1981 Volkswagen T25 camper... The BERYL

[luckyseven]

Y'see, I blame the wife. And by "the", I mean mine, of course, I don't care what yours thinks so much. She made me buy a tent, and that's how it started...

She's never really been camping. We went for a week in the New Forest when we were twenty-odd, but that was a long time back now. She never had family holidays as a kid. Unlike me. And those two words "family holiday" really don't convey the utter unalloyed horror of a British holiday in the 1970s. A leaky ridge tent in some "District" campsite with shower blocks like the least salubrious facilities in a Soviet labour camp; rain; mud; pre-tech fabrics that meant if you touched the tent wall the water would come through like a tap was turned on; the constant smell of wet canvas; a site "shop" that maybe sold curling bread, powdered milk, eggs still covered in hen sh!t; nursing a James Herbert novel for two weeks because they were the only books the shop sold except for Mills&Boon (....you want The Fog, it's the one with lesbians in it hunhh hunnhh); mother cooking for five on a two-burner gaz stove... whatever the end result, it was burned, it was cold, it was damp all at the same time; brother and sister both bored teenagers who took it out on their little brother; and just the sheer trauma of getting there...from the south coast to the Lake District five-up in a 1300 Beetle pulling a trailer filed with camping gear... can you imagine the horror? No you can't you weren't there maaan, YOU WEREN'T THERE

The old man liked camping, y'see? It took him back to a simpler time on the trail village to village with his itinerant doctor father, camping where they ended up for the day. This halycon image conviently ignored the fact that this took place in idyllic Cyprus between the wars and our family holidays basically took place in Withnail and I for the two wettest weeks of the British "summer"




so, anyway. This tent. I put it up in the garden as a trial run and all it did was trigger flashbacks and remind me just how much I hate putting tents up. Especially when it's your home for the night, you've been driving for seven hours prior, it's raining and it's getting dark. I don't mind crashing out in a one-man tent at a show or a festival or whatever when I've got so full of gin it's belching gently into the back of my mouth, but with the kids and all the paraphernalia for a fortnight..... shudder. So, tents are out then. What about a campervan? A solid roof, sleeps four if you get a pop-up roofberth, you can sleep in it within minutes of arriving and put out the awning when it's dry... in fact, you can sleep in it wherever the hell you like. Seems a good idea then, doesn't it?

Which to get? Well, It's got to be a VW hasn't it? Not even a discussion, that one. But splitscreens are long since beyond my ability to afford, and are horrible to drive. Bay windows look daft (IMHO), are also going north of "silly money", are also horrible to drive and have less room. T4s are front-engined and watercooled, so not real VWs. T5s and T6s are front engined and watercooled, so not real VWs and are stupidly expensive still and look nasty. So there's only really one choice left innit. The Brick. The Wedge. The lost generation of VW bus, the T3/T25

Which, as the cleverer amongst you have already sagely tugged your beards and tutted about, are also water cooled and ...worse.... diesels. (and arguably look really bad, too, but that's another story). However, not all. Early ones struggled on with the 1600 aircooled flat four from the Type 4 VW and later Bay Windows, called the "pancake motor" because it had the fan on the end of the crank instead of being pulley-driven and could thus be squashed into a smaller space under the floor. Realising that even in the Bay Window the 1600 (in the immortal words of the late great Barry Sheene) "couldn't pull the cock off a chocolate mouse" and that the T25 was a bigger bus all round, VW saw fit to introduce a two-litre version before getting lost in the wilderness of offering oil-burners and waterboxers and all that malarkey. So all I had to do was find an early T25 up to 1982 with preferably a two-litre lump and as little rot as possible. Which is a lot easier said than done, because they're actually quite rare and even more so without rust, because they love to rust. They fox-picture love it

I saw a few... a few rotters, a few horrifcally taste-bypassed interiors from the Land That Draylon Forgot...and missed a few that looked good and everyone else on the hunt realised this too and snapped up. One bloke phoned to say he'd just sold his... as we were parking outside his house after a drive of several miles to view it And getting home from that infuriating experience, I checked my mails and a very nice lady had replied saying yes, please come and look at our van, we're in all afternoon. So on a rainy Sunday afternoon we found ourselves on a forested hill somewhere near Uckfield looking at a slightly sorry-looking and very yellow aircooled 2-litre T25 named Beryl

And the next day she was on our drive


Beryl's first day f by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

You deserve a picture, because that was a lot of words. In fact here, have another


Beryl's first day by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

She wasn't great, to be fair, but she was honest. And y'know that thing about you buy nice cars from nice people? Well, the vendors were nice people. Much like us; two kids, similar attitudes. Our viewing of the bus was spent more in their lovely farmhouse kitchen drinking tea and chatting than anything else. She was gutted to be selling the van, he couldn't wait to see the back of it. The kids loved Beryl and I actually felt a bit guilty taking it off them. But our kids loved her just as much, and immediately set about trying her out for size


Tried for size by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

She had the "standard" aftermarket camper conversion layout; 3/4 rock'n'roll bed in the back (so it's a rear seat unless you're camping when it folds out flat to make a bed for two adults); row of cupboards down the "long side" opposite the sliding door containing electrics with a site hook-up, cooker twin hob, sink, water container, gas storage, coolbox and some storage; pop-top that side-elevates to offer sleeping for two more (small) humans. Fortunately, our auxiliary humans are fairly small;


Seal of approval by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

I mean, she certainly wasn't perfect by any stretch, but I quite liked the idea of a blank canvas that we could re-make anew as we wanted. There was evidence of some water ingress that mostly seemed to come from the stupid louvred vent window that all the scene kiddies seem to love so much, there were some rust patches and a bit of the legendary T25 "seam rash"; the passenger door was absolutely FUBAR and seemed to be held together with bathroom sealant; the electrics looked like they'd been done by a Hammer Horror set dresser and included both Halfords crimps and scotchlocks for the full scary "is it a three-bar fire in disguise?" lottery feeling; BUT she had new sills, recent welding and drove well. Well... drove well for a thirty-seven year old bus. And she was most definitely a blank canvas;


Rear seat by Nick Liassides, on Flickr


Cab by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

So that's Beryl. Say hi

[daver555]

Looks pretty solid in the pics, good find. Seems odd that the seats don't have individual bulkheads behind them unless it had swivel seats at one point in its previous life?

