Monday, 30 December 2019

My Little Grey Van Rebuild Part 1


Le Petite Van Gris Part 1

It’s an odd title but very apt. I bought a wreck on e-bay in 2018 it was a car that had been converted to a van and I thought it was Villevan but it turned out to be a Rico van conversion. So instead of having two doors at the rear it had one big door, a tailgate that lifted up like an estate car. The van conversions have much more space inside as it has the inner wings of the car not like the van which has two box sections running the length of the body taking up a lot of space on the inside but does have the fuel tank and spare wheels hidden below it. 





I have been progressing quite slowly with this and the weather this autumn has been quite wet. I have no workshop to do anything in and my garage is full of motorcycles so it all has to be done outside on my drive. There has been other interruptions in that I have been on a bike trip to the Himalayas in the Ladakh region of North East India in September and then again to a different part of India in November and by all accounts missing the worst of the wet weather. This does nothing to move the project on. I have ordered a 4X4 chassis from Louis Barbour, who lives in Croatia and his time scale has slipped mainly because of the 2CV World Meeting that he organised along with their local car club in Samobor. You will find something about this in “Something for the Museum” the other blog. In the mean time I have got a few things done. First of all were finding two suitable van gearboxes. I need two for the lower ratios I want to use because of the extra weight of the van and four wheel transmission. This I did over the summer months and are ready for the internals to be transferred to a modern disc brake casing. Next was to get hold of 8 inner driveshafts and 4 outers in good order. The original ones were beyond use being exposed to the elements for years and the gaiters rotting away. The inner driveshafts were lengthened by 35mm which is why I needed 8 and this one done by an engineering firm in Old Sodbury near Bristol. 






 Standard inner driveshafts left.
 Extended driveshafts right.






I just need to get to Bristol to collect them at some point. I had removed the van tailgate to try to get some replacement hinges and there is nothing around that I could find on the internet in stainless steel. In the end I bought something that I thought would do and, after a bit of messing about straightening them they fitted quite well. I needed something to hold the tailgate up so got hold of some gas struts for the job. Sounds like a good idea but I had problems with the brackets as the company were not able to supply me with any internal ball brackets only flat or with the external ball. I got my mate Bob to find a bit of metal that the 13mm ball would go into, clamped it all up in the vice and with a little heat from my oxy-acetylene torch applied enough to bend the flat bracket to the right shape making an internal ball bracket. 



After doing this I realised that if the company were prepared to send me a ball and a bent bracket I could have saved myself some work and achieved the same result by just assembling the ball on the other side of the plate as it is a tight fit with an extension that is peened over, like a rivet, to hold it in place. Hey ho job done but some people don’t make it easy. I have now the appropriate brackets and have fitted them and adjusted the struts by letting some gas out to adjust the pressure on the tailgate so it is easy to close but stays up for access. I have this system on the gull wing doors of my Burton. 



You can just see the inboard fuel tank in the left corner of the picture right.


The next problem to solve is the locking mechanism for the tailgate. The original van doors used 
flat metal strip that engaged in a slot in the floor and behind the top support beam of the door working off a lever on the back of the door handle mechanism. I have the handle mechanism but need to construct the metal strip set up. Not being able to use anything from a van I will have to try to find something suitable. I wonder if I can get the door mechanism from Burton. Now that could do the job?


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