Spending the cost of the van....on seat covers...latest investment!

Trevor's been in the family for many years now, and you'll know that in that time there's been the need for relatively frequent constant welding jobs to keep him together and to keep the rain out (always a work in progress that issue, as we discovered on our recent trip to Yorkshire!).

Although these patchwork sessions did the job, they weren't the tidiest in other ways and our poor front seats took the brunt of the welding splatter when welding all around the screen. They were pretty nasty to start with and had some of that horrible vinyl covering which your skin sticks to in hot weather (never nice to peel your thighs off the seat). Having said that, the seat covers were basically shredded and pitted so frankly most of our backsides were on bare foam rather than the cover.

Not the most inviting seat!

So as a treat we decided to invest in getting the seats reupholstered. Our local seamstress who lives literally around the corner had just completed seats for a VW camper and did a fab job so we had faith she'd give us some refreshed and replenished seating fit for Trevor!

Some of the foam was replaced during the process, and we chose a cherry red leather (swit swoo) as the new covering.  It looks absolutely awesome now, we were delighted with the result and the chairs are a pleasure to sit in!

now then, that's better!

Latest outings - family friendly festival and the Tour!

We've had some brilliant trips in the van lately to two very different events. Here's what we've been up to:

Wychwood Festival
This was our first family festival and we were recommended this one by a friend who said it was great for children. They weren't wrong, it was a fab weekend and we all really enjoyed ourselves. Set on Cheltenham racecourse, the terrain was relatively pushchair-friendly and the festival was small enough to get round easily in an hour or so, perfect for little legs. Another plus of the small size was that we could get back to the van in just 10mins so very easy to nip back if we needed anything, or to take a rest in the middle of the day.

There was a great kids zone at the festival with a Little Tikes village, craft and music activities, literature readings and our favourite - the bug hunt arranged by the British Ecological Society which entertained our little troops for ages. Our son is still quite obsessed by finding and identifying creatures when we're out and about!

The bands were varied and great - the kids even managed to nap a bit whilst some acts were on (our daughter slept through the warm up acts but woke up in time to boogie to the Levellers). We particularly loved Bad Manners and the Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra, and the kids really enjoyed seeing Justin Fletcher on stage (lots of grown ups secretly enjoyed that one too!!).

think I'm enjoying Justin Fletcher more at this point!!

The campsite atmosphere was dead friendly and our kids were in and out of new friends' tents all weekend. We even saw another Bedford CF on site so managed to have a nosy round that and compare notes with the owners - marvellous!

Le Tour de France in Yorkshire
The tour whipped through Yorkshire the other weekend and we decided relatively short notice to go up north and camp up in a friend's Mum's field in North Rigton (amazing pub there to check out - the Square and Compass - if you're in the area). We had to make a stop fairly soon after starting off as Dave realised he hadn't reconnected the alternator so power would have been an issue! Luckily the dash mounted voltmeter was reading low so gave the clue. It had been disconnected to avoid damage when welding the wings up.

standard!!

It was pretty rainy on the Friday night (and we had a bit of rain seeping in, but not enough to worry about) but the weather was fab for the Saturday. We used a new (to us) trailer to cart the kids down to Pool then into Harrogate for the finish.  Hard work for my husband lugging them round all day, but we're expecting child number three so I gladly waved my virtual pregnancy "Get out of a job free" card - happy days!

by 'eck there were some big hills!

The finish in Harrogate was heaving but really exciting (although our shoulders were aching from having the kids sitting on them for so long that day!) and it was well worth the effort of going up there to be involved in something so spectacular.

The journey home wasn't without incident; some kind of electrical fault had occurred which meant we had to jump start to leave the field, and fairly soon after this manifested itself in a more serious way as the indicators completely failed.  Cue me frantically winding the window up and down and sticking my arm out all the way home - luckily the weather was good, wouldn't have liked that job in the rain!!

This problem is yet to be resolved - another one on the constantly evolving 'to do' list!

Front wing repairs

Here we go on fixing a knackered holey front wing. Following on from my previous post where I investigated the reason for paint blistering and rust in the top corner of the front wing, today I had the day off work so spent a good 8 hours cutting, grinding and welding. Here was the hole we started with:
 

 

The doors and hinges came off OK on drivers side, and that was the worst so I started there. Ground back the area to find good metal as you can see. Luckily it was a good day for it, absolutely boiling hot... not great in welding gauntlets but better than rain I suppose. I always keep two grinders on the go - one with a normal grinding disc and one with a diamond cutting disc for making up the patches and cutting back the old metal.

 I use the bonnet of a car I got from the scrap yard as my donor metal. I just cut a bit out of the outer skin - it's a good thickness and the one I'm using at the moment in galvanised to a bit more rust protection, although that makes it splatter more when welding. Here's the first patch fully welded in and ground back. My welding isn't great, but the grinder hides a multitude of sins.... I put this piece in to give the bottom of the A pillar some strength as it's currently hanging in space a bit. All came out really rather well. for once welding on the side of the car rather than underneath - so much nicer when the splatter falls on the floor instead of on top of you...

 next welded on the lower patch. I folded over the top to make it like a wrapped over wing (just hammer a shape in the vice and on the floor until it nearly fits, then do the first few welds and hammer to shape from there). A bit of Etch Primer (bubbled a bit due to it all being a bit hot still, but it won't show).

 Then normal primer on top of that - Smoothed back a tiny bit once dry with fine sand paper.

 Then onto the other side. Easier job which is lucky because I can't get the bolts out of the doors so had to do it with them fitted.