[luckyseven]

I set to with a bit of gentle servicing and titivating. Some was just to make her feel more like our own thing, with a few stickers


nametag side by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

Apparently she was named Beryl in honour of the previous kids' grandma. I would have changed the name but it seemed to suit her and b) it's humongously unlucky to change the name of a vehicle; if you don't believe me, give it a quick Google. It's like changing a boat's name; you have to pretty much exorcise it of the previous name and anything associated with it before introducing the new one and it'll probably still sink. So, given my luck with vehicles, she could damn well stay as the Beryl. Some other thing were rather less frivolous; a little mini-service because on first inspection the plugs didn't seem to be helping the rough-starting issues;


cacked plugs by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

Incidentally, how hilarious a job changing the plugs on a T25 is. I thought Beetle ones were a faff but at least you don't have to remove half the fuel lines to get to those! While I was in the engine bay I tidied up a few obvious things like the cracked and knackerdy breather and fuel hoses


cracked pipes by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

Random piece of silicone was already there, so someone had cared about the Beryl at some point in her past. Less reassuring was the length of what can only be described a garden hose pressed into service as a breather. Yes, I know it's only a breather and that garden hose is quite robust in it's own right, but it's more what it represented; the sort of "that'll do" mindset that I don't want having worked on any vehicle of mine. And how can I be so sure it was garden hose? Well, it was bright yellow and had "quality garden hose" printed on it


Hooooose by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

so that went, and I don't really care whether it was quality or sh1te garden hose, and don't even care that at least it was colour-matched. Mini-service completed I put the lid back on the engine and got on with other stuff


new pipes by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

The tailgate lock was just floating weirdly in its aperture which meant you had to line it up carefully before it'd work and getting it to actually lock was a bit hit-or miss. This was a simple fix which just involved pulling off the interior trim panel to get to the back of it


Floating lock by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

Turned out the bolts holding it to the tailgate had come undone so I replaced them with stainless and gave them a bit of threadlock and also bought the spacer and weather seal which were missing and allowing it to wobble about even more. While the trim panel was off, I took the opportunity to add some sound-deadening with some leftover bitumen stuff from when I did the RX-7


tailgate soundeadening by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

the worst part of which was scraping off the old gunge and waxoyl-type stuff that coated everything and then rubbing clean with celly thinners. But at least there was evidence of rustproofing, which was a good sign. Although it hadn't helped too much; the seam between the outer and inner panels of the tailgate was weeping rust like all T25s seem to. Annoyingly, despite all T25s apparently having rotten tailgates to some degree, it's one of the panels that no-one in the aftermarket seem to make, and obviously VW haven't supported any in ages.

The dashboard in a T3 is rubbish... actually, a quick name guide for those what don't VW; this is a Transporter. VW buses/campers/panel vans have been called this since Ben Pon and Heinz Nordhoff turned Pons' napkin sketch into reality and brought the VW commercial into existence in 1950. Splitscreen vans initially, they were called the Transporter or "Type 2" as there was only one Volkswagen up till then and that hadn't even been nicknamed the Beetle yet. The later Bay Window model was also a Transporter, also a Type 2 but was appended an extra "2" to the Transporter name to differentiate from the Splitscreen; thus Bays became the T2 standing for both "Transporter 2" and "Type 2". The third generation of Transporter like our hero Beryl was obviously the T3, and then so on into the front-engined conventional van-like Transporters, T4, 5 and 6. So why "T25"? Well, opinions vary, and they tend to only be called that in the UK, but most likely is that it's derived from the prefix to the VIN numbers. Boring but true. So, we can pretty much use interchangeably Transporter, T3 or T25 to describe the Beryl and pretty much be accurate with all. Of course, there were different model versions including Vanagon and Caravelle, depending which domestic market you were in, and epic 4x4 Syncro versions later. South Africa loved the T25 because of its rugged go-anywhereness and built them long after other markets moved onto T4s.

As with all the camper variants, VW never actually produced any of them. The closest was the original Splitscreen Westfalia conversions which were good enough to be warranted by VW albeit not built by them; the Rheda-Wiedenbrück based company got empty unfitted vans from the VW Hanover works and built them up into campers rather like Karmann did in Osnabrück with the cabriolet Beetles. Of course, given their popularity even in the day as campers, VWs were soon being converted in the aftermarket by a plethora of different companies (with varying degrees of quality, taste and efficiency) such as the UK's Devon or the massively spacious Vikings and this unregulated free-for-all continues to this day. Albeit usually as small one-unit firms rather than large businesses although you can still buy a brand new Westfalia conversion if you like, starting at slightly salty £75,200. I've no idea which of the aftermarket companies converted the Beryl. It may even have been a bloke in his shed at home; you can buy all the required parts, even the pop-top roof conversion in the aftermarket if you want. And the cabinets definitely had the look of home carpentry about them. Maybe someone out there has a guess?

...anyway, the T3 dashboard. It's rubbish


Slopy dashboard by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

It's a featureless open slab of steel, adorned only with the holes of a speaker vent (there was no speaker behind it, mind) and an ashtray which clearly I couldn't use anyway with the kids in the bus. Worse still, it's at a 30° slope so anything you put on it immediately slides off onto the floor. Aha, zose cer-azzeee Germans und zere sense of humour, ja? Fortunately, the excellent people at Just Kampers actually use and develop their products on their own vehicles and thus have a solution. Actually, a couple of them, but I went for the more expensive and slightly better version. To wit, a dash tidy. Which to some is an unlovely piece of vacuum-formed platic in nobbly black, but to others is a brilliantly-designed cubby tray that gives all sorts of useful trays and storage solutions and even *gasp* cupholders. Mine, being the top of the line model, comes in two parts, the lower one which fixes to the dash and then to top slots over that. I otped to put rivnuts into the steel of the dash and then bolt through both sections of the dash tidy for extra sturdiness


Dash tidy base installed by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

which was a bit of a faff lining up to get all the holes drilled, but worth it in the end. Although I seem to have not taken a photo of it with the top section fitted at the time. Ooops. Never mind, there'll be one along eventually when we get onto the Duck. Duck? You''ll see.

The ladder, then. It was OK, a nice wooden one that I reinforced with some really long screws and then gave a decent coat of varnish. However, it didn't quite reach the "upstairs" bit of the van, so there was no way of propping it up except against the side window (clearly not ideal!) and then it was quite a stretch for the li'l Un to get herself into the roof. Some kind of step or plinth seemed the way forward. So with some offcuts and leftover bits from the garage and a couple of hinges and handles that cost about a fiver from The Range (ooooh, who doesn't love The Range? Like a pound shop for those who think they're middle class) and a morning's work I had the basic components;


Box embryo by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

I even found a use for the cream-painted bonnet emblem I took off Dolly the Beetle for a nice chrome one. Add in an old drawer handle from my box-of-things-that'll-be-useful-one-day and some stainless fasteners, plus a couple of stainless wingnuts and we had a madly strong box


Box assembled by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

in a suitably rustic flavour. The bolts go through several thicknesses of wood and thus when the brackets I added to the ladder are screwed on with the wingnuts it's pretty much a self-supporting structure that you could use to climb the Magic Faraway Tree if you wanted.


