Club 80-90 Forums

jiffies wrote: The van was bought in Oct & had been sat dormant for 8 years sat outside in all weather.

I think that's your problem right there, unless the vehicle had been dry stored subsequently and stripped back to empty bare shell and dried out for a few week properly before even starting on the prep then the residual damp inside will be finding it's way out
cutting up a van at the weekend it was suprising how much water ingress you find as you cut through what appears to be a sealed channel or the like, similarly the rust comes from inside out often till all that is left is the paint holding onto the primer with no steel left at all behind it
there is a real art to doing seems well especially to reapplying a bead which must be convex, ie a complete tube section, to maximise it's ability to expand and contract and the paint has to be flexible enough to do the same

my cheap £500 partial respray came through in 24 hours - I put virtually a whole can of very expensive rust cure paint, one of the american products from Frost all over the back of the affected seam and that pushed out more moisture and then seemed to cure in the seam and in the last 4 years it's been slow to get worse, problem there was damp in the filler and the crack because they'd moved the van out of the workshop into the yard while they did a nice little earner for a pretty woman so it rained on whilst unprepped but stripped back and then they trapped the moisture with the filler and new paint - it was a real shame the paint was excellent but the prep was woeful and the welding non existant - if they could prep like they paint I'd have been sending you all to them, but they'd rather do small insurance job work, I guess that's where the money is for those sorts of businesses; camper resprays would be a nightmare job really unless you love these vans

I had my old type 2 resprayed about 15 years ago and that cost me £2000 then. They took all the windows out etc and I saw the work done all the way through. It was pretty thorough. However, some small amounts of rust still came back after about two/three years. As others have said to have the job done thoroughly including acid treatment is a very costly exercise. I would be surprised if that level of work could be done for less than about £4-5000 these days. We have to accept some seam rust. It goes with the type.
Patrick

I did dry the van out thoroughly for several months before the re-spray but it seems that even if I had of gone down the acid treatment route & spent big money it still comes back in a few years. Surely ther'es a market for replacement fibreglass panels? If theres not already! I know of places that make some panels but is it possibly to make your whole bus out of fibreglass? Just a thought!
Cheers
Jiffies

You still haven't mentioned whether they did the inside of the seams too.......

I'm pretty sure they did nothing to the internal seams. The van was bare when I got it so I simply dried it out & treated everything with Kurust. It sounds as though unless I want to strip it all back to bare metal & start again theres nothing I can do. Think I'll go for the rat look next time & save the bother. Thanks again to all the advise
Cheers
Jiffies

Our bus gets a reapray every 3 years because of rusty seams!
I'm fussy.

That not as daft as it sounds...
I too did this but the lad who does it crashed with the economy.
he charged £850 for the full spray then £250 for the bottom half

I had a full spray six years ago then after three years a bottom half... it was due one again next year but not happening now..

kevtherev wrote: I too did this but the lad who does it crashed with the economy.
he charged £850 for the full spray then £250 for the bottom half

too cheap to stay in business even in a recession, that's just too cheap

Now you can see why I like rollering. Its like a winter coat and takes far less time.

We pay just under £1000 each time. This includes windows out and the odd panel repair. I'm well happy.

I was too

mine lasted 10 1/2 years before any rust appeared then the new owner got another year out of it before he had it resprayed, the reason i reckon it lasted this long is it was sprayed in june / july when the weather was hot and really dry, i would never have any paintwork done at this time of year , even if it was painted in a heated booth its when its left in the damp garage overnight between prep , to stop the rust on the seams i sandblasted both sides of the panel then painted it with comma stop rust brilliant stuff sadly i dont think its still available i did manage to find a can last year in a old motor factors, i have tried kurust jenolite etc and they just dont work , then i applied plastic padding cavity wax to the rear of the panels loads better than waxoyl , and then if any body seams showed any signs cracking i used to touch up with a small artist brush , the van was used every weekend and was outsde in all weathers but it was taken of the road at the end of october every year,
i used to work in the garage next door to the bodyshop both owned by the same company one day they had a t3 van in for paintwork they sanblasted the seams , filled and primered the van then pushed it outside as they were short on space to work on other vehicles it started to rain heavily later that day it was bought inside around 5.30 pm so it was safe overnight and dry , in the morning it was being painted at 9.00am as i arrived 6 months later it looked worse than when it first arrived to be painted

Finally got around to contacting the sprayers. It seems they did all they could in terms of preping it properly. Didnt do anything daft like leave it out in the rain before it was primed. Just one of those things. They are more than happy to take a look at it next year when i want them too. So I guess thats positive
Cheers
Jiffies

Good luck matey. My first one had a little seam rust and rot around the windows. This one is as rotten as Jonny Rotten and is going in for bodywork after Xmas. I hope that after they have cut out the bad stuff, I have something left.

The first one was sorted over winter and finished in 2 pack in Feb, after 2 years there was nothing coming through.

Slam

where in southampton did you get it done,ive allways used the body shop down hazle road in woolston,he,s good and cheep