Coachmen Leprechaun

Yeah, I gave in and went with loud orange after we saw a couple of chevy vans at a car show during the summer. The engines on chevy vans are buried so far in under the bulkhead that you'd hardly see them. So I figured I'd go with the flow and agree to a bit of blingy bling.

Sanding........ filling........ Sanding......... Filling.......... Sanding.......... Sanding.........



I'm sure any of YE who've done this stuff before know the story.

I must grab a beer and my SIM card and properly update this thread. It's well overdue.

I'm still chipping away at it but my company has me travelling all over the place at the moment so i only have a few hours every weekend to get a bit done which is really slow going!

Another "hard to find" item off the list (From my new Facebook friend in the US.)
In great shape for used parts... My own were in such bad shape, there's no way I could put them back on a freshly painted cab...

More photos eh... I don't have any recent ones but here are a few to keep ye ticking over...

Overcab:
Before the cab goes into place permanently, the ceiling of the overcab needs some attention. So cab off time (again).


After cleaning off all of the crap and then sanding back the aluminium skin, it needed to be treated and then painted with special aluminium primer.


Then a couple of top coats of cream gloss paint.


Passenger side door sill (rocker panel) had some corrosion. I was going to just patch it, but decided to cut out the bad metal and weld in a new pattern panel I bought in the US.

Core supports. Some of ye might remember the core supports on the front of the donor van were for a quad headlamp arrangement which was different to our dual headlamp/indicator lamp set up on the camper. (Discussed back in post 84 of this thread).

So I had to do another bit of fabrication:
Using a template from the old core supports, I marked out the area to be cut on the new core support with red marker:



Then got to cutting:


And then weld in some 1.5mm sheet metal and shoot some zinc primer.


The only thing left to do was cut out the holes but I won't do this until I do the FINAL final assembly on the front end: just wanting to make sure everything lines up perfectly...

Floor supports:
These two vertical braces are important wee fellas, in that they provide a good amount of the structural support between the cab and chassis. I was able to use the top section of the panels taken from the donor van and make them suit by adding material to the bottom edge where the supports will be attached to the chassis rails.

Passenger side:


Driver side:


So back in June, I welded the cab into place and it's safe to say the cab is not coming off the chassis any more! I don't know how many times I had the cab on and off the chassis earlier this year, let’s just say "lots!". The goal here was to make the cab fit exactly as the factory had done so that I can be assured it will look right and more importantly, behave as intended if we get involved in a collision (God forbid). Even though I don't know if they did much in the lines of crash testing back in the 80's, for my own peace of mind it needs to be exactly as it was when it left the factory. So now, the cab is mounted and welded into place. Happily the alignment is spot on, which took a ton of jiggery pokery!

The lower front valance had some minor pitting that became major pitting when I put the twistknot wire brush to it, so I had a lot to do to get good metal back here. Now finished and ready for primer:

I finished off the headlight buckets on the core supports. Good job I didn't chuck out the old rusty core supports as I needed to graft a section of the old into the new. The headlight assembly pivots against one section of the bucket and is held in place with screw adjustors and springs... Very quirky.

Cuttin' n weldin'


So that's where I am right now in terms of metal fabrication. The core supports are now finished and the headlights, bezels and front grill all fits nicely.

I haven't really been taking photos of the filling and sanding that I've been doing over the last 6 weekends or so. I'll share a few in the next post. Not much to report there other than it's getting there.
My current target is to get the cab in primer by end of this year. I've had a painter over to have a look at it and he offered to paint it at my house which is handy. All I'm doing right now is trying to get the panel gaps and surfaces as perfect as possible before the painter does his thing.
I'll probably fit all of the suspension components and get her down off the axle stands before I get it painted, just to reduce the likelihood of damaging the paint later.

So next thing to do is dismantle everything again and get ready for final topcoat. I'll be glad when all of these "dry-fits" are done.

So....

Where was I with this story again?

Sanding fiddly bits...

So I spent a ridiculous amount if time sanding, filling and sanding again but it was worth it.

Even on fiddly bits that will never been seen again. But for me, a job worth doing is a job worth doing right.

That's just about done now. Well maybe just a small bit left!

Its amazing the amount of time that it takes to do small parts.



Trying to remove all traces of rust from the scuttle before giving it a shot of rust converter. Then a few coats of isopon 182 primer & then paint.


Having past experience of wings (fenders) rusting from the inside as they've only had a whisper of paint applied by the manufacturer. I spent a lot of time sanding and prepping the insides of the wings before shooting on 3 light coats of 2k high build primer.