Stairway to Heaven by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

In addition, it's a useful box that can store on-van essentials. Such as blankets. The "heating" in an aircooled T25 is pitiful. It's much like a Beetle in that you have large canisters around the exhaust pipes. These are called heat exchangers and that's what they do, in theory; lined with fins, they extract heat from the exhaust and then the engine fan blows it via a pipe into the cabin. This works sometimes really well in a Beetle, depending on leaks and rot mostly. In a T25 when the heat exchangers are 15 feet away from the dashboard and the "hot" air has to pass along a flexi-trunk under the vehicle, full of leaks, uninsulated and dowsed by road spray, the end result isn't so much "heating" as being coughed on by an asthmatic death rattle. And that's in the cab, by the time the death-rattle has passed back into the body of the bus, it's very little more than ambient. And I ain't talking the Aphex Twin. So, blankets are definitely A Good Idea

I also replaced the washer jets, which had at one point been siliconed on by a PO after their fixings snapped ...why not just buy new ones? They're a couple of quid from Heritage... but the glue had long since given way meaning that if you washed the window, the water's torque reaction meant the jet flailed around on an inch or so of pipe and sprayed everything in the vicinity except the windscreen. If you replace the jets on a T25, please make sure you have some means of keeping hold of the end of the pipe*

*for reasons that will become painfully clear in a subsequent post!

washer replacement by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

and of course I went through the rite of passage that all new owners of vehicles have to go through; that of accidentally buying inappropriate wheels while slightly ginned-up in a late night eBay session


VIP or not to VIP by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

Coming up... the Duck

[luckyseven]

A long time ago I bought a duck from some unsung inhabitant of this august organ. So long ago I've no idea who it actually was, the thread and their username long since erased from memory by the drifting sands of time. It was a great duck, however. Originally featuring as Kris Kristofferson's character Rubber Duck's mascot, the hench duck first appeared in the superb 1978 film Convoy from Sam Peckinpah....incidentally featuring Ali McGraw in an E-type, allegedly with no pants. I mean, what's not to like? Anyway, when Tarantino made his tributary and slightly-less-good film Death Proof, he not only referenced such titans of cinema as Vanishing Point, he also adulterated Rubber Duck's Mack mascot, gave it a cigar and stuck it on the hood of Stuntman Mike's Nova. Chevy, not Vauxhall. That'd be silly. It was an OK film... like every second Tarantino film, it suffered a bit from a lot of it consisting of lots of people ....all of whom speak fluent Geek exactly like Tarantino himself... none of whom have enough character for anyone to care about sitting around talking Geek about curse word that no-one gives a four-X about. Then some great cinematography happens and the film ends.

But the Duck was great.

So I had this duck, only it wasn't brass or whatever like in the film; it was plastic with light-up eyes and cigar and had a weird white plastic ridge of spines down it's back that didn't light up. So it looked a bit... well, plasticky. And I'd never owned a vehicle that it would suit as a bonnet mascot in the time I'd had it. But now I had The Beryl, and she had a simply vast expanse of dashboard crying out for a mascot. So, out came the masking tape...


Duck masked by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

and I screwed the duck to a plinth for ease of holding (it's very front-heavy and tends to fall onto its beak if left unfixed) and set to with firstly an all-over rattlecan satin black to give a key and to lose the white plastic mohawk


wetlook duck by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

A trip to the Range ....who doesn't love the Range? Oh, you there? Get out... provided some decent acrylic paints and a couple of big fluffy brushes for applying some kind of makeup to ladyfaces (all of which is a mystery to me...I haven't worn makeup since the Cure were a thing) which were perfect for drybrushing. So, first a coat of bronze


Copper drybrush by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

and then gold over the top had me duck* looking a lot less plastic. But this isn't a brand new duck, this is an old, knackerdy streetfightin' duck and he's been around, slugged some JD and seen some shee-hut...

* inhabitants of the Stoke-on-Trent region will wonder why that's funny


Gold drybrush by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

...so he needed to look it. I got bizzy with the distressing, bringing out my inner nerd who'd been successfully suppressed since the early days of Warhammer and the late days of Tamiya kits and was pleasantly surprised to find I could still bluff a bit of Art


Washing verdigris by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

when the wash had dried, he definitely looked a much more scroffulous and well-used kind of a duck, but I didn't want him to look like he'd just been washed up somewhere


Verdigris finished by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

....so back again with the drybrushing and a few more highlights added back in had him looking like an objet d'art that had aged and been polished smooth with touch and use, although what you'd actually use one for remains something of a mystery. I think these days they call it *shudders* patina. Although plastic doesn't really patinate so you have to help it along


Highlights back in by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

And then strip off the masking and add a couple of good coats of laqcuer to seal in my faux patina


Lacquered by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

and some self-tappers and my newly copperised Death Proof Duck was bodged onto the lovely Just Kampers dash tidy. Which you can now see in (part of) all its glory


Duck done by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

and if you plug the little doobrie into the cigarette lighter socket and press the switch, his eyes and cigar still light up, which is massively cool*. Obvs. One day I may even wire it in directly with it's own switch, but there's always been something more important to do so far.

* If you're five. Or an adult five-year-old. Like me


Duck lights by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

And that was the essentials dealt with. After the mini-service I'd given it, I packed the Beryl off to Doug's VW Werks along the coast here in Sussex to check my work. They confirmed the wiring wasn't great but was at least safe, that there were a few bits of bodywork that could do with "doing" (which I knew), welded up some holes in the trailing arms (which is a common T25 problem I'd failed to spot and which saved me nearly 300 quid per side), gave her a rather better service than I had, and gave her back with a new MOT. Yay, the Beryl.

Let's go, then...

[dikkehemaworst]

You made me smile for the first time in the last 2 weeks. Really really nice write-up. Thanks,you saved my sanity.

[dandam]

Great write up, looking forward to more

[johnthesparky]

Excellent, always enjoy a L7 write up, and have had 3 today

Looking forward to the next episode

[luckyseven]

Thanks! daver555 I think all T25s came with walkthrough cabs unless they stared life as panelvans. dikkehemaworst , I'm happy to be of service and sorry you're clearly having a bummer at the moment. johnthesparky , you're about to get another one cos we've got a lot to get through to get up to date!

