Surprises…

by | 15 Sep 2015 | Vanlife - Fitting | 2 comments

Date de dernière mise à jour : le 5 July 2018

Now that the mechanic is working, we will have to start the interior finishes. First of all, we’re allready concerned by some moistures next to the back doors…

 

Oulà, c'est pas bon tout ça...

I have a bad feeling about this

After a brief cas analysis and a discussion about possible risks, we decide to remove a large plywood board wich was starting to mold, in order to take a look at the extent of the problem.

Gosh… if we want to remove this board we have to remove these screws, hidden behind the other board. Well, we remove the other board first. Ouch, it’s blocked by the bed board. OK, we remove the bed board. Oh yes, but we have to remove that at the same time…

 

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One done ! Oh no, there’s a part stuck down there… behind the tank…

 

The fridge hatches exist outside, but we can’t see them from the inside of the cupboard ? I never thought about that…
Anyway, we’re finally going to dismantle almost all the fitting, discovering step by step the extent of damage in some areas…

 

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Perfect

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The privilege of removing the expansive foam with a crowbar

OK… I think there will be a little bit more work than expected…

Netherless, the large curved plywood board will remain !

 

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Here it is, it’s clean !

 

  • Hum… wait. If we want to set up a roof rack, additional spotlights and a WiFi antenna on the roof, where do we fix it ?
  • …oh, on the… no, but behind…
  • we remove all the stuff ?
  • let’s go…

The truck is now completely naked, so we can have a better view. But there’s still this thick coat of tar on the floor, preventing us to see the state of the metal… And if it’s completely filled by rust ? Let’s try to scratch a little bit this blister to see what’s below. Oh, this is very hard to remove this thing…

 

Ouch… some rust. What do we do, we remove everything to bee sure ? I think that it would be better. No ?

And here we go for days of cleaning, centimeter by centimeter… All methods are tried: heat gun, drilling machine with wire brush, hammer and scraper, unflavored petroleum…

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with the heat gun

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perfect result !

At the end, we start to see the white paint. Don’t forget to take some before / after pictures to keep the high spirit and to see that the last four hours of work maybe weren’t useless.

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before

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after. Magic !

Now that all the floor is cleaned, we start to work on the cockpit (that we want to insulate) and to remove all side traps (some of them looks very rusty).

After some hours of hard labour, we’re starting to have a good idea of the extent of damage :

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front left footboard

repose-pied avant droit + fixation sièges

the right one

Rouille caisse 2 - dessus

I think there is some holes in our floor…

ancien trou plancher cabine

oh ! There’s a big one too !

trappe frigo à reboucher

the old fridge trap, that will be closed

trappe gaz à réparer

the gas trap. Here, there will be some work…

 

This time I think that we’ll have to find someone to help us…

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