Flash's '78 Bedford Panelvan

[Flash]

The red van had been converted in the late '80s and was on a deceleration. I wanted to get a Certifier involved early in the piece to prevent rework so armed with a number of pictures off I headed. Turned out that the V8 engine mounts on the donor suspension beam weren't up to scratch with no gussets and the weight concentrated on the thin top plate. Since I was planning to do a power steering conversion the motor would need to be lifted slightly to accommodate the thicker diameter steering rack anyway, so a decision was taken to pull the old mounts off and start from scratch.

I'd researched my power steering options and the most popular choice for the Bedford seemed to be the rack from a '97 Transit van. A quick visit to a local wrecker netted the power rack and universal coupling for a cool $85.

I then proceeded to mock up a mounting bracket and after a test fit I got the plate plasma cut. Certification requirement was for a double sheer setup. I used the original rack mounting points to make it simple enough to convert back to manual steer if ever required.

The Transit rack needed to be extended by about 30mm on each side in order to prevent bump steer. So a mate of mine who owns an engineering shop stepped in to help me fabricate these. The standard Transit rack arms were then machined and threaded to take a standard Bedford tie rod end.

Apologies for the quality of the pics.

[Flash]

With everything mocked up and fitted back under the van I was able to assess the angles for the universal joints. The plan was to use the Transit lower universal and then machine the shaft to take an after market upper universal that would mate to the standard Bedford steering column.

The alignment looked pretty good and all that was left to do was to work out the measurements for final machining of the shaft.

[Flash]

Luckily squeezing the V8 under the van just enatials some cutting of the floor boards with no changes to the firewall required.

I cut a quick cardboard template using the red van and set to work on the yellow van's floorboards with a jigsaw.

After lifting the new engine into the hole and test fitting the front beam complete with Transit power rack I was able to work out the height for the new engine mounts.

[Flash]

So a quick step back, to cover off a phase that I had forgotten about.

With the crate engine sitting on its trolley and me running around gathering all of the bolt on bits and pieces and the gearbox getting fresh seals and paintwork, Mrs Flash and I took the opportunity to tackle the underside of the van. It was in really good condition with only a little surface rust. I reckon all of the oil leaks from the Vauxhall engine had given it a fighting chance against any rust, but had resulted in 30 years of accumulated gunk covering the underside.

I stripped the fuel tank and everything else off the underside of the van leaving only the wiring harness in place and we proceeded to water blast and scrape the entire underside. It then came back inside and I dropped both the front and rear suspension leaving us open access to its bare bum. Mrs Flash and I spent two long months of weekends flat on our backs cleaning and painting the underside. Once we had the underside completely clean we started off with two coats of brush applied Brunox to neutralise the surface rust followed by two coats of brush applied rubberised under seal and then two top coats of gloss black just to finish it off.

Sadly the pictures that I took are too dark and have too much reflection to really do the job any justice, but these images of the fuel tank that was done following the same process will give you a rough idea.

[Flash]

Okay back on track now ...

So with the engine mounts worked out I was amassing a shopping list of items needing welding namely:

- New engine mounts complete with required gussets and reinforcing plates

- Extra large engine box to cover the wide hipped V8

- Relocation of the rear shock mounts on the Galaxy 9 inch rear (for some reason the shocks on the donor van were mounted outside the chassis rails and on my van on the inside) ... bizarre

- New seat bases for the luscious leather bucket seats that I had scored on TradeMe for $100.

A quick chat to Barry revealed that it would be far more cost effective to get the van to his place rather than him having to leave his workshop to work at my place, so I braced the motor and box in place and we loaded her back onto the transporter for the short trip to Barry's workshop.

[Flash]

Sadly I don't have any in progress shots of the work done at Barry's place, but I can confirm that with all of the welding completed, we fired up the new motor and I drove the van home a week before Christmas Day 2013.

I can share a picture of the new bucket seats that went in. They were pretty dusty and dry in this picture but with a clean and some leather cream they came up brand new. I was told by the seller that they are out of a Ford Focus.

[Flash]

So on getting the van home, the next job was to strip out the front suspension in order to paint up the new engine mounts. At the same time I fitted new bushes, shocks and ball joints.

[Flash]

With the mechanical work now at the stage of Certification readiness and everyone off enjoying their Christmas Hols, Mrs Flash and I turned our attention to the interior of the van.

As with the exterior, the idea was to create the illusion of a mildly customised "shaggin wagon" from the late 70's, but at the same time it needed to be relatively practical and comfortable to sleep in.

