Well the time has come to carry start carrying out the restoration of my camper MyVanwy. The story thus far:








Purchased back in august 2006 while I was still in uni, I bought my camper off an "honest" Previous owner. I had great plans for her the the following summer. I went about fitting a few things ready for, what would be, an 8 week journey around France and North Italy. I fitted an auxilary battery with split charge relay system and seperate fuse box





i eventually found what caused my fuel smell when i filled more than 3/4 of a tank





i replaced this central breather elbow followd by all of the other breather flexi hose which had become rock hard after probably 35yrs of not being replaced.

Next port of call was to fit a propex HS2000 for the cooler evenings spent in the campsites on the continent. the location i chose was to be under whether my dormobile cool box should have been. This was a dead space, that was a bit useless. rather than wasting the valuable space i thought if my propex would fit, then i could shelf off and make use of the area where the cool box should have been. this is where i was talking about:



with the eventual hose coming out in the kick panel below the back seats:



I also, went about fitting a 12/24V fridge manufactured by Vitri Frigo, an Italian company who specialise in marine use.



Got everything sorted in Uni holidays and outside of working full time in those hols in time for my travels. had an amazing time, but things havent stopped ont he camper front. As recently advertised on here, i sold my Dormobile interior and the camper is now empty. Stripping in interior has opened a few cans but not that many.

behind the drivers side is royaly entertaining....







Then there was a section the other end of the middle side panel by the floor....



There was a section or rust found when I removed the cab roof lining, above the drivers door which is pretty bad. I will take pics next time i'm working on the van.

My adjusters should be arriving for me to lower the front end slightly, so my attention will be focusing on taking front beam off and sorting out that, followed by engine removal before sending it off to the bodyshop for some serious body work and a resray. While its away i'll be rebuilding the engine to a slightly high spec than stock.

nice so far. looks pretty clean on the outside.

it looks ok, but was tarted up by previous owner, and as a result at closer inspection, things were not done properly. YEEEEHAAAAAA

Looks just like a van parked in my barn - I've just started breaking it.....

Looks like a good van you have there about from the minor issues!

What are the plans for the interior then and are you keeping the two bunks above

as long as you're only breaking the rough looking bits to sell back to previous owner Loxy

it'll prob end up with a custom interior taking into account the practicality of the dormobile interior but with a more modern, clean/sleek look. I will be keeping the bunks gninnam, so soz if you were after them.

I'm only upset cos you didnt mention all the help I gave you, remember the roses tin?

I wasn't being nosey about having them off you, just interested on what
you had planned.

I think that once I have used mine next year, that I will make new cabinets, but used the old ones as templates as they are well passed their best now

DOn't forget to shove those piccies up once you start putting the interior together

Engine should be coming out this eve with the help of loxy so wath this space

Well with the constant directing, and the odd use of my spanners of Loxy we eventaully got the engine and gear box onto the floor. If somebody ever tells me that its simply a matter of 4 bolts i'll go off the rails.

After attempting to drop the engine followed by the gearbox, we found that, the way the engine mount bar was bolted, it had to go down, before it could go back. This was impossible, because the engine couldnt go back unless it was off the gearbox. Catch 22??? i think so. so the only way i could have dropped just the engine was to unbolt the bracket that the engine mount bar was bolted to. however, if this root was to be taken then the bumper irons would have had to come off first.

we then looked at possible removing the engine bar from the engine, but as it bent above the heat exchangers i'd have had to remove the heat exchangers.

in the end decided to just drop the two at the same time and at 11:10p.m finished with the engine on wood below the engine bay with the gearbox attached.

What about my coffee making skills

Dormy`s are the way forward good luck with it all! Will belooking forward to the updates

Thankyou Alzy. I will hopefully remember to take photos as i'm going along, but i'm already finding myself getting all wrapped up in the excitment of my first ever engine drop.