It's a fair point from daver555 though; due to the nature of all campers being converted in the aftermarket, it's sometimes difficult to ascertain what the vehicle started life as. The easiest way without deciphering the VIN number is to look at the window seals; if they are flat or protrude slightly from the side of the body then the T25 left the factory as a panel van and the windows were cut into the steel sides later when it was converted. If it was a microbus then it has factory windows which are recessed into the body with a sloping seal. There are other benefits to it having started life as a bus of some sort, such as the fact that there will be rear seatbelt mounting points built into the structural webs behind the interior panels.

And while we're doing T25 spotters facts; you can tell an aircooled model from a water-cooled one because it only has one frontal grille (unless it's a bus with factory airconditioning, which were extraordinarily rare in the UK market). If you look at a picture of the Beryl, where you see the front numberplate mounted; on waterboilers there will be another horizontal grille similar to the one incorporating the headlights. On later T25 versions after the 1985/6 model year facelift, the radiator bottom grille extended to wrap around into the front indicators, and the headlights changed from round to square. So that's a quick bluffers guide to elementary T25 spotting.

Anyhoo, back to Beryl. With a clean bill of health, we managed to set off on the excellent day trip that is the Brighton Breeze, although she did rather blot her copybook by trying to leave me and the kids stranded in a building site at silly o'clock in the morning (you can read that particular escapade in this 'ere thread... forum.retro-rides.org/thread/206805/brighton-breeze-2018-pics ). Anyway, she did make it eventually;


Beryl by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

and back! Two other annoying things happened on that trip; the first being that I reversed into the lamppost that was hidden by the green mesh you see in that picture above. Brighton council hate motorists and have done everything they possibly can to dissuade anyone from driving in the city, ever, and that includes running down the seafront Madeira Drive to turn off participants from entering or spectating at the Speed Trials. It's now like some postapocalyptic wasteland held up by scaffolding and is about as appealing a place to spend time on wet October weekend as a holiday trip around memorable Eastern European bus depots (anyone who's spent a few years on a.n.other forum with the initials PH will remember that epic "worst Christmas present thread" in which that book gained legendary status). Anyway, the angle at which the light caught the safety mesh made it impossible to see the bloody great cast iron post behind it, and it put a rather large dent into Beryl's rear bumper.

The other annoying thing was that the stereo (dodgily wired in by a PO) went mental and refused to switch off, even with the key out of the ignition. I only got it off by punching it really quite sternly in the end and it was never quite the same again after that. Although to be fair, it clearly wasn't quite the same in the first damned place. So that was two more things to add to the list of jobs then. However, simple ones first;

It turns out that Beryl, for no reason that can be easily explained, had one LHD and one RHD headlight. Her propensity to dazzle oncoming motorists in a monocular fashion had been mitigated by that time-honoured method of bodging some insulting tape over the headlight. However, this clearly wasn't an ideal or permanent remedy and required sorting


more rusty fasteners by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

In typical VW fashion, the front of the T25 is a curious mix of clever engineering and design and shameful cost-cutting and bodgery. For example, the T3 originally only came with aircooled boxers but they clearly intended it to be watercooled from before the launch, because all the space and mountings to fit a radiator are there in the cavernous nose, even on an airblower like Beryl. There are mouldings pressed into the front panel to convert the same shell from LHD to RHD and be able to swap the wipers over to sweep the correct area of the glass. The grille itself is held on proprietary quick-release quarter-turn fasteners. And yet, the headlights are held in by self-tappers. Which are made from cheese and rust


monocle look by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

the weather wasn't exactly conducive, but I kept the self-tappers soaking in WD40 for a day or so and considerable application of the impact driver eventually shifted them. The replacement headlight looked to have an identical beam pattern on the glass to the old one, but it definitely kicked the light the correct way, which was weird. The reflector bowl was much more chromey though, the old one had gone milky (hunnnh, milky milky*) with age like a pensioner's eyesocket.

* Mary Whitehouse Experience moment for all those of an age


new vs old by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

While I was on a roll, I thought I'd have a go at swapping the equally rusty self-tappers on the perfectly good passenger-side light for some nice stainless ones too. The impact driver was called into service again; lined it up on the head of the screw, gave it a good whack with the hammer... and the headlight glass fell out of the unit and shattered on the concrete Smeg. Oh well, I needed to pop over to Heritage again for some fasteneres anyway. The grille itself was looking a little tired too. The plastic had done that old automotive plastic thing of going grey and knackerdy, but not in a homogeneous way. It was streaky and patchy and generally looked a bit fox-picture.


grille fade by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

I gave it a sand down with fine grit and then blew it over with the last of a tin of Valspar Direct to Plastic paint I had left over from... something else. Umm, spraying the grille of the RX-7 IIRC. Anyway, it prosaically but quite literally does exactly what it says on the tin. I just had enough to do the grille, which was both good and bad. Good because it looked a miwwion times better but bad because I can't find anywhere that sells the same Valspar paint any more. I've since got some similar straight-to-plastic stuff by Rustoleum (Hammerite or whatever the parent company is now) which just isn't quite as good either in terms of finish or coverage, being more watery and prone to runs. A bit like your nan, really


Direct to plastic by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

Remember I mentioned quarter-turn fasteners? Well, many of you will be well aware that Dzus fasteners have been offering this option to the discerning motorsport prep and enthusiast market for decades. But VW, being VW, had clearly no intention of using a perfectly adequate tried and tested mechanical solution when they could damned well reinvent the wheel for themselves. So that's what they did, coming up with a strangely organic spade-shaped thing that protrudes into a thin spring steel receptacle held captive in the bodywork. This distorts as the fastener pokes through, then springs back behind the flange (ooh, flange) of the fastener to lock it in place as it turns through 90°


VW reinvents Dzus by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

Of course, the rubber washers that hold the fasteners into the grille had long since perished and split, but it was easy enough to make up my own out of some fuel hose of the correct diameter. And fortunately Heritage stock not only the fasteners, as two of mine were missing, but the receptacle plates as well.


new retainers by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

While the grille was off, I re-attached the VW badge which was clinging on by one of the three original studs, two having sheared off. This was achieved by the simple application of really tiny self-tappers (which can occasionally have their uses) only stainless so they won't rust. It was bit fiddly drilling really tiny holes into the snapped stud remnants to take the screws without going through or off-centre


Badge bodgery by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

so that was a nice, relatively easy (or would have been if I hadn't wrecked a perfectly good headlight, anyway) job that made quite a difference not only to how drivable the van was... especially at night...but also how she looked.


