CamperShite - VW LT28 Sven Hedin

[72_square]

Thought I'd document my campervan refurbishment on here.  I trust this is of interest to shitters, but please tell me if not!

I purchased this van in 2016 and its sat about around my house since then.  As usual, I have too many projects and not enough time to work on them.  Anyways, with the old virus thing about, I've managed to clear some of the backlog and got this one to the front of the queue.  As holidays look to be in doubt this year, I'm aiming to get this mobile for a family holiday around August some time.  Immediate plans are to refurb the underside and give it a good clean and paint underneath.  I'll then take it for an MOT and then see what I can manage on it internally and externally, before we need to go away in it.

Onto the beast in question then.  I paid £4000 for this with an MOT, from a chap not 20 miles down the road in Rugby.  I've only literally driven it back from there to my house (not counting driveway shifting about).  I wanted a campervan for touring about.  I'd say with the family, but my two kids are now 18 and 15, with 18 year old happily driving her own car.  Best laid plans and all that......  This van struck a chord with me as it is bigger than your average VW bay window van, but still small enough to fit in a normal parking bay.  Plenty of room inside and complete with a toilet!  One double bed in the roof and one double bed below.  If you are ambitious, you can also fit a hammock across the front seats (although it didn't come with one of those).  This is the floorpan:

This is how it turned up (and still looks like at present):

 

Its LHD (all the LT westfalia vans are).  2.4 turbo diesel.  Five speed gearbox with the engine thrumming away between the front seats.  Initial impressions from driving it were "Fuck 'me, this is wide...... how do I change gear with my right hand....... the suspension is too bouncy..........the brakes are shit....."

[72_square]

So, started this in earnest yesterday.  I'm a bit stuck with room at my place.  I've got a three car garage, but its not as posh as it sounds.  It basically a single garage just behind the house with an old car port turned into another two car garage in front of that (alongside the main house).  The bad news is that its three cars in a line and not three cars wide (I wish).  I knew I wanted a campervan when I was building the new front garage, so I planned upon a 'normal' van size and allowed a height of about 2.7ish metres headroom.  I'd got as far as finishing the roof of the garage and walls with just the floor to do, when this one popped up to buy.  Needless to say I bought it then worked out it was 3m high.  Bollocks.  I then had to dig out the ground floor slab to what felt like Australia to make sure I could get the bugger in the garage.  The garage is now about 3.1m headroom.  This all means that there's fuck all room inside the garage to actually work on the van.  Here it is at home:

There's just enough room to jack it up slightly and crawl down the outside.

So yesterday I had a good mouch around the underside and determined that its in bloody good order for its year of 1988.  The chassis is in excellent condition with no rust of any kind (that I've found to date).  I know that I will have a tiny bit of welding to do around the lower rear end of the body, with a couple of frilly lower panels, but that appears to be it at the moment.

Current plan of action is to strip and refurb the underside in four sections.  Yesterday and today is the offside front corner section.  I spent Saturday taking the front suspension apart.  It appears to have had new discs and pads in the recent past.  The caliper appears a bit crap, so I'll either get them refurbished or replaced.  My method of refurbishment for the crucial running gear parts is to replace everything that can fail with new, where practical and possible.  I would like to be able to jump in the van and drive to the furthest part of Europe without a worry.  Most of the running gear can still be got new and for fairly cheap prices.  So the front end will have new ball joints, tie rods and bushes.  I'll keep a running total of costs for a laugh if you want.  For reference, as this is VW shite, they can command a decent price when sold.  If I return the van to pucker status, it would be worth in the order of £12-£15k, so no worries about not getting my money back if I need to sell.

[privatewire]

That is a good looking van! 

[Shandylegs]

Always had a hankering for a Westfalia T3 or LT28, way over that of the earlier offerings from VW.

I very nearly pulled the trigger on a Florida a few years ago and have regretted not doing so ever since. Just love the size and space.

Prices have now climbed to silly levels, so will always be (another) one that got away......

 

[72_square]

It took me all day to get all the front corner stripped down.  I'm not used to working on such heavy duty stuff.  Everything is about twice the size of normal car bolts.  The camper is rated for 2.8 tonnes (being an LT28).  With all of the camping gear in it, it weighs about 2.3-2.4 tonnes bare. The lower ball joint was a particular favourite, putting up stiff resistance right to the last thread.  My butane torch was the preferred method of heating things up to free them off.  Must have used about half a tank of gas!  Slowly things came apart from this:

to this:

I'll be wire-wheeling the wishbones today and getting some paint on them.  Same process for the underside of the chassis.  The undercoat on the chassis has dried out and is peeling off in places.  Need to either get that back to bare metal or at least to solid paint before I paint over it.  

Edited June 7, 2020 by 72_square
wrong photo!

[72_square]

5 minutes ago, Shandylegs said:

Always had a hankering for a Westfalia T3 or LT28, way over that of the earlier offerings from VW.

I very nearly pulled the trigger on a Florida a few years ago and have regretted not doing so ever since. Just love the size and space.

Prices have now climbed to silly levels, so will always be (another) one that got away......

 

I nearly went for a T3 Atlantic, but they are at least £7k for a minging one and £12k for a good one, plus they are pretty cramped for a family.  The old LT's seem to escape the VW scene tax in most cases and you can still pick up a good one for a decent price if you keep your eyes open.  I was quite seriously considering a German road trip to pick one up when this one dropped in my lap (mine was also imported from Germany in about 2008)

[w00dy]

I love an LT and I love Westfalias, so this is very me. Definitely well bought at £4k, looking forward to the updates.

[72_square]

So today, I used this as the weapon of choice:

To go from this:

To this:

Cleaned up the rest of the axle bits and bobs and coated everything in rust convertor.  I'll leave it like that for a bit and then get some paint on everything.  I'm using the Rustbuster stuff and will be applying epoxy mastic 121 in black as a top coat.

Things then went a bit tits-up after that progress.  The next job was to start wire brushing the underside of the van.  The wire brush above was about done for after cleaning up the loose bits, so I wanted to swap it for a cup type wire brush.  The thread on my quality cheapest-on-ebay-wire-brush item decided it didn't want to come off my grinder.  It knackered up the locking pin.  I got the dremel out to cut it off the thread and it then killed my dremel stone dead.  Managed to eventually get it cut off and got the cup type brush on.  Spent about 15 minutes attacking the underside of the van only to have the cup brush snag and jam on some bodywork.  The handle on the grinder snapped off and it then ended up trying to wire-brush my leg and getting cosy with my jumper.  That's that grinder bolloxed then.  I gave up after that.  After having a think, I'm probably going too far with the underside.  I've decided to just take off the dirt and loose underseal and then re-apply some new underseal.  No point in taking everything back to bare metal.  It will take ages and I'm taking off good factory paint and underseal only to put the same kind of stuff back on.  I'll sack off the cup wire brushes as they appear to be death in disguise and stick with either the first type I had or something that fits in a drill.

End of play:

Well I did a little bit more before I tried to snog the angle grinder, but you get the idea!  Big shopping list to sort for the front suspension bits during the week.