So earlier in the year after spending hours pouring over some books dating back to the hey day of custom vans in the USA, we came up with a crushed velvet theme. We were looking to create a clean and uncluttered look with hidden fixings and a simple colour scheme.

So armed with some measurements we hit the local fabric shops to see what we could find. Shock and horror when we discovered that crushed velvet runs around the $30 to $40 per running meter locally, far more than we were prepared to invest. A quick squiz on eBay revealed that there were bargains to be had for the same product in the UK. Only issue was that we couldn't view the material in person, so we short listed 3 colours and ordered a running meter of each. It was well worth the investment and our final choice was a dark grey. The seller agreed to post the material in 5 meter lenghts so each parcel came well within the minimum charge for international post. Total cost for the velvet was $250 including postage about a quarter of the cost of the local suppliers.

Anyway, enough words for now, so I'll start off by showing you a few pics of the original interior.

[Flash]

So first step was to strip the interior back to a bare shell.

Here are a few pics of the floor with its factory original paintwork. As previously mentioned the first owner laid down a plywood floor covering on the same day that he picked the van up from the showroom, so the floor was in pretty good condition.

[Flash]

The planned layout was a fixed "day bed" running the full width of the van from the rear barn doors all the way forward to the edge of the side cargo door. The front of the day bed would house a full width pull out storage drawer that could be pulled out at night to extend the day bed into a full size queen bed. More storage space under the bed for tools and other camping gear would be accessible from the rear barn doors.

Swivel down lighters mounted over the bed would provide night time illumination.

Entertainment would be provided by a flip down LCD screen facing the bed and the plan was to build a small roof console above the dashboard containing a head unit for playing DVDs or streaming music via blue tooth. A metal chilly bin located directly behind the driver's seat would provide a handy place to store a few cold bevvies.

The existing flip up sunroof would provide night time ventilation with a removable insect screen protecting us from mozzies and sandflys.

Privacy would come in the form of magnetic backed custom shaped PVC sheeting for the front door windows and a standard folding sunshade to cover the windscreen.

Power for the lights, sound system and LCD screen would be supplied via a second deep cycle battery that would be squeezed in next to the starter battery in the under floor battery box. A voltage sensitive relay would ensure that the house and starter batteries remain isolated during park ups.

So with the plan all worked out, the first step was to line the floor with sound deadening. With such a huge area to cover I used a cheaper Dynamat copy to keep the costs down. I then stripped the old carpeting off the original ply and re installed the floor boards using stainless steel nuts and bolts.

[Flash]

With the first phase of the flooring completed our attention turned to the side paneling. The existing panels were installed by the second owner. A pretty professional job had been done as the panels had been shaped to fit the tapered back. However they were externally fixed using self tappers and my plan was to fix them using hidden clips similar to car door panels.

The clips would need to be fairly meaty to handle the hug panels, so I elected to go with old VW Beetle / Volvo metal clips rather than the plastic clips used on modern door panels. I sourced 300 clips on eBay and proceeded to build a frame out of left over aluminium off cuts.

In keeping with the "clean look" theme I built mounting panels for the 6 x 9 speakers that would be hidden behind the velvet panel covering. This also meant that the speakers were solidly mounted and wouldn't wobble about in the flimsy side panels.

A bit of dynamat type sound deadening was placed behind each speaker.

Note the lashings of cavity wax that I gave the panel folds.

Some useless information for you:

A little known fact is that these vans rust from the inside out. The internal temperature builds up during the day when the van is sitting in the sun. At night things cool down and the condensation then runs off the inside of the roof and down the side panels and sits in the catchment areas being the inside of the roof gutters and the point where the floor panels join the side panels. After years of the same daily cycle the result is rusted out roof gutters and a rusty tell tale line running along the exterior seam at floor level.

Anyway, enough of this boring chat about rust, lets get on with the task at hand.

[Flash]

So how are you going to tackle the hood lining Flash ? I hear you all asking.

Well, its now time to confess that this isn't the first van that I have built. My previous van was a newer shape Bedford also running a 350 Chev. In that van I installed a ply roof with bonded leather covering, but I've got to admit that it was a mission to get the curves right and I had to use self tappers to keep the boards in place. Even although I managed to hide the self tappers I was never really 100% happy with the finished result.

So this time around we decided to use the old metal hooped and stitched roof lining found in most old school rides. Again using the velvet material that Mrs Flash would run up on her sewing machine.

Some pics of my previous van and its roof lining, just to give you the idea.