Loxy, your coffee skills are imperitive for the success of my project. Liz enjoyed her tea tonight also.


ok, so what did we do tonight in -2 degrees? in short, we got the engine from out under the van and disconnected the gearbox.

in full, with pictures....

engine on a few blocks of wood where we left it last night





then, after eventually using a 2 ton axle stand (fron halfrauds), i attempted to jack up the van and put axle stand under the torsion bar. well that didnt work cos the wheels didnt even come off the ground. so routing around the farm (looked under Loxy's rear wheels, we pinched his wood to put under my wheels...




After tipping the engine assembly one way and the other we removed some of the wood, thus lowering the engine further and creating enough clearance. this wasnt before realising that the gearbox was still attached to the earth strap, which wasnt going to help us very much.

With a few pulls on the engine "support" bar Loxy and myself got the engine clear of the engine bay and thus the camper....







making short work of the gearbox, we got that clear and found some oily grease with slight metallic depositary on the corners of the bell housing.



removal of the semi-butchered tinware around the spark plug holes no.2 and no.4 wasn't too difficult. although, a phillips and flathead, along with an alan key was required to undo the "universal" screws lol. The butchering was obviously a direct result of a previous owner dropping a sparkplug or two down there. also removal of the tinware shows that the engine has been out before, with numbering still present on the cylinders and heads. (It will be good to get the previous owners details through from the DVLA, whenever that will be!!!!)





although the exchanger have had serious work in the past, they appear to be the originals with the larger fins inside....





that was about it for the evening, but here's a few other pics for your interests.....











p.s. i'll let Loxy tell you about how he nearly lost his head......[/i]

Well, work continued in stripping the camper on Saturday and I went about removing the easy bit starting with the front and rear bumpers and all of the exterior lights. Also I stripped the headlight bulbs and the wing mirrors. There was some minor rust around the wing mirrors which I was already aware of because the paintwork had blistered a little. See below:





Once the easy bits had been removed Loxy and I turned our attention to the fuel tank removal. I had removed the firewall last year when I replaced all of the fuel breather pipes due to an overwhelming smell of fuel, so I knew the corner section needed some attention. However, it soon came apparent that it would need more attention than initially thought. Firstly it was noticed that my gearbox boot (near the coupling) was a little worn:





This may explain where all of this gunk and crap came from that is visible on the torsion bar:



The firewall was removed, and then after a lot of agro I managed to undo the two fuel tank straps. A little tip……if you intend to undo these straps, make sure you have a deep socket because the stud is too long for a conventional socket. I had to take off the gearbox mount and found Loxy’s ratchet spanner invaluable. The fuel tank came out with a bit of a wiggle to expose what I didn’t really want to see.







The hole on the left is where the bottom of the fuel tank is piped off to go to the fuel pump. But the one on the right isn’t meant to be there. This section is riddled with deep rust and will have to be completely replaced I think:



Needless to say, I wasn’t very happy when I found out this bad news as my face expresses:

That's why you should never remove panels

I take it that you will have to fabricate panels to repair this area then

So Sunday was to be a less revealing day as we were going to spend it on the front end of the van and started by removing the front seats and took off the covers to post to the buyer of my interior (as I had promised the winner of my e-bay auction). This then allowed me to remove the mats that were bolted under the seat and seatbelts. Then the glove box and radio by Loxy, while I labelled and removed all of the wires from the back of the speedo pod and switches etc. This then freed up the dash to be removed. We then worked the wipers free with a bit of persuasion:









Now the front is pretty much bare I could evaluate the damage…..











All in all, the front panel looks ok. It’s just the two corners by the windscreen that appear to need some attention. It may be worth considering getting a replacement lip that runs the full length of the windscreen. I think that I may need to replace the whole cab floor as there is some slight holes in the drivers side severe patch work my the passenger door area. It’s possible to see from the pics above that there is some bad welding done. Well to be honest it looks like someone has laid some toothpaste along the line.

may be able to find someone breaking a bay with it in usable condition. not sure yet tho

Wheres the antlers pic????

And no mention of your "psycho" moment.....

Here's the antler pic, but you can tell the psycho moment i had. just a shame i missed!!!