:

  1. If I volunteer Dan to help you with it, can we borrow it when it's done?!

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