Coachmen Leprechaun

There's actually 4 body-lines that are working against me....



I've been able to line up the top two body-lines and the bottom body-line fairly well but its the most prominent line (3rd down) that's a couple of mm off. The donor van had some fairly heavy pinstriping to camouflage the differences between the body-line on the door & wing so you're spot on there, thats what the rprevious guy did to hide the misalignment.... I'm going to do my best to avoid pin striping if I can. I still have a little adjusting to do on the door to drop it a little amd move it forward a mm or two so the lines might appear better after that... I still have to adjust the curvature of the door too, the bottom and top edges of the door do not match the profile of the cab. I was able to adjust the top of the door easily by bending in the window frame with a cable winch and some straps. For the bottom edge of the door I'll have to do some cutting & welding to pull the bottom of the door in 3-4mm...

The other passenger-side wing that I have would not line up at all!!!

All good fun...

Sher if it comes to it, I might get the correct coachmen graphics painted onto the doors. Ours never had them as long as we had it, but the coachmen logo was a standard factory addition on the doors... It'd take the emphasis off the line I'm having problems with anyways...

Heres a photo of another camper (not ours)...


Looking at it some more, the door line I'm having issues with is also misaligned with the wing on this camper too. It might be a common feature... lol

I did some more with the 12v leisure lighting in the accommodation unit. I replaced the rest of the standard 25 watt incandescent bulbs with 3 watt LED panels. I really couldn't be happier with the result!



The LED panel on the right is the one I went for. The standard 'ish bulb on the left wasn't so good.





Separate thread about it here -

forum/topic.php?t=3403&page=fst_unread&highlight=

Aye... There's a lot of grumbling on the GMC/chevy van forums about door and panel alignment issues on the older vans. In a lot of cases these vans were made as work vans and nobody really gave a crap if the doors & panels didn't fit quite right. They weren't really built to Bentley or Aston Martin tolerences...

No stress anyways as I'm not too far away from where I want to be with the passenger side...

Onto the driver side this evening...

The big manky old V8 engine is not looking its best at the moment...


I've been lashing on plenty of WD40 to all of the nuts & bolts on the engine over the last couple of days to soften them up. This seems to have paid off. I haven't had one stripped bolt yet (touch wood).



Most of the tubes & widgets you see in the photos above are for the California smog abatement system and for cruise control. Removing them will tidy up the engine bay nicely. Chrome rocker covers will be a welcome addition to the engine.

The pink rubber bungs you see in the photos, I've fitted temporarily to prevent anything getting into the engine while it's stripped back.

Removing all external gubbins in advance of pulling out the engine & trans next weekend!





Just about ready to lift it out! Only a couple of items left to remove (distributor, cruise control actuator & carburettor).

Only 3 main bolts now holding it in place.

I CAN'T WAIT to get this engine all painted up and looking pretty...

I need to decide on a colour for the engine yet. GMC engines of this era were typically painted Orange or Blue in the factory. I'll have to look at what's available in hi-temp paint first. I'm kind of leaning towards understatement and just painting it black or dark graphite grey and maybe putting on a bit of chrome here and there to bling it up tastefully... Not 100% decided on that yet though. Orange would be good too...

Transmission fluid not looking so good...

Not yet Jack.

There's a lot to do yet...

Now that we're heading back into winter, the "winter project mode" should kick in and hopefully I can start making a bit of proper progress...

We haven't even started to think about the updates in the coach yet. All energy is going into the cab & mechanical's right now...

It'd be an honour Jack. I can't think of anyone else more appropriate for the job!! Hopefully in the new year we'll be able to make it to our first MHcraic meet somewhere in the midlands. That'd be a great opportunity to give our ol girl a proper blessing. Might need to crack a bottle of carlsberg on the front bumper!



Ain't that the truth. Heck, all we do is spin a few spanners!

That old fibreglass starcraft roof from the donor van was of no use to me so I put it up for sale, open to offers on donedeal. But as expected, there was no demand for it.

I really didn't have the heart to cut it up so I put it into service elsewhere...

Just for safety & convenience, I decided to strip more items off the engine before lifting it out. I removed manifolds, distributor, power steering pump, oil lines and then drained all fluids. I also needed to get the camper up on blocks to free up the back axle/wheels (release pressure on the transmission), so now all wheels are up off the ground. I burned up most of Sunday getting that done.

Up on blocks -



I lifted the engine & transmission out on Monday afternoon using my father-in-laws MONSTER engine hoist.

With the engine out of the way, I had a nasty surprise when I went over the 'now accessible' chassis and cross member with my pointy hammer.

The chassis is solid, but the back of the cross member was seriously rotted and completely unsafe. This is a major problem. I didn't see it originally as the brake pipes were in the way and caked in mud.





I need to check the cross member on the front of the donor van and see if it's the same as the one on the camper. I know that the lower control arms on the donor van are different, so it'll be a stroke of luck if its the same.

Aye, Carol's Dad is a mechanic and he let me borrow his engine hoist. Its a bit of a beastie, but it made light work of pulling out the engine & trans, no hassle.

The problems with the crossmember are to be expected with this kind of project I suppose. I hadn't planned on doing anything to the front suspension except for giving it a lick of paint. It looked fine on first inspection . The oul pointy hammer finds a lot of hidden issues but I'm glad to have found it now. It'll add a few weeks to the project at least. Say a prayer that the part on the donor van will fit our camper!!

I really REALLY want to get it on the road soon so I need to pick it up a notch and catch a few breaks!

Most of the old cab is now cut away.

The cabover is propped up with 4x4's just in-case!

Thank God!



It looks identical in so far as I can tell and I think I'm OK. If all goes well, I will just need to transfer all of the control arms and gubbins over from our MH cross member to the donor cross member, which is no harm anyway as there's some bushings not looking so good on our assembly. It'll be a good opportunity to replace those. I discovered some pretty bad pitting on the lower driver side control arm in one or two areas, so I need to see if they're repairable or if it needs replacing too. I'm going deeper than I planned with the front suspension, but from a safety point of view, I'm happy to replace anything that looks dodgy.

I painted the questionable control arm. But even though it's 5mm thick, I'm not happy with the pitting. I'm going to order a new one for peace of mind.

I finished stripping and measuring the front end this weekend. I'm happy to report that the cross-member is 95% the same.

These brake hubs are bleedin' heavy!!



Looking at the business end of the brake discs, they're a little pitted on the inner faces so it'd be no harm to get them skimmed. They need to be shaved back a couple of thou.




I should be able to start stripping & painting the chassis rails this week. I'll send the suspension parts off for beadblasting & maybe powder coating if the price is right. If not I'll give them a shot of rust bullet.

When I started out on this project I tried to be good by 'bagging & tagging' every nut, bolt & screw that I removed.



... but I still managed to wind up with a few nuts & bolts that I have no clue whey're they go!

Ah well, I guess I'll eventually find out!

I took thursday & friday off from work this week to make a 4 day weekend of it and get some decent progress made on the camper. Yesterday I had a great day, I got a lot done. But today everything I touched turned to sh*t. Literally, Murphy's law prevailed out in the workshop. By 3pm I had had enough of it and turned the lights off & closed the door. I fecked off out on the bike for a couple of hours...

I needed to get some saddle time and do a "brain re-set" for fear of letting loose on something with a sledge hammer!!

On a plus side I found a great little beach that I've never been to before, not far from my home!

It was getting pretty dark by the time I got there...



... but I did manage to catch a great sun set. Sitting there on a sand dune, I watched the sun dip down behind the horizon while the waves rolled in. It really lifted my spirits!



Tomorrow is another day.