Will it shrink ?

Ok so when I looked at the forecast earlier in the week, we were due for a nice dry, bright week, that was going to gradually warm up for Elemental. So the cover came off the van so I could clean it over a few days.
So who ordered the ******g snow ?
The question is, as my van has not seen rain or snow since I bought it, will it shrink ? Or just rust

 

Its more likely to get bigger as it soaks up all the water & then freezes, it will only shrink if you put it in the tumble dryer

Lets face it rust is inevitable wet or dry

 

Got plenty of snow showers...would you like a few more?
It'll do what they all do rust in peace .

 

If you avoid Hot Wash, it'll be fine.

 

Get fresh cooking oil on it fast all over the van will be fine till summer

 

It will expand, then flake, then get lighter as bits fall off and you have holes where there were no holes before. but the lighter bus the better the mpg so its win win really

 

Oh dear, its worse than shrinking....its leaking.
When the bus was in the good ol' US of A, it had an aircon unit fitted on the roofrack and through the cab roof. Since then the unit has been removed and replaced with a plastic vent as can be seen in the photos below. Now this seemed a reasonable stopgap but the plan has always been to plate over the cab roof and then repair the roofrack somehow. The van has been under a cover since November unless the weather was dry so it was not until today when the April SNOW showers arrived that I found the bloody thing was leaking ! I only went out there to see if the window rubbers were OK I guess the roof repair has just gone to the top of the list.
I could do with some help on the repair but I'll start a seperate thread under the Mech Tech section.

Hope it doesn't snow or rain anymore !

 

not surprised it leaks looking at that
looks like you need to remove and fit a plate about 50mm bigger all round then fit back againn

 

The plate will cover the whole in the cab roof (underneath the roof rack), then I'll be left with a hole in the roof rack. I will either fibreglass the hole up (if I can work out how to do it), or try to fit the top part of the vent back into the roof rack. This may prove a little difficult because the vent fixes using both inner and outer frames.

 

Silcone for a temp repair, then a bit of welding and a new westy rack?

 

Rust is lighter than carbon fibre.

 

Had another check to see if the water had stopped coming...it has.
On the bright side, my dash and rubber mats look nice and clean