Keep regular

What's your fibre intake?

Mine just got a little better, a forum member has started producing carbon fibre parts for the T4, amongst them some mirror covers.

My existing mirrors are showing signs of