Unfortunately not a lot a has happened with Beryl of late what with work, life and an accident involving a table saw and the top of my thumb she got put on the back burner. But today with the weather being on I decided to potter about down the shed. I decided to have a go at fabricating repair sections for the kick panel I’m quite please with how they have turned out.
Any sentence that contains the words "accident", "table saw" and "thumb" can't be good. Glad you are back on it, the work so far looks amazing.
Thanks Scrooge, fortunately I got off pretty lightly the thumbs healed well although it’s now an odd shape at the top. Being a self employed kitchen fitter it hurt my wallet and pride more than anything else
Brilliant restoration thread, keep at it please as I’m learning new places that a T2 can rust! I’m restoring a bug at the moment that really was past the point of no return but I love a challenge too..
Started making the inner valence repair panels today. Takes some effort manipulating the thicker steel into shape!!
So whilst the weather is doing its thing I’ve been in the shed carrying on with the drivers door. This one is a lot better than the passenger one was but it’s still bad. Nearly finished fabricating all the little bits the inner curve at the bottom on the lock side was gone completely and unfortunately no panel is available for this now so I’m fabricating in small sections so I can get as close to the original shape as possible. I think I’m almost there!
A morning spent sanding grinding and painting most the rot gone now two patches to fab then everything ready to rebuild the front end.!!!
On a bit of a roll today!! Hopefully this will continue, Finding hidden rot isn’t getting me down today
Finally feels like I’m getting somewhere!! Still the valence and kick panel to weld the patches on. But the windscreen panel fits and is ready to weld and couldn’t resist a test face fit. Fist pic from last year.
So tonight I’ve been experimenting. The replacement front I have is a panel that was manufactured in 1997. I bought it of a chap on Facebook marketplace for a very reasonable £100. Obviously with it being stood around for over 20 years it did have considerable surface rust. Tonight I sanded the panel down and epoxy primed it. I also took this as an opportunity to test the paint and colour I’ve picked out. I was going for the old orange over white and this was decided over a year ago. But last week I came across this colour and instantly fell for it. As I intend to use and abuse this bus spending anything up to 7k on a spray job seemed a bit of a waste so I looked into other options. In considered the rustoleum and rollers until I came across graffiti paint. Any way long story short I decided on a colour called viper using Montana white spray. It’s a gloss finish and extremely well priced at under £5 a can. So tonight I tested out both the colour the cans and my ability! I’ve used the standard nozzles that come as standard with the paint and to be honest they don’t perform as you would want for this application. They basically produce a ball of mist which makes it difficult achieving nice even passes. They do do several different types of fat caps which I’m assuming produce varying width’s of fan so I’ll be purchasing the different options and testing to see which is most suitable. Having said that the over all finish I was able to achieve tonight wasn’t to bad at all. I used just one can and got 2 coats on. I did get runs on one of the passes and I out this down to the nozzle and it making it difficult to maintain even passes. After leaving it for a couple of hours I’ve been out to feel the finish and it’s not bad at all. With better nozzles, warmer conditions and better prep I think you could achieve a great finish. I’m not sure 100% on the colour but it is growing on me. Does anyone else on here have any experience with these paints?
Nice colour! I’d get the panel outside in the day light before you make a final call. I sprayed a few repairs on my van with cans - the overall area was probably a bit bigger than you should and it was tough going. You get through lots of cans and it’s prone to spitting, each can is different, etc. While I haven’t upgraded to a compressor yet, use imagine that would be easier on larger van panels, provide better coverage and apply better thickness of coat. Someone like @jameslee has sprayed his own cars and may have started with cans! Most decent paint suppliers will colour match too
You'd better use proper 2k automotive paint. Even cheap ones. If you plan to respray it later, you will have to sand it back to primer to avoid paint reactions. And with the amount of work already done, you deserve better than a rattle cans paint job .
Cans are less spitty if you warm them up in a bucket of hot water. I painted this with rattle cans outside a panel at a time as I restored it. It would have been cheaper to buy 2-pac and use a gun but it suited my panel at a time outside restoration.
That’s exactly what I’m doing, outside resto, panel at a time. If I had a decent garage it would definitely be a gun job. Hopefully the next one will be as once the kids have flown the nest I’ll have the space and money to build a dream garage!!
Top tip if using cans is to buy all the paint you will need in one batch Even ordering the same colour paint from the same company left me with different shades across different batches.
Absolutely. I ran out with a corner left to do and it turned out the "seagull grey" (I think it was called) was nothing like Seagull grey. Mine was a sandy sort of colour. They did work out what they'd done wrong (twice) though and I got it finished. I got mine from a local company who kept records of who mixed what. Part of the problem being the recipes are for a litre, so say it calls for 9 drops of blue/lire and they're doing 400ml cans it's 3.6 drops/can. I had no idea what I was doing with paint. It wasn't until I moved it into the workshop that a proper painter told me if I wanted smooth and shiny from the can (or a gun) I needed to paint much wetter. Stop just before it sags or runs he said. Ha-ha, but that's the skill - top coat as heavy as you dare. Cans: Gun: First attempt at a whole one, with vertical panels. I'd done the doors lying flat so I could pile it on without runs and sags. There are a few runs but you don't notice them.
You got lucky that they kept records The supplier I used didn’t want to know when I contacted them and just said we’ve sent out the colour you ordered then refused to answer emails and when I phoned up they would just hang up on me. They went bust and another company took over. I’ve now got to re paint some parts of the van with the paint from the large batch I ordered at the end before they went bust. Thankfully it will be easier than before because I did the prep properly getting rid of the crap work from the previous respray so it will only need a quick flat back/key up Still it’s a hell of an annoyance having to redo some panels. Awfull paint to work with when applying and even worse when trying to sand it I wish I’d never used it and I’ll be glad when the van eventually gets painted in upol raptor.
10/10 for effort, would be too much for me to handle but if you've got the skills and the drive to continue good luck, keep the pictures coming.
Inner valence repairs going well I’ve decided to do the angle section that the front sits on as a separate piece. Trying to bend the thicker plate with 3 90 degree angles and and maintain the correct hight for the front to sit on was to much of a challenge makes more sense fabricating a separate item so its easier to get the correct position to carry the front
