Bernard Montgomerys escort van

[Jikovron]

Greetings all ive been a outside lurker on this very forum for some while so thought i might lower the tone and post things

i shall open posting with my garage services/farm hand spec escort van weldathon that i'm going to have a crack at despite no driveway, extremely old but liberal neighbours, a 1984 themed town council, and an extension that literally only just reachs the road and half of a 200 litre chemical drum 

 

pics as always speak louder than 1 dimensional written text

 

 

The scene earlier, one victim of depreciation and a communist throwback, the old neighbour came out to see why activity had suddenly went up 5000% on the street and had a poke at the jump leads offering tea bags,,milk, sugar etc

main thing gleaned from the jump start though was the skoda actually has the net result of basically having no positive effect of the stricken battery  i'm unsure one how it can actually look after its own one tbh

 

Mould growth and pointless tat,,,,check

 

a typical 1970s AA book of the car would i assume caption this as excessive toe out

 

spring sagging on this side for no reason and dampers have less control of the beam as a battered sausage

 

 

initial investigations of the sill show my favourit go nowhere repair, rotten inner with a cover sill nicely blended in with window putty seems like its serious rot local to the sill/cill but excellent floor so saveable with some carefull tin bashing , also forward leaf spring hangers are beyond being considered a mounting anymore,,so some fabrication there too (the future mrs eyes glazed over when i mentioned that the back of the van must be unusualy heavy given the front NS wheel joining the OS one despite being quite far off the centerline jack wise )

old out sill chopped,,,and new material donor from work note my DSS garden condition

 

apologies in advance if this is too miserable a saga to be posted up but if the concensus is that its passably bearable i shall update as i trundle through the banal minutea of MOTting it!

 

 

[Cavcraft]

^{Welcome along}

[phil_lihp]

Welcome along, do please keep going, this looks like an excellent little saga and I look forward to seeing more!  Nothing is too dismal! 

[autofive]

welcome Ron

 

still got the v8 trumf?

[cort16]

Welcome. If youre making a sill for an escort vsn out of and oil drum you'll fit right in.

[Wilko220]

Greetings

[Jikovron]

thanks for the kind words i shall update as motivation drives progress so to speak

i do still have the triumph indeed!,,,its undergoing a mass of change so it looks and sounds less offensive to the general populace and has abit more shove from the loud pedal

[overrun]

Errrrrr alright there Ronnie errrrr *shuffles nervously and concentrates on floor*

[DodgyBastard]

I'm currently welding a 2003 Transit which is pretty rotten, initially I was going to weld some square bar in to replace the sill but found I could get a replacement for £22 so went with that.

 

 

 

 

[Richard]

My work bought an ex-Royal Mail Escort van that had holes like that in both sills before its second (i.e. 4 years old) MOT. The garage repaired* it with sills cut off a scrap Escort car, they didn't even paint them!

[Jikovron]

blimey that transit in my eyes is still a new vehicle only fairly recently has that shape transit in my mind finally replaced the mk3/4/5 in area's that dont enjoy mid to upper quartile economic success

 

if the car sills are the same then thats a good bonus with ebay having them listed fairly cheaply

 

i have thought maybe welding in some cds and tying it in to the surrounding metal but i think its the floor that shall take a patch first,,even before that though ideally i'd love a plasma cutter just incase old john boy or reginald et al is asleep at least then it could be done without being a massively  obnoxious unlikeable rough scrap dealing sort of guy

 

it amazes me that focii and fiestas at a pre mot stage are showing signs of surface corrosion even wor first lady knows where modernish fords go and she doesnt have any car interest , at least the days of badly welded to rust patching is not a dying art yet should make mots passable for the next few years untill welding becomes a weird concept to younger testing talent

[skoda_fan]

Welcome Ron. Well done and good luck with the van. Although having read this thread maybe the answer is stick to the Skuds

[Richard]

if the car sills are the same then thats a good bonus with ebay having them listed fairly cheaply

 

 

They weren't the same, but it seems they can be made to fit. They looked appalling on the 4 year old van, particularly as they were green and rust (but not yet holed), but a new pair competently fitted to an old van would probably look acceptable enough.

[vulgalour]

On account of the Skoda and the location I think you're who I think you are, but I might be wrong and if you are who I think you are then for some reason I thought you were called Kyle, not Ron.  So, are you who I think you are or are you someone entirely new who happens to be in Chesterfield with a brown Skoda?