matching eyes by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

...not that you can tell, since it was constantly raining and it hides a multitude of sins. You'll just have to take my word for it


drops by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

Due to the cack weather it's nice to have an indoorsy project to get on with too, and mine was to address some of the styling horror that was going on inside the Beryl. To say that it had been Hyacinth Bucketed was something of a mild way of phrasing it. Honestly, it was like a nursing home lounge circa 1978, all floral and pink and frilled-edged cushions and even... the horror... bunting. Bunting! Jesus. The kids insisted it had to stay and I humoured them for a while... or appeared to. Then I took it down later when I was grinding stuff in the van (becos "fire risk") and never put it back up again. They don't seem to have twigged yet

So the bunting had to stay...for the moment... but the cushions. Their days were seriously numbered. Floral I could just about take, but not floral and frilled. I use them now as kneeling pads in the garage, and it makes me feel gooooood every time I grind a bit more oily swarf into them. But what to replace them with? well, funnily enough, the scheme I came up with was @quatermass' fault (as is so much on this forum). Y'see I'd posted this photo in response to something I can't even remember in his "Naughty Corner" thread forum.retro-rides.org/thread/192439/naughty-corner thinly disguised as a chat room in the guise of a Scimitar build thread. You should look in if you haven't already, its where all the cool cats hang out


The view from inside by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

anyway, that's the view from where I am now, looking out at you through that monitor. Yes, you. Right now. Stop doing that while we're talking, please.... oh, for the love of God... not right to the second knuckle? Animal! Gross. Anyway, that got me thinking; album sleeves are a superb source of ready-made artwork, even as CDs where it's all too tiny for my old, bent eyes to appreciate. But I do have loads of groovy old albums, don't I?

Yes, I do. That was rhetorical, I wasn't really expecting you to know the answer. But let's be honest, I seem like the sort don't I? So it's off down memory lane I went


Zones by Nick Liassides, on Flickr


Hawkwind were the first port of call, not just because they were the first band I saw and have been a profound part of my life over 35 years or more, but also because they did loads of rare collectible versions of records with coloured vinyl and pic discs and fold-out sleeves and booklets (Space Logs to the initiated, stop tittering, this was serious stoner stuff back then) and....ooohh, just stuff!


None more blue by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

If you were like me and an obsessive collector back in the day, you'd have loads of these gems and rarities that would provide an ideal proof of concept. And so a quiet morning saw me spending a happy few minutes artfully arranging them on the floor whilst trying to make them look like they hadn't been arranged at all. And then balancing on a stool while trying to photograph them from directly above. Without getting any of my feet into the shot


choose your masques by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

Any Hawkwind cognoscenti in the audience? Bet it's a while since you saw an original PXR5 cover with the dodgy plug wiring uncovered by that fake warning sticker? and yeah, the fold-out Space Ritual was comparatively common, but the Warrior on the Edge of Time one was rare even in "normal" foldout shield style, but this is a pre-release version with the separate lyric sheet, not the printed inner sleeve. So there. And yeah, that's an original X:In Search of Space with the fold-out sleeve and HawkLog... and the Church of with the booklet... and... well, you can see, it's proper geek stuff But more importantly, with a bit of cropping and some post-processing I felt that I ended up with a picture that was interesting in its own right, fit in with the planned colourscheme of the bus, and also said a lot about me and the personal journey I'd been on through life. Which after all is what having a camper is all about


Hawkwind II by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

so what next? Well, a matching but not matched set was needed for the interior, so with the Hawkwind Project proving a success, it was off to pillage the record collection for some of the other most significant musos of my miss-spent youth


NMA pic discs by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

New Model Army were another band you could obsessively collect when vinyl was King; as you can see in the pic here, there were often 7", 10" and 12" versions of the same single (as with Space here), all with different tracks on the B-side


Theres an army coming by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

along with bootlegs and rarities and all sorts of cool schmutter. The Clog Dancers 7" has the only known version of We Gotta Get Out of This Place sung in pure Bradford. Again, a quick retouch later and


NMA by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

and so on to the next one. Who should need no introduction


Point me at the sky by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

yes, it's the centrefold of Ummagumma. Don't be like that. It's massively underrated... yes a lot of it is tosh, but who can't respect a track title like Several Species of Small Furry Mammals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving With a Pict, even if the track itself is unlistenable drivel? But Grantchester Meadows is noting short of beautiful. And that version of Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun... just epic


Floyd II by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

Not bad getting in 7"es from the band that never released singles, either; When The Tigers Broke Free wasn't included on The Wall and only came on 7" originally (though you can now get it on the soundtrack of The Film CD... if you can find it) and saw The Rog really getting to grips lyrically with the seething resentment his father's sacrifice in war left him with. And Point Me At The Sky, the greatest Floyd song no-one's never heard of. This was hard to get in the pre-download era, even when it was re-released on an Italian pressing. You can still see 7" originals change hands for nearly three figures!


Pile of mercy by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

Sisters of Mercy... of course...don't be dismissing them as a gimmick goth tinsel effort on the basis of that bloody Corrosion chart pop nonsense. And recruiting a guitarist from Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Before that they were awesome and creating their own genre, taking inspiration from acts as diverse as Leonard Cohen, Psychedelic Furs and Lou Reed. A songwriter who was as fluent in German and Japanese as he was conversant with the Romantic poets makes for some of the most haunting words set to song since the Lament of the Hebrew Slaves. And also had a great line in bootlegs, low-volume pressings and rarities


Sisters by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

And finally, Levellers, one of the best bands ever to get a few beers down you and jump around to*, especially live. And also with an excellent stylistic unity to their sleeve artwork that came from them all being drawn by Jeremy the bass player.Which oddly lends them great impact and ideal for being turned into a cushion. I'm guessing that wasn't what Jeremy had in mind when he painted them...

* see also "Prodigy", RIP Keith, and "Motörhead", RIP Lemmy


Levellers by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

So I had my designs, all I needed was a way of making them squashy and three-dimensional. Enter stage left Photobox, who for a fee will take your pictures and print them onto just about any household item you care to mention and a few you'd probably never thought of. Now, I'm sure they expect most people to want gurning photos of Babies Jayden and Kayla drooling back at them from their printed chod tat items. But I ain't most people. I want rawwwwk! I waited for one of their deal things they use to sucker back lapsed customers to float to the surface in my email inbox, and pounced. Sadly, it meant I could only do four without it getting too expensive, but that meant at least I had four really cool and unique cushions where before there was only Hyacinth Bucket


the end result by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

And I bet that's not how you saw this post ending when you started reading about rusty headlights! Don;t worry, normal service will be resumed in the next installment when we'll be getting back into the gruesome world of replacing body parts, rust, paint and welding.

[v8ian]

As a 16 yo I still have happy memories of watching Stacia getting her kit off, Hawkwind, almost background music.....

