I've decided to start a thread on my van to catalogue the work I'm doing on it. Maybe some of it will help others and also folks can point me in the right direction if they think I'm doing something the wrong way (more likely!). I bought it last year and since then basically just drove it whilst playing around with small stuff. It's a 1985 1.6D ex German army Transporter. All that had been done since it came out of the army was a really bad paint job and someone dented the hell out of the drivers side wheel arches. This is when i bought it, no radio, still had the army extra floor and panels in it.
This past while I have finally started on the bodywork. The reason I left it so long was that apart from the damage and dodgy paint there wasn't much wrong with the body and I feared I'd make it worse rather than better as I'm not an expert, more an enthusiastic amature! The first job was to tackle the damaged front arch.
It was so bad there was no other option but to cut it off and replace it completely...
After welding it on I gave it 3 coats of zinc primer, 3 coats of red oxide primer and 2 coats of white hammerite to keep it rust free in the meantime as I had to go back to work. (Offshore in the Uk)
More to come!
Yeah right, like that's going to work! So the next job was the rear arch damage.
I then filled in a few dents and gave all the repairs a little red oxide primer so the bus then looked a little sick. 
) to take all the windows out of it and get it all keyed up and hopefully get at least one coat of paint on it. The paint was ordered a couple of days ago and I'm just away to order new seals for all the windows. I know I could just mask them up but the originals on the sides don't look too good and they are covered in overspray from the last paint job.
What width and lenght of window tint film do I need to do from the B pillar back?? I wanted to buy it over here in the UK before I go home as it's cheaper! 
) I went over the whole thing with 240 wet and dry (wet) then again with 400 wet and dry (wet again) then finally with 400 dry sand paper. The reason for going over it with the rough stuff first was due to the bad white paint job that was already on it, there was so many runs and orange peel looking areas that when I tried to start with the 400 w'n'd it just wasn't cutting through it. Here is how it's now looking...
So until the weather improves a bit my next task is going to be attempting to tint the windows. Something I've never tried before. Should be a laugh then! 
I think clean shaven would have been a better idea... 
