Make Autosleeper Great Again
Posted: 08 Apr 2020, 10:28
First of all I'm not sure if this should be in Bodywork or Restoration 
.
A little bit of background: I bought my van last June, an Autosleeper Trident 1988 high top. I made the mistake of buying a freshly painted/repaired 'solid van'. There appear to be some very poor quality 'repairs' and a blow over the rest of the rust. Not going to cast any shade at the seller, I should have done further research before buying. I paid 7k for the van. It has 152k miles on the clock and according to my mechanic - Volksfarmers in Kent (amazing) the engine 'isn't awful'' - which to me sounds like fantastic praise. I had a little bit of work done last year which made her run pretty smooth but she is smoking a bit from being overwintered in a barn. I wanted to protect my lovely paint job from the elements.
I had the roof resealed and it appears that the front rivets had perished and started to rot the front roof which I wanted to explore further.
I've got the van back, stripped the fuel tank and have a replacement including all lines, etc from Brickwerks. Last week I removed the interior to tart up the units and replace the disintegrating carpet. I've found quite a lot of rust in various places and some evidence of poor repairs (choosing my words carefully here).
I've started uncovering the rust that I can see. There's quite a bit and I'm not really sure where to start as it's a little overwhelming. At the moment I'm going to start on the smaller repairs internally just to get a feel for it and perhaps bouy my confidence prior to tackling the larger repairs, at the moment everything I do feels like I'm rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. I'm going to upload various pictures, I've got my own welder (R-tech 180 MIG) and have done a little welding previous but no bodywork. I've been reading the amazing resources here and can't be more thankful that such a brilliant resource exists.
Any advice as to the best place to begin or places that require further investigation would be much appreciated. I'll upload the photographs in a separate posts (can't seem to upload more than one photo per post on Tapatalk)
Thanks.
.A little bit of background: I bought my van last June, an Autosleeper Trident 1988 high top. I made the mistake of buying a freshly painted/repaired 'solid van'. There appear to be some very poor quality 'repairs' and a blow over the rest of the rust. Not going to cast any shade at the seller, I should have done further research before buying. I paid 7k for the van. It has 152k miles on the clock and according to my mechanic - Volksfarmers in Kent (amazing) the engine 'isn't awful'' - which to me sounds like fantastic praise. I had a little bit of work done last year which made her run pretty smooth but she is smoking a bit from being overwintered in a barn. I wanted to protect my lovely paint job from the elements.
I had the roof resealed and it appears that the front rivets had perished and started to rot the front roof which I wanted to explore further.
I've got the van back, stripped the fuel tank and have a replacement including all lines, etc from Brickwerks. Last week I removed the interior to tart up the units and replace the disintegrating carpet. I've found quite a lot of rust in various places and some evidence of poor repairs (choosing my words carefully here).
I've started uncovering the rust that I can see. There's quite a bit and I'm not really sure where to start as it's a little overwhelming. At the moment I'm going to start on the smaller repairs internally just to get a feel for it and perhaps bouy my confidence prior to tackling the larger repairs, at the moment everything I do feels like I'm rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. I'm going to upload various pictures, I've got my own welder (R-tech 180 MIG) and have done a little welding previous but no bodywork. I've been reading the amazing resources here and can't be more thankful that such a brilliant resource exists.
Any advice as to the best place to begin or places that require further investigation would be much appreciated. I'll upload the photographs in a separate posts (can't seem to upload more than one photo per post on Tapatalk)
Thanks.