[guz]

My '83 twin slider caravelle had a factory half bulkhead, until I removed it

[johnthesparky]

Went to a small village VW show at the weekend and marvelled at individually themed Cath Kidson vans.... I reckon Agas will be the next big thing, for the full cottage look

[gtviva]

Another jolly good read as always! the headlamps both look right hand drive to me, amongst all the markings on the glass is an arrow which changes direction for left or right hand drive, perhaps the bulb was fitted wrong?

[luckyseven]

Jun 4, 2019 5:06:05 GMT v8ian said:

As a 16 yo I still have happy memories of watching Stacia getting her kit off, Hawkwind, almost background music.....

Mmmm, Stacia. Now there was a lady with outstanding... Assets. She also had a lovely pu... no, I'm not gonna do it

Jun 4, 2019 6:30:27 GMT guz said:

My '83 twin slider caravelle had a factory half bulkhead, until I removed it

That blows my theory out of the water then because Caravelles were never panel vans. Maybe cos it was a twin sliding door thing?

Jun 4, 2019 8:05:18 GMT johnthesparky said:

Went to a small village VW show at the weekend and marvelled at individually themed Cath Kidson vans.... I reckon Agas will be the next big thing, for the full cottage look

Doug's Syncro has a wood-burning stove complete with chimney through the roof if that counts?

Jun 4, 2019 8:26:36 GMT gtviva said:

Another jolly good read as always! the headlamps both look right hand drive to me, amongst all the markings on the glass is an arrow which changes direction for left or right hand drive, perhaps the bulb was fitted wrong?

Is that even possible? I didn't find an arrow on the old glass and it definitely kicked the wrong way. I agree they look identical though. Weirdness, innit

[gtviva]

Never heard of Stacia, what was I doing in my youf if I missed that!

You can see the arrow just under the circular E mark on both glasses

[MiataMark]

Just googled Stacia Hawkwind, err interesting. I never saw Hawkwind live although I did go to a Gong concert one, talking of song titles one of theirs is "Squeezing Sponges Over Policemen's Heads"

[luckyseven]

Gong Had some good moments, though they were so well hidden in the dross that no-one ever found them. Steve Hillage could play a bit, though, and was right at the start of the electronic dance music revolution bringing on many seminal acts. And his cover of the Beatles/George Harrison's It's All Too Much was epic

Anyway, we digress. I promised rust and stuff, and that's what you're getting. After one more brief pause to remember the delightful Stacia....



right, then. Bubbles. Rust. Rust Bubbles...the Beryl's passenger door had it all. See? How good a segue was that‽ And an interrobang. Awesomes. As I mentioned before, the passenger door was absolutely FUBAR. Now, doors are a funny thing with T25s. They do come up on the Bay of Evil quite often, and vary wildly both in quality and price. Most of them, obviously, are stripped off rotten vans being broken for parts and are thus correspondingly terrible. But condition seems to be no indicator of price; some utterly rotted examples are being priced at ridiculous amounts. We're talking hundreds of pounds here. As with everything on eBay, add "vintage" and "VW" to the description and watch those pound signs float up to the sky. However, I was clearly in the right place at the right time and some brekaers place up in Lancashire was flogging one for fifty quid, plus IIRC twenty quid post. Which seemed an absolute bargain given that they had to courier it pretty much the entire length of England. And it looked really solid in the photos.

It arrived. It was really good


New old door by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

I mean, it had some dents and dings, many of which no doubt came from the fact it was couriered by a man with a van, no wrapping of any kind whatsoever. The vendor had just written my address in grease pencil on the window and sent it off like that!


new old door face by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

First impressions were many and varied; a) I don't blame him not packing it up, because T25 doors are bloody massive and you only really appreciate this when they're not attached to the van; ii) it was a Caravelle model, so later and upmarket with an opening quarterlight and everything; 3) it was actually in really good nick, almost no rust at all; errrr d) it was quite clearly the wrong colour

There were a few places where the paint was gone through, mostly I suspect from rattling about in a van from Lancashire


Little nicks by Nick Liassides, on Flickr


and weirdly, all the fasteners were really rusty to the point where I was careful to leave them all soaking in penetrating oil before trying to loosen them off for fear of them snapping


For comparison by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

but overall I was pleased, because I'd seen doors offered for sale at three times what I paid, collection only, that were rotted as pears and this one was good, solid and even came with all the windows and door furniture, which are often stripped off for sale separately


nasty fasteners by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

So I got on with treating the few rusty bits, sanding back as much as possible and then treating with Bilt Hamber (thanks to @grumpynorthener who recommended it and I figure if it's good enough for him it's certainly good enough for my cruddy old bus)


Bilt Hamber where needed by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

And while that was going off, I relocated the owls that were one of the main reasons that Niah, my daughter, first fell in love with Beryl. They're like those little hula dancers you've no doubt seen on the dash of every splitwindow van ever ; a little solar panel powering an eccentric cam in their body halves makes them do a little dance when the sun shines. Well, Beryl had a pair of owls on her dash that the li'l Un loved and so I moved them to the cabinet top next to where she sits in the back. And carefully cleaned the solar panels of all the accumulated crud. I was worried that any powerful cleaner would knacker them, so it was a tedious process but once finished they sprang into jiggly life with new vigour. It may seem daft, but these things matter when you're seven!


Niahs owls by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

Right, enough nonsense. Back to the door. There was quite a deep ding in the bottom panel, not sure what from. Because of the structure of the door internally, I couldn't get behind it to try to push it out so had no real choice but to sand it back and fill it. You can really see how VW put a lot of love into their panel prep in just how many layers of primer and paint go on. There was a famous Beetle ad back in the epochal days of the Doyle Dane Bernbach "Think Small" advertising campaign where the strapline went "first we paint the car. The we paint the paint" and it was one of the stronger features of VWs for the longest time, just the sheer quality and durability of the paintwork. Weird how they rust so well, really innit


mystery bullseye by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

anyway, a few other ugly spots needed bogging up and sanding back, so that was done as well


Bogging up by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

and it wasn't long before I could start priming up. I opted to just mask off all the seals; they're bonded on and I didn't fancy my chances of sticking them back on again with anything durable enough once removed. Plus they were in decent condition and I suspected that trying to remove them would mutilate them beyond redemption and then I'd be out of pocket for new ones (and they ain't cheap!). Likewise the windows and seals... all the how to guides and the Haynes said the windows are a proper PITA to remove. So I did the cowardly thing and left well alone. Masking tape is cheaper than windows and seals!


masked up and go by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

I was quite pleased with the level of prep, I'd learned a lot from doing the Beetle engine lid and although I say so myself, with the bits I'd repaired once primed you'd never have known Never quite known what that smiley is supposed to represent, I'm going with "pleased and slightly embarrassed"


