1980 VW T3 DoKa

Well, another day in the garage (there are perks to unemployment ::) ) and after getting distracted cleaning up (all this grinding makes an awful lot of dust :( ) I started looking at the rust in the engine bay. I needed to remove various bolts that had been used to hold on the coil and electrics boxes.

Inevitably, I found more rust ::)

So, choppy choppy!

Ballcocks!! More welding then. That's all been ground down now but no pics. Then I dropped the gearbox.

Makes it sound easy doesn't it. It wasn't, it was a ballache, but it's done now and on the floor. I've spent a bit of time underneath cutting cable ties, dodging coolant (trying to move the pipes underneath, a, because the heater pipes were crushed and b, because I am a bit OCD and want it to be tidy under there after I've thrown some chassis paint on) I really wish I'd been able to jet wash it underneath before I'd started, it is minging ::)

Bit more done. (although I'm not exactly sure why it took me all day ::) ) SO, paintstripping? Why? Well, I don't really know to be honest, but I do want this to look good so I set too with wire brushes in the engine bay to get it looking clean. There are a lot of holes everywhere, mainly drilled for attaching things like the coil, electrical junction boxes etc, but most use self tappers and are hence a bit rusty. I want rid of all of these as most will no longer be needed and nor will the fixing for the air filter. Off that came

Oh, ffs, more crispiness. Choppy choppy.

Here's another area full of holes, and most of them surplus to requirements when the Scooby lump goes in, so after finding more rust around the seams that came out as well. 

This will be remade so that the airfilter for the Scooby lump fits properly and can be routed around the engine and put somewhere cold (although up and above the axle may work as well)

Then I spent some time sanding down the dash again ::) Just not happy with it and wanted all of the sanding marks gone! Knifing putty? Crap! So had to scrape that off and start again ::) 

I also dug out the engine mounts for the Scooby lump to have a fiddle and see how they fit up. A couple needed derusting ready for paint and that will go on a bit later. All seems fairly straightforward, I need to get some new bolts and stuff, and drop the sump to fit one of the mounts, but looks OK. 

Then after choking on dust for an hour and basically getting nowhere on the paint stripping I went off and bought a proper grit blaster so will set to the van with that next week. Thanks for checking in ;)

Pete

 

Evening! Well, I've managed to motivate myself a bit and after getting a proper grit blaster I set too on the engine bay. The stuff gets everywhere, but after masking up a bit and making a grit catcher out of a very large cardboard box we got to here  :D

Why I didn't just bite the bullet and buy one months ago, I will never know  ::) Suffice to say, it will be getting a lot more use! Today I had a clean up and hoovered up the used grit before tackling the dried waxoyl that had been spread liberally around the back end, and which wasn't doing a lot apart from collecting dirt. After an hour with a wire brush we got to what you see above ^^ I had noticed a couple of flaky areas though so had a tentative scrape with a small chisel

Erm, that doesn't seem to be right! It basically looks like someone has painted chassis black everywhere without any prep! More scraping....

I'll be attacking it with the grinder tomorrow. More work, but there is surface rust under there and I don't want to have to go back and do any of this again so I'd rather give it the best chance possible!

Thanks for looking in  :D

Pete