My Vans

I'm always on the lookout for more Bedford Rascal vans in particular - see here.

E50TKE - 1987 Bedford Bambi Camper Van

Welding the cab for MOT

I had a quick look round the little camper for its MOT this week and discovered a few areas that need some welding. I started by removing the remains of the bullbar from the front of the van as you can see in the picture above. I really must get round to painting the Bedford lettering white again. The lower valance panels have been attacked with the wire brush on the grinder to get rid of the rust spots. These will eventually be painted when I respray the rest of the cab in the coming months.

Anyway there was a metal fatigue crack on the chassis at the front where the tie rod mounts to do the body as you can see below. It looks a lot worse than it is - this area is double skinned and still has a lot of strength even with that crack. For MOT purposes it needs addressed though.

In order to deal with this crack I removed as much of the clutter from the area as possible
(all that remains in the way is the choke cable) and then buffed it up with the wire brush on the grinder:

A suitable plate was cut from some scrap heavy gauge sheet steel and seam welded onto the chassis:

After a bit more flattening of the welds I dressed up up the repair with some zinc primer. I'll eventually cover this with some body shutz and then white paint but for now I just want the van to pass MOT before I get stuck into a full blown restoration of the bodywork.

I also had to attend to some rust around the tow hook under the driver footwell. Again this was plated and seam welded with some scrap heavy gauge sheet steel.