1/3/2011. It's been an interesting (read frustrating, irritating, trying) bunch of months since my last post, the ups and downs have been many and varied, but it boils down to this: Got The Bitch Sorted! Who's your Daddy! Me, that's who!
I had had a total gutsful of self proclaimed experts, engineers who didn't return phone calls and generally jerked me about for weeks and bureaucratic weenies who wouldn't give a straight answer if you held a gun to their pointy heads. In the end I did what I should have done in the first place and took the old dear to an engineering shop, parked both vehicles out front, pointed to them and said 'Sort it.'
Even this was not without it's excitment. The engineering shop who eventually did the job were flat out with other work and had me booked into a quite specific time slot. I actually quite liked this, it meant they were not going mess about getting it done. By mutual agreement I'd deliver both camper and new truck to them the day before so they could make an early start. Somehow I got the idea into my head this was a thursday nite, get it done friday. A quite random check of my emails one afternoon revealed that today was delivery day, not tomorrow like I had thought. Oh hell. So the best laid plans of mice and men (delivery drivers, getting picked up etc) went all to pot and I had find someone who could help me NOW!!! Luckily for me the nice lady living next door came to the party and drove the pick up car. So, with me driving the new truck and towing the camper with my dad at the helm, we all set off for the 20 minute trip. I would spend the night in the camper, parked outside the engineering shop, then in the morning when the gates opened I'd drive both in. A last minute not so perfect plan but the only one I had.
Sort of fortunately, the place was out in the sticks, so I didn't have to spend the night in an industrial area, tho it was just meters away from the main road north from Palmerston North, so I got traffic noise in my ear all night. I made ramen noodles on a Trangia stove by candle light, then got a horrible night's sleep.
The main road is a few meters on the other side of the trees. This is the last photo ever of the camper with the Transit under it. I rolled both in the next morning, had a brief conversation with the workshop foreman on what I wanted and then left them to it. 7.15 A.M. on what was showing to be a nice day, my ride hadn't arrived, so I started walking. A couple of hours and 8kms later (no point rushing), dad and the lady next door again (Thanks Vicky!) show up in the car and save me the last 30 kms. It felt strange to sleep in the house for the next 2 nights.
A phone call to the shop and it's all systems go! Yeah baby! NZ$1100 later and I have both vehicals back home, the change over certificate grasped tighly in my hot little hand. To tell the truth I'm a tiny bit shell shocked, all my planning, scheming, phone calls, moaning and bitching and here it was, hard part done and rest all down to me.
Freakin' Tahdah!!! Damn it looks funny! My only tiny moan (and nothing I can do anything about except deal with it) is the box is exactly in line with very front edge of the tray, I had asked for a spare inch back from here so the new front panel would follow the line of the top curve of the roof. No matter, done now and I can work around it easily enough.
The naked Transit. Almost sad, really, 30 years together and now seperated forever. I put the thing on Trademe and few days later got NZ$300 for it from a chap in Auckland who wanted to fully restore it as a flat deck! I explained about the rust, sent the chap warts-n-all photos and he still wanted it. Cool! A couple of days later a huge car transporter turned up, we drove the thing on and that was all. Byebye Ford, like every other one I've ever owned, it's been painful knowing you!
Now down to work.
First thing is to strip away the old cab combing and wipe down the now exposed surfaces. Once again I was struck with fair shape the camper body was in, who ever built it did a very fair job.
Then it was drag out the freezer panels and start cutting them up using an off-cut wheel on the angle grinder. Which promptly blew up in a stinky cloud of smoke. OK, I had been expecting this, it was old and cranky. Trip off to The Warehouse and buy a nice new generic one for NZ$29.95. Blow this one up after about 10 minutes use. Hmm. Track back the The Warehouse, receipt in hand and exchange it for nice new one. This one seems to go OK and work is resumed. Floor first. I riveted and siliconed ali angle stock on all four sides for the new walls to slot into, then lifted and pushed it into place, layering the deck first 3mm thick garden mesh so there would be an air space between the underfloor and wooden deck. I didn't want the steel to be laying on wet wood for 6 months of the year. Using one of the bigger panels, I was able to cut the floor out in one piece.
Levering the floor into place, I was slightly pleased to notice I had cut the front-to-back distance just right, locating the front edge first, I had to jump up and down on the back edge quite a bit to get it slot in, which it eventually did, tight as you like. An auspicious start!
That done, right side wall was next, also one piece. This one was bit more tricky, I had to cut and fold the front vertical joint to accept the front panel neatly. A special bending tool was devised for this, 2 pieces of 25mm iron angle stock was clamped together in a pair of vise-grips and tack welded in place, giving me 4 inch (100mm) wide jaws. By carefully working my way back and forth along the bend lines I was able to get nice neat right angle bends.
Floor, right hand wall and half of the front panels in, this is starting to look good!
Right side view, not all bad. I was stuck by how solid the whole arrangement was.
Coming along nicely. Much silicon, many rivets. Both are cheap and leaks blow royal corgi. Note the offset at the top of the front panel, the lost inch I was talking about above.
There we go! 2 Days, 2 tubes of silicon and about 300 rivets later. The over hang at the back of the truck is going to be taken up by a box I'll build later. Note the 4 steel plates added by the engineering shop.
Left rear mounting bracket spudded through to a steel cross brace. There are 8 (!) of these held down by M16 bolts! What ever else may happen, the steel floor frame is going nowhere. Ever.
The new addition is nick named The North Wing and is excellent! It could be a whole new bunk room, but that's not my plan. One of the things to remember about this is that nobody can ride in the back while underway, no seat belts etc and no access to the cab. I was sorely tempted to punch through the front wall and join up with the cab, but after much thought decided I would rather be able to roll the cab over for maintenance. Also, the number of seat belts in the cab has to match the number of bunks in the back, some sort of bureaucratic detail that could have been a problem if I hadn't already decided on a '2+1' format for sleeping arrangements anyhow. So, the North Wing is strictly storage, all the junk inside the camper easily fits in with room to spare Bloody good!
I toyed with the idea of ripping out the main bunk and lowering it to make sitting up in bed possible, but that would have reduced the North Wing to an awkward rat hole, as well as being a major rebuild, so I left it as is.
The next couple of days was spent painting the outside to match the rest of the camper, 3 coats of paint and it looks as good as it's ever going to.
Oh my readers, it has been such a long trip getting it where it is now, weather tight (I hope!) and fully drivable. The ups and downs have been mountainous. Hind sight is always 20/20, if I had done all this when I 1st started, I'd be 6 months ahead, but where's the fun in that?