It's all about practise.
While I have painted kitchens, wooden radiator covers and house doors in the past, I've never really sprayed anything with automotove paint before and got a lot of advice from my local auto paint supplier. He gave me the confidence to give it a go myself. I was going to get my neighbour to paint the camper, but i figured I'd save a wedge of cash if I did it myself and have another feather in my cap by spray painted it myself. So, the theory at this point was to do the bits that can't be seen later (bulkhead, inner wings etc) and if they turn out ok, then i'd have the confidence to to the outer surfaces.

Third and final colour coat. Yeah, that turned out ok. I'm very happy with the result.

Pretty close match to the original colour.

Took advantage while on a recent business trip to the US. Picked up some new heavy duty MOOG tie rod ends and adjusting sleeves for a great price. The old ones were OK, but a little bit pitted.

Heater core:

While I had easy access to it, I figured I'd better test the heater core for leaks. My dad had bypassed it some time in the past, I'm not sure why. But I thought it might have a leak.

Plug the ends with rubber bungs and pressurise it with a little compressed air while it's under water.

No bubbles = good. (the bubbles you see in the pic are from a bung popping out seconds before)...

I had a spare core left over from the donor van, but lucky me, all is ok with the original. So the spare can go back into stock

Every surface gets a rub of sandpaper (and filler if needed).
While the cab has already painted with two coats of rust bullet paint (inside and out) and any joints sealed with tiger seal panel adhesive, the next step is three light coats of acrylic primer followed by 3 coats of a colour top coat. Just about ready for primer here:



Need to cover up my shiny top coat before I start priming the inner cab!

Engine:

As I have the heads on a shelf, I decided to pull all the valves to inspect the valve seats, guides & seals. A few of them had some minor pitting. Nothing bad, but as I had them out sher it'd be a shame not to give them a rub and make sure they all seal good.

It's a boring and tedious job hand lapping valves. A couple of cans of cider and some loud music made it a bit easier

Coolant holes:
The new aluminium edelbrock heads are superb, but these heads are for a chevy SBC350 ((Small Block Chevy, 350 Cubic Inches). My engine is a SBC400 (400 cubic Inches). The only differences between the 350 and 400 heads are an additional six "steam holes" needed for the SBC400 block which has "siamesed cylinders". It's a common practise for car restorers/builders/engine guys to take a set of 350 heads and drill them to suit the 400. I knew this before buying the heads, but had been putting this modification off until now.

So after a lot of measuring, inspecting & procrastinating, it was time to geet on with it. If I f**k this up, then that would really suck.

But it worked out OK.

Need to get these tyres removed so that I can strip and paint the wheels. I only need four of these, as I'm planning to buy two new wheels for the front axle. Two of these tyres are old and cracked so they're no good to me.

Problem with these wheels/tyres is they are 16.5 inch and that size radial tyre is near impossible to find. And when you do find some, they're bloody expensive. Not to mention the tyre choices, tread patterns and Manufacturer brand names are extremely limited.
So, having spoken with the lads in North Hants tyres in the UK, they offered an alternative. They get in 16 inch dually steel wheels every so often with chevy 8 bolt pattern, and so I'm going down this route. As long as the outer circumference is the same then changing the rim size won't affect gearing or handling.
New wheels and tyres for the front end are almost as cheap as a pair of 16.5inch tyres. No brainer. This also opens up a lot more options for getting good quality and known brand 16" tyres. I'll eventually get around to changing all 6 wheels over to 16", but for now I'll just change the front two.

Radiator:
The original rad had a leak. It also had a lot of fin corrosion on the forward side of the rad. Years worth of exposure to salt moisture. Unfortunately, the euro/dollar exchange rate sucks big time at the moment, so buying a new one from the US was a no-go when you factor in the additional shipping & duties on top of the purchase price.

So I put it out for quote with several of my local rad repair shops.


I had a spare one that was in the donor van but it was for a SBC350 and it was skinnier than mine. I'd prefer to not take chances with overheating, so I chose not to use it. Still have it in my spare parts bin if anyone ever needs it...
(My original one on the top of the photo)


I got a very good quote from Lee radiators in Cork, and so they got the job of re-coring the original rad with a more efficient core.


That's it for a while folks. Sorry for the long delay since the last update. More to follow.

Thanks Pat.

Yep, picked up a good quality mask before I started messing with the 2k. I took some advise from the paint supplier regarding which type mask and which kind of canisters to use. I would have loved to buy a positive pressure air-fed face mask, but they are out of my price range, so I went with a good quality filter mask. I have a pair of industrial fans at home that I'll stack in the doorway while spraying. I still need to figure out how to manage dust control!