Hope everyone is well, ive been reasonably busy on the old van in the last week or so fitting the propeller plate, door, step and awning etc. The propeller plate is glued and screwed where you can't see, i then trimmed the roof sheets and bent them over the wall cladding trying to reduce any chance of water leaks that was followed by the fitting the true line j moulding which i sealed with boston v 60 and screwed in place with self drilling screws and nylon washers. The door fitted quite well within the tolerances set by the manufacturer i only had to skim the welds in the top corners of the wall frame so the door frame will fit in place other than that i was happy with the way it went together, i opted for a single galvanized step with checker plate for the step to reduce the chance of slipping and i must say it sure beats using a milk create.
The awning i have fitted is a 14' care free fiesta i am still deciding whether or not to put a support in the middle even though its only 14' there is still a bit of weight in the middle unsupported and when travelling down heavily corrigated ungraded roads may cause it to bounce in the middle who knows. i am currently sorting out parts for the windows which i have taken out the glass and replacing that with poly carbonate which has a 10 year guarantee, scratch resistant etc the chap who supplied it is one of the nicest people you may come across and very helpful too he has over 30 years in the plastics industry. So if your thinking of changing windows his company is Golden West Plastics in Kelmscott WA.
i only have a couple of pic's this post as i keep forgetting to take pictures.
Your a very skilled person Alan ,my hobby is restoring old motorcycles , but a trade background gave me a lot of those skills,you obviously have a trade background the sort of work your turning out has me curious,I cant immagine you as a pen pusher
I have a 5 year old caravan and I loved to have half of your skills I would pull it apart and fix the stupid unfriendly design faults build into it. Maybe I might pay my caravan repairer to do just that next year.
Thanks for the comments, Ron-D was curious about my back ground well i basically brought up where you had to have a trade so instead of being a chippy or cabinet maker i rebelled and became a first class welder engineer at least that's what my papers said when i finished my apprenticeship. I actually had to work on industrial vans when i was an apprentice they were the brand "Modern" and an older brand which could have been "Brimarco" i can only remember the small diamond pressing on the aluminium cladding i actually used to hate it as at that age all i wanted to do was weld and cut things.
The best education i had was working for the old man who was a builder and most of the time i helped out the other tradies working for him as a labourer, ive worked in the construction and mining industry etc and maybe to your surprise have done some work as a pen pusher but eventually i got sick of the governments political correctness and retired a few years back and concentrated on my favourite past time which is prospecting.
With the old van i am rebuilding i think if you take your time and plan ahead work out what you want you should be in good stead, for me luckily i have a bit of experience in some of what i have done on the old van but i also have you tubed a lot of stuff to make sure i was on the right track or even if i was able to do it (i gave it ago anyway) there are a lot of good tuital's on you tube.
Abloodygoodoneatthat.