[overrun]

 

i have thought maybe welding in some cds

 

 

Sounds good. Here's me thinking you didn't even listen to the radio. #hilariouspost

[overrun]

On account of the Skoda and the location I think you're who I think you are, but I might be wrong and if you are who I think you are then for some reason I thought you were called Kyle, not Ron.  So, are you who I think you are or are you someone entirely new who happens to be in Chesterfield with a brown Skoda?

 

He may well be who you think he is, although the person he is, has a yellow Skoda, not a brown one.

So maybe he is not who you think he is, but is someone different.

 

I like to think of him as an ex-pat.

[RichardMoss]

I like to think of him as an ex-pat.

He used to be called "Pat" as well as Ronnie and Kyle?

[vulgalour]

Well I say brown, what I actually mean is brellow.

[eddyramrod]

Only on Autoshite could you read about someone attempting a mammoth weldathon on a... Ford Escort van of 18 years old.  Excellent opening, Ron, welcome in!

[Jim Bell]

Welcome in Ron.

Long time no see.

 

Always happy to view your fabulous fabrications.

[Jikovron]

Tis I indeed vulgalour man ! aproximatly 0 other people in chesterfield have a biege mk1estelle haha

 

This eve saw yet more action even to the point i missed going to a relatively local car show mainly because currently practical things outweigh frivolous standing around observing and listening to wildly outragous vehicle statistic and figure claims that normaly about car shows

 

anyhow, i chopped away the sill back to solid clean metal and ust kept on finding yet more brown snowfall each tap transmission of the chisel

 

 

The sill seamed to get progressively better further forward almost as if the van spent most of its time parked uphill

 

 

added some metal but i am the first to say i'm not much cop at welding when crouched/lying on the pavement useing my feet as a weld gun steady lol, ideally tipping it over with a forklift would be so much better

 

[Shep Shepherd]

Welcome along!

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Blimey, doing that lot on the roadside marks you out as beyond 'shiter' and well into 'mental case' territory. Welcome!

[Split_Pin]

Welcome along. Mustard Estelle and roadside welding = Legend!

[Jikovron]

Thanks to you all kindly for the welcoming words ,

its merely 85% of the retired neighbours coming from practical natured work that makes doing this pass by without all the 'danger to teh area respectability' hysteria which most people suffer from with anything thats not 'domestic'  , even so its done quietly to keep in peoples good books so no angle grinder action allowed here lol.

 

anyhow more done

 

floor return and inner more so completed

 

 

little bit of the sill end fitted but not messed with till the cover sill is offered up 

 

 

seat belt box roughly looked at for now,,, to be continued 

[DodgyBastard]

Nice welding! I did a few small patches to my car recently but had the luxury being able to hire a ramp/workshop for the day which helped a lot. Good effort getting the welding done out on the street.

[Jikovron]

Today the van became worth double with its new outer sill purchase which has yet to morphy richards into the structure as i left the welding wire at work, which only became apparent after cutting a few patches and starting to weld with the last wisp of wire in the feed mechanism , this with the dying ebb of interest put paid to that evenings debauchery 

 

 

 

the floorpan imho looks like its been 12 rounds with rick moranis

 

 

pattern panel fits great very little in the way of chasing gaps with weld splatter

[Jim Bell]

Sill(y)ness approved.

 

Metal beats Air.

[pompei]

If you are cutting up an oil drum, that's another steel band doomed.

[Jikovron]

the oil drum has now become garden furniture in a sort of 'on the social' kind of fashion because its a faff to cut given it having structural rigidity enough to need slitting discs et al

so anyhow i cracked on with Kevin Bacons white escort van

 

more activity in the form of a topped up welder and moar gas

floor bit and inner/inner sill plopped in ,,really needed a double hinged hand for that tbh 

 

also this bit is what differentiates a 90's car A pillar to a 70's version in terms of a 1.5mm thick extra section to add abit of crush resistance when the wheel is trying to fold up the passenger 'cell' in an offset crash which is helpfull hoever as i cut away the secondary inner sill i popped this lawnmower handle as a back stop and welded a new simpler inner sill over it 

 

This i really didnt fancy doing as by this stage i'd become really slack and bored but powered on ahead without even bothering to blow over with the knot wheel to expunge the paint 

 

 

closed it up like the sows ear purse it actually is ,,,next will be the outer sill well once its been flatted and painted up inside