 And finally throw a bit of Rustoleum on top to make it water proof. Deal with colour matching later.

Should do for another 10 years hopefully. I'm happy to say it's probably the best welding job I've done yet. As no-one looks at the quality of the welding anyway due to the paint job, as long as it's structurally OK, I'm happy.

Miglia Quadrato 2014

A night of motor sport in the camper van...?

For the third year running (bar 2012 when it was postponed due to the Olympics taking over London), Trevor The Van took part in the Miglia Quadrato (square mile in Italian) Road Rally/Treasure Hunt. It takes place in the second weekend in May on the Saturday night, starting at midnight, finishing 5am Sunday Morning. You have 5 hours to visit upto 60 grid references within the one square mile 'City of London', jump out of your transport and find the answer to a clue. There are 20 easy to find answers, 20 medium and 20 hard.

It takes place in the traditional City of London. Starting from Finsbury Circus (green circle on the map, we travel from Chancery Lane in the West to Tower Bridge in the East, Liverpool Street Station in the North to The Thames in the South. There's a point for every correct answer, but minus one for every minute beyond 5am that you hand in your sheet - so don't be late to the finish.

On our first year we had a few motoring problems - the van was still on a terrible Indian knock-off carburetor which caused the plugs to continually soot up so we only made it through half the night and resorted to traveling on foot - not a good idea as even over a square mile, there's a lot of distance to travel between clues. We came in with around 20 points.

The second year we did better, much more attention to the exact location of the grid reference - no point looking for an answer if you're not at exactly the correct place. Each clue is accurate to 10m, so only a tiny plotting error can have you looking in completely the wrong street. We did have a minor altercation with a bollard (re-painted and 'made good' after the event', and spent most of the night unknowingly driving without headlights - not a problem really as the city is so well lit we didn't even notice. We came in with around 35 points. This was us at the start just waiting for 12pm to clock round (photo credit Matt Brown on Flickr)

This year we returned with an extra crew member (Me-navigator, Andy Barker - answer sheet man, Dave Richards - driver, Dean Pay and Big Mark - crew members). We've got a routine worked out where me and Andy plot all the points at the start while the other three set off for a few easy clues. By the time we've plotted all 60 points, we work out a route around them and set off collecting them one at a time. At a grid ref we all jump out torch in hand and set about finding the answer. Easy ones tend to be names on blue plaques or shop established dates, mediums might be a sign seen in a building through a window, and hards.... well we've only ever found three of them and most of those were by spotting someone else looking at something and realising they must be onto a clue...).

All sorts of vehicles take part from a 1902 (?) vintage car which runs with a sound like the spark timing and piston position are completely random - complete with oil lamp headlights, to this 1910 (I think) fire engine. Useful as the crew can all cling on to the side rail like the firemen would have. (photo credit Matt Brown on Flickr)

There's also regularly a vintage delivery truck (1920's) and other then that mostly modern stuff, but our result this year of 12th out of 62 entrants shows the CF is a pretty useful vehicle for the job. A table in the back for plotting on and space for 6 people (the maximum you're allowed in the Miglia) makes up for the slightly cumbersome size, but the excellent turning circle does come in useful when we (regularly) need to change plans (go the wrong way) due to the many tiny old streets in the City. We scored 26 points, unfortunately one point away from a First Class Award, but it was much harder this year then last due to masses of road works and some of the easy clues being much tougher than usual, so pretty happy that we're getting better every year.

The van ran well (i'll explain about the alternator nearly falling off in a later post) with no mishaps - roll on next year. If you want to enter, send an e mail now to the organising club to get yourself on the mailing list  uhulmc@k3g.net . It's only ~35 quid to enter, well worth it. Any car at all can enter, but it would be good to get a fleet of CF's in - they are desperate for more people to compete to make the time spent organising worth while.


The organising club's web site is:

http://users.breathe.com/pwa/uhulmc/miglia.htm#I

you can easily see some photos of what the event's like by searching, and this video shows another crew's complete night in 2.5 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo_uC226Nsg

Rusted front wing repairs

A bit of as different blog post for a change - I need some help with diagnosing what's really going on with my front wings, and patches of rust in the same place on both sides of the car that has completely rotted through.

This area was corroded when I got the van, so I welded it up as with so many other areas. Water kept coming through the weld from the inside though, and I couldn't work out where it was coming from. It instantly started rusting again and the paint blistering with water from the inside. This is the condition on the right hand side now:

I set about fixing it the other day, and pulling the rusty metal away, found this (on the left hand side):

It's hard to see, but there is some fibrous type of material in behind the metal. It runs horizontally along and then goes down the rear edge of the wing. It's as though it's some sort of support structure for the wing. It explains the source of the water coming from behind. I guess it absorbs water and later gives it back out. Any ideas what it is, and what's best to do about it? I could go about getting the whole wing off, but don't want to unless absolutely necessary - I could easily weld a patch over this area and make it look presentable enough, but would need to get rid of the resin stuff that's been soaking up water.


8 April 2014 Update:

A bit further investigation including speaking at work to a couple of blokes who started their careers working on CF's at the factory, and no further forward. Decided to take the plunge and open up the holes a big bigger to investigate. This is a better picture of the resin.

I pulled the resin off, and this is what's left:

Turns out it's some sort of sealer for spacing the wing away from the metal work underneath. It only runs around this upper corner as that's where the metal structure underneath goes - further forward there's a void behind. Clearly the sealer was absorbing water and causing my problems. Should be an easy job now to weld back up and make it good. This is the sealer that came out:

I'll post some pics up when i've done the welding.