Little nicks smoothed by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

Given that this was happening at the very end of October, the weather was far from ideal to be painting, and especially priming, which as ane fule no is hydrophilic, i.e. absorbs moisture. Of course, every day I tried anything, it was cold and raining so I was forced to keep the doors closed and resort to my hilariously middle-class paint oven. Yes, it's an old electric faux fire


Drying oven by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

the other annoying thing about the T25 door, besides it's bloody humongous size, is its utterly ridiculous weight. Honestly, if you left it stood on its edge it'll actually sink into solid concrete it's so heavy. This meant I couldn't do what I wanted to and hang it from the roof so I could paint both sides, I had to lay it on a trestle and do one side at a time


Outside primed by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

Eventually however, we were there. Or thereabouts. I'll be honest, it got to the point where I thought "that'll do" and yes, I know that proper preparation prevents p1ss poor performance but it was just such a massive acreage to sand that I reached a "life's too short" stage. I had a load of rattlecans made up by Autopaints Brighton shop.autopaintsbrighton.co.uk/ who are in Hove, actually* and who are always helpful and quick, with a great colour-matching service. And then I threw a load of paint on the door and hoped it'd stick

* joke for which a bit of local knowledge is probably required.


Shiney corners by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

Spraying in a closed garage with no ventilation isn't really to be recommended... but compared to some of the stuff I've voluntarily put into my lungs over the years it probably doesn't matter too much, and even though it got a bit thick at times, no-one died


light of God or death cloud by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

as I said, I'd learned a lot from doing the Beetle lid and was a lot more successful at getting a halfway decent finish straight out of the spraycan this time around... it seems a lot about how close you hold the can, what angle, how fast you move it... I'm certainly no expert by any stretch and mostly what it;s done is give me a massive amount of respect for people who do this stuff for a living. The skill, the feel you must need to acquire to produce show-quality paint is of an almost supernatural level.


Shiney flats by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

I was especially keen on getting a good base finish in the complicated bits around the edges and hinges. Mostly because they're fiddly and the idea of trying to sand back a rough finish without going through any of the edges and having to do it all again filled my with horror


Shiney complicated bits by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

[luckyseven]

So that went comparatively well then. Yay. I left it a good couple of days to dry before flipping it over and starting on the other side. The mystery dent was still visible, my filling is not up to the correct standard yet. So I had another go at it... and then ran out of grey primer


Mystery bullseye refilled by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

So off came the masking and the whole lot was re-sprayed with white primer (because that was what I had left) to ensure there were no edges that could come through the paint. The possible slight difference in colour this might give wasn't a concern as you can't really see both sides of the door at the same time! Then, back went the masking and the yellow was laid on


Painting the difficult side by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

and then re-masked and the white went down. Beryl didn't start life in this lurid yellow with the two-tone white. She was actually dark brown and a sort of off-beigey colour but has been resprayed (badly) at some point in her life. I've no idea if it was done by the company (or bloke) who converted her, but if so they were a bit shoddy because there are traces of overspray all over the place; seals, panels, even bits like the edge of the glovebox. I suspect it was a bloke on his driveway. Errr so a bit like me, then. Only much less OCD


oven baked by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

Anyway, it does mean I've no real idea what the paint is, what the code might be, or even if they're VW colours. I had to take a bit of bodywork down to Autopaints Brighton to colour-match. The white was easy, I just took off the sliding door track cover which is a couple of screws (rusty self tappers, of course, now replaced with stainless). The yellow was a bit of a pain because the smallest piece of removable bodywork with the yellow on it was a door, and I don't think the paint shop would have been overjoyed with me rocking up with one of them. Eventually I hit upon the little door round the back; because of the pancake motor being under the "boot" floor, VW had to make a little hinged sprung-loaded flap in the rear valance so you can check and fill the oil. This is only held by two bolts (M6, rusty, now replaced with stainless) and it's only a foot or so across, so I whipped that off and got it colour-matched. Of course, at the time I didn't twig that the numberplate mounts to this little door and so has spent the last possibly 38 years protecting the paint from the UV fading that the rest of the bodywork has suffered.

Sooooooo... the short version of all that was that due to my stupidity, the white was a perfect colour match. The yellow... not so much

Oh well. It'll all fade eventually. Anyway, as with the inside surface, I was especially careful to get a good finish on the curvy complicated bits round the edges and nooks and crannies


Going white by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

Left it all to gas out for as long as I could, threw a few buckets of lacquer over it all and then I could get on with re-assembling all the bits that had been removable. New fasteners all round, of course


For comparison after by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

The old door doesn't have this rubber trim/seal piece. It's for the later T25s with an actual heater/blower system like in a normal car, not driven by the engine fan and feeble optimism like on Beryl. On later models (or earlier ones with the previously-mentioned uber-rare aircon) there was an extra under-dash vent that fed into this one through the door. It's basically a long, sealed channel right through the door lengthways that terminates in a sliding vent. That can be opened to allow air (hot or cold) to be blown into the rear seating area of the van. Obviously on an aircooled bus like the Beryl, there's no way this was ever going to work so they didn't bother setting it up. In fact, the vents in the A-pillar actually have little plastic blanking plates screwed to them (with a self tapper, rusty, now replace with stainless) to close off the entire "system". They're a factory fit; they even have little Audi/VW logos cast into them!


reassembly by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

Anyway, the paint was OK. Even the crossover between white and yellow wasn't too lumpy and awful, but it's not that obvious when mounted anyway because it's sort of underneath the swage line


colours colliding by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

So that was the tricky bit done then. Or was it? I booked in my loyal and long-suffering assistant mate Ada to give me a hand fitting it and then the realisation struck that I'd never actually test-fitted it before setting in painting and stuff. Would it even actually fit?

[MiataMark]

BTW, got a bit distracted with 'googling' Stacia. The cushions are a greta idea might need to borrow that although I'd probably go for just a single album cover (DSOFTM, Boston, Crime of the Century, Machine Head, Led Zeppelin [all of them], I guess that shows my musical tastes or lack of depending on your point of view)...