[Flash]

So I sourced some 10mm diameter hollow aluminium tube at my local Mitre 10 and curved the ends to make up the roof hoops. We then worked out where the hoops needed to be sewed into the velvet and with Mrs Flash slaving away over her sewing machine I started cutting and installing the insulation that would go behind the wall panels and roof lining. I used a product called Novahush from Forman Insulation. Its fairly rigid so is really awesome to work with and comes in various thicknesses and R ratings . The black fabric covering that you see in the image is the acoustic barrier that forms one side of the insulation.

As you can see in the image I held the insulation in place by pop riveting a wider strip of flat aluminium onto the existing roof ribs and then sandwiching the insulation between the roof panel and these plates.

Sound deadening is critical in a van as you don't want to scare small children and animals with the sounds that usually accompany periods of vigorous suspension movement.

[Flash]

With all of the insulation in place it was time for me to start mounting the side panels.

First step was to remove the existing marine carpet from the side panels leaving me with a blank plywood surface.

Those of you who have had experience with VW Beetles will know that the clip holes in the door panels don't line up with the mounting holes in the doors, they are slightly offset, so I needed to come up with a way of replicating this in the van.

I grabbed a spare length of aluminium flat bar and made a template strip with 3mm pilot holes offset by the correct distance. With the side panels temporarily fixed into their final position using a few self tapping screws I proceeded to move my template strip along each mounting point drilling hundreds of pilot holes through both the ply and the aluminium frame.

Then it was just a case of opening up the correct hole on the ply and the corresponding offset hole in the frame to the correct diameter, slipping the clips onto the ply and then test fitting each panel.

[Flash]

With the panels all in position the next step was to build the fixed day bed. I initially used 13mm ply, but some boisterous activity on our first overnight trip proved that the ply wasn't up to the task and this has now been replaced with 18mm ply.

The images below show the day bed base, the under bed storage space that is accessed via the rear barn doors and the pull out storage drawer that is accessed from inside the van.

[Flash]

With everything test fitted, the next step was to strip everything out again and to then pad the panels before covering them with the crushed velvet.

I started off by gluing standard foam carpet underlay onto each panel which I then wrapped around each edge. In hindsight I wouldn't recommend using the carpet underlay for this job as it starts to break apart when wrapped around the thin edges. If I had to redo the job I'd invest in a proper thin panel foam as it gives a much smoother wrap around edge.

I needed a way to be able to open as well as lock the side door from inside the van so I mucked about with some old VW Beetle parts left over from my veedub days and it works like a charm. I've subsequently fitted a pull handle from a Land Rover Defender to the inside of the door to make for easier closing.

[Flash]

With the panel work all sorted we headed down to a local carpet shop and scored a luscious off cut from a thick pile carpet.

I used the old marine carpeting from the side panels to cut a template and then dived into the good stuff.

It was a bit of a bugger cutting all of the openings for the seat belts, seat mountings, gear shift etc, but with a good dose of patience it came out pretty well. I covered the storage drawer front with a bit of the same carpeting.

We then removed the carpet and took it along to a professional upholsterer that stitched on a beading around the exposed edges.

My little helper gave the new carpet a big thumbs up.

[Flash]

With the carpeting completed and the seats back in I made a crappy looking temporary cover for the Hurst Promatic 2 shifter that I had pulled from the donor van. I hate these shifters with a passion, so the plan was to swap it out for something more user friendly at a later stage.

Note the small baking tray fitted to the new engine cover. It was much easier than trying to fabricate a tray. Apart from allowing easy access to check oil and transmission fluid levels without having to pull out the whole engine box, it also serves as a handy place to store mobile phones, keys and wallets so they don't slide about the place.

I wanted to keep the original dashboard and instrument cluster, but was keen to fit some additional gauges. I managed to track down a NOS Jaeger 3 gauge pod in Crete of all places and sourced some older style Smiths lookalikes locally. They look the part but are about a third of the price of Smiths.

[Flash]

We managed to get the van relatively complete and back on the road in time for a trip down to Beach Hop 2014. The van ran really well apart from some nervous moments when the water temp gauge started creeping up in bumper to bumper traffic. So a change from a single mechanical fan to twin electric fans was added to the "To do" list.

[Flash]

So I quickly chucked in a set of 10 inch electric fans with a Davies Craig thermo fan switch before we headed off on an epic 4,800km journey around the South Island over Easter. Again the van performed really well with only one nervous moment when a loose fuel pump wire caused the van to grind to a halt as we were heading down the ramp off the ferry in Picton. A few pics of the van taken during our South Island trip.