The big job here was ripping out the step well in the front (side? only?) door and filling in the hole. Not overly hard, most of the screws holding the step well in were either rusted away or the timber around them had cracked or rotted. Fill the cracks with building adhesive, scrape away the rot and replace with fresh timber or steel. Right about now the thinking ones among you will saying 'Yes but if he rips out the step well, the door will be too short!' And you'd be right. First things first, fill in the hole left by the door step.
I got a length of 25 X 50mm box steel and welded up a T to provide a solid base for the new floor. This was welded to the floor frame and a piece of the original table was cut to fit the gap. The new panel is held in place with building adhesive which also served to fill in the places I scraped rot out of. Worked out nicely.
You can see the stainless steel lintel cover I made out of the trim that covered the old top step edge. That was an exercise in lateral thinking, it's 90 degrees over and carefully cut to fit it's new home. There is a 8mm lip at the bottom of the door frame for the new door to sit on, the thinking here being that in years to come as the door settles, it'll be steel to stainless steel. I taped a couple of rivet shanks in place on the lintel to sit the new door on while I fixed the new hinges in place. Worked a treat!
An early view of the door-hole just after I had removed the gas tank and well step. The gas tank had to go for several reasons but mainly because I had to cut off the original left side lifting point. This was just a steel tube about 10 inches long welded to the floor grid right at the front. From this and it's mate on the right side the builders would have suspended it to get the truck underneath. I don't need them, so off they come. The left one was hemmed in by the filler pipe of the gas tank, meaning I would have had to used an angle grinder with a cut off wheel about 3 inches from the filler cap. Like hell! So I cut the straps holding the tank in, clamped off the fuel line and cut it, then slid the whole thing out. I rescued about 30 liters of petrol from the tank. That filled the family car with the overflow in jerry cans for the mower. Waste not, want not! The hole is covered by the piece of ply I eventually cut to fit. Note the cut steel straps. With the tank out of the way it was safe to go mad with the grinder. I shortened the fuel line and wired an empty meths bottle between the left headlight and the radiator. Poked a hole in the cap and stuffed the fuel line through. Now I can still move it short distances, ie in and out of the garage. Damn thing is too heavy to push!
Door frame under control, now I can start on the new door(s).
Happily there is enough room over the door to rebuild the door to 1.9 meters. Cut the ali cladding, Cut and move up the door lintel, fold the hanging flap under, trim to length and screw into place. Easy! Well, sounds easy, anyhow. The lintel was a bit of a drag, I had to plane down a length of treated pine to 26.5mm thick and 104.5mm high, a tedious job since I had to try it for size about 20 times until I got a tap fit. I shot building adhesive up into the hole, tapped the new lintel into place then folded the ali cladding under and up, adding screws as I went. I put the new lintel in first, then cut out the old one once the glue had set.
The above pic clearly shows the new gap. All along I had planned to ditch the original door anyway, at some stage in it's life, some moron drove off with the door open and smacked it on something that was harder and heavier, it's actually broken right across just under the window and is held together by the cladding outside and interior panel inside. A shake of the door handle and it flaps like it's trying to take off. Poor thing.
So, the steel box section that made up the old bunks was pressed into service to make 2 rectangles for the door frames and a freezer panel was selected to chop up to make the new cladding. Right from the second I decided to replace the door, I wanted a Dutch barn door for the new one, I like the idea of being able to just open the top part for ventilation and views. I made the bottom section 1.1 meters tall, good leaning height, the top is a tad over 800mm. Welding the steel proved problematic. At 1mm thick, the steel box section just blew away about 2 seconds after I put the arc welder to it. Hmm. So, I sourced some 2.5mm welding rods, turned the power down to minimum (80 amps, low earth setting) and practiced on some scrap. I hadn't used an arc welder in nearly 2 years, but some experimentation and my welding mojo returned, I was in business! Still had to be quick tho, stirring the arc rod to get a nice red puddle of liquid weld then going from there was not an option, the second the arc started it was go man go!
Also slightly painful was the fact that the door frame was not straight, putting a straight edge to it revealed a whole tribe of high and low spots but I got around this by bending the steel as I went to suit it's new home. Fairly trying, but I got there in the end. Then it was just a case of peeling off the steel on one side of the freezer panel, laying the new door frame on it and marking off the inside of the frame with a marker pen. Cut away the excess with a sharp knife and press the steel frame into place, squirt silicone on the steel frame where it meets the cladding, clamp and rivet. The freezer panel is 50mm thick, I needed 25. The excess was cut off with a wood saw that was just longer than the door was wide, jiggling it back and forth with the 30 or so mm of movement left over. Slow going but I got there in the end.
Bottom section in place, top section dummied up to see if it fitted, some grinding, pounding on the door frame with a wooden hammer and a couple of strategic micro bends in the steel and all was well. The small bar on the bottom left side corner of the top section is the mounting place for the new door lock.
Bottom section in place and awaiting it's new hinges. The steel is a slightly different pattern to the original cladding but not at all bad. I added a shot bolt to the bottom corner of the bottom section for locking when the top section is open. I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out. I don't have hinges for the top section yet, that comes tomorrow when I go off to get those and some angle steel to make the mounting brackets to hold the box onto the new truck deck.
That was the interesting part. The tedious part was the endless prep I had to do elsewhere.
As mentioned, everything below floor line had to go, including the skirts that gives the camper a nice round shape. These were ali covered boards bolted to steel brackets, so, mark and cut the ali cladding then cut the brackets holding the boards up and the whole mess falls off. Sounds nice and neat, it wasn't. Now the bottom edge of the ali cladding isn't fixed to anything, so I went right around the outside screwing the cladding to the floor boards. The screw heads got a blob of silicone to (hopefully) protect and seal them, then painted over. Note I haven't filled in the step hole yet.
The stern of the camper got the same treatment, the bumper and tow bar were both removed along with the tail lights. They came off just after this photo.
Note the sides are slightly lower than the back, this is the height of the steel floor frame. It's taking awhile.....
There was one small event that cheered me tho. It was the excommunication of the Ford Transit badge from the rear of the camper. I was going to leave on, cross out the 'Ford' and write 'Isuzu' over it, but in the end I decided to just take it off. Who ever put it on had used stainless steel rivets, too hard to drill out, I ground the heads off and peeled off the badge.
Going....
Gone! Leaving only 31 years of dirt and spider webs. A minute with a wire brush, then a rag dampened with meths and only 2 holes to show it had ever been there. Fill holes with silicone and paint over. Done. I'll save the badge for later, might do something interesting with it.
I'm on a roll now, things are finally coming together. Hopefully (ever so!), The Big Transfer will be in a week's time, giving me time to finish up the door and do a couple of other small jobs.
Bring it on!
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