[luckyseven]

So at last the Big Day dawned, now the end of November. Needless to say the weather wasn't the best, but at least it was only cold and damp, not actually raining. Ada arrived and buoyed up on a crest of soss an hegg McMuffins, we set to. First step, obvs, was to remove the old door


Out with the old by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

As you can see, the original doorcards weren't the nicest. Actually, I don't believe they are the originals; as I said, Beryl was dark brown and beige and I don't think even the early 80s were wacky enough for VW to offer that with dark blue trim panels. In addition, the vinyl material is nasty; scratchy and cheap feeling and not anything like any other VW fabric I've encountered. And the hardboard itself is really flimsy and wobbly. They just don't have the feel of a quality VW product, but have exactly the feel of stuff bodged together by a bloke in a shed. Fortunately Heritage had supplied me with a massive box full of an entire trim panel set for a T25 from Newton Commercial, in a nice cream vinyl finish much like those I'd used for Dolly the Beetle. So we could tear off the old doorcard without caring too much how it ended up


insane membrane by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

Underneath... well, at least it had a waterproof membrane, although it was rather like it was suffering from the Andromeda Strain or something else equally scrofulous and incurable! It was actually pretty disgusting, like the door was lined with zombieskin*, and also apparently completely pointless. Given how rotted-out the door was, it didn't seem to be achieving much in terms of waterproofing

* OK, possibly not a Thing. But how cool would it be to buy zombieskin on a roll by the metre, or a sofa upholstered with it?


zombie apocalypse by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

Remember what I said about how the van had obviously been sprayed... and then oversprayed? It's like this pretty much all over the place.


Shameful overspray by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

and by way of example for how rotten the steel was in places;


rot by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

but the really shocking bit was he bottom edge where the doorstep is. This part is a real water-trap and has been a weak spot on Transporters since the first splitscreens... not sure why it took VW so long to design a decent setup, but then maybe they didn't intentionally build their vans to last fifty years or more.It's kinda an unavoidable feature of the forward control setup that a rear-mounted engine allows; if you're sitting at the foremost point of the vehicle, the layout can't really avoid having a step built in next to you. Because you're sitting on the wheelarch, see? So, the original door was bad here. It was rusted out, the seal had come loose and then snapped and a PO had tried to stick it back on. However, they'd tried to stick it back on with some kind of household sealant akin to putty. And it had come loose again. And so they'd used more. And it came loose again. And they'd used more. And come loose and used more and loose and more and more and more until the bottom of the door looked like an archaeological dig


caulk by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

and the goddamned seal still wasn't stuck down. This irredeemable mess was the main reason I opted to simply replace the door rather than trying to fix it; I didn't fancy trying to dig out and repair that abortion and I couldn't see any VW fixing business being keen on doing it either. Honestly, why to fools people do this to a vehicle? The amount of time and money they must have put into such a failed bodge, they could have actually fixed the problem in the first place. Anyway, by some miracle (and having spent a long time soaking in WD40) the hinge bolts actually came undone comparatively easily, and in no time we had the offending article unbolted


open up by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

Of course, the crevice that the door bolts into is a massive water trap; it's where three panels of steel meet and crud and water gets sluiced upin there and can't get out. It's another design constant that seems to have carried on from Splits to Bays to T25s, despite being very different in many ways and they all suffer from rust here. Sure enough, there were warning signs in Beryl's gusset


preliminary scabs by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

and just like a fresh scab, you can't not pick at it. Joking aside, it had to be examined and cleaned up; no point hanging a nice shiny door if the structure it's hung from is dissolving from the inside out with rust


don't pick it by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

and...phew!... there was a lot of rust widespread under the paint. But it was surface rust, not full-blown rot. Got away with one there, then


Dinitrol needed by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

the hardest part was effectively grinding it back; the only tool that would fit in was a Dremel wire brush and even that grabbed at the edges of the crevice annoyingly. Still, it was better than sanding it all by hand


just in time by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

So we stripped it back best we could, Bilt Hamber rustconverted the bits we could get to, and sprayed Dinitrol cavity rustconvertor/wax into the bits we couldn't reach. And because it was really cold, spent a lot of time with a heat gun trying to help chemistry happen; brush, heat, spray, heat, primer, heat, paint, heat...


drying primer by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

and considering the adverse conditions, after much faffing about, the relevant area was eventually all yellow again. You can see the Official VAG Blanking Plate part number #289DBP0975/A/RH7809495 there on the A-pillar with the speaker wire sticking out from behind it. And yes, it has overspray on it


blown over by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

The actual step seemed pretty crusty to be fair, and I suspected that it would need to be replaced altogether in the not too distant future (and you can see whether my prediction was accurate in later thrilling installment of this 'ere thread*). So I wasn't that bothered that my ghetto masking technique did allow a bit of overspray onto the step rubber. To be fair, it already had some anyway

* spoiler alert; it was


epic masking technique by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

meanwhile, Ada was running a bead of non-curing sticky butyl tape around the perimeter of the door so that we could fix a nice new waterproof membrane to it that didn't look like it was made from zombieskin


membrane added by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

What followed next was genuinely traumatic. I mean, me and Ada are two large, reasonably strong blokes... actually scratch that; I am and Ada is legendarily massive and Herculesian. And the goddamned wrestling match we had trying to offer up that bloody huge and unreasonably heavy door was actually life-shorteningly frustrating. Honestly, threading a needle without my reading glasses is light relief after that. If you look at the picture a couple of posts ago of me being pleased with the paint finish around the complicated bits, you'll see a little rectangular hinge with two threaded holes in it. There are two of those on the door. They go into the crevice we'd just rust-treated and then four bolts thread through the flitch where the panels are spot-welded together and screw into those hinge plates. While supporting the massive weight of the door at 90° to the van. and not moving it by as much as one millimeter otherwise the bolt won't catch the thread. And you can't get to the back side of any of it because the door and the bodyweb are now in the way. And it's been a loooong day and it's cold and getting dark...

Jesus. I'm getting the RAGE just thinking about it Honestly one of the most irritating things I've ever done on a vehicle, ever. So excuse us for not taking any photos of that part.

Anyway, after much swearing and tantrums (mostly on my part, I have to be honest) the door was hung.


end of a long day by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

No, of course it didn't line up; by it's very nature the alignment of the hinges to the bolt holes allows a lot of movement and how you tighten them affects how the door sits in all three dimensions; up and down in the aperture as well as front-to-rear angle. Plus, of course the latch can be adjusted as it's mounting plate floats in the b-pillar on three bolts and until you tighten all of these, it's free to move and affect how the door sits when latched.

Suffice to say, this would have been a right irritating old faff if we hadn't just done something REALLY irritating to put it into context. However, it was dark, it was cold, we were tired and fed up and it was ON and more or less aligned. It'd do for now.


nice door shame about the colour by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

It was only a slight shame that the colour clearly didn't match the rest of the van at all

[Deleted]

Nick - For rattle cans - that's no bad finish at all bit of a flat & polish (or not) once the door is hung and it will look the business

PS I reckon that your used door has been resprayed at least once - no car manufacture puts that amount of paint on a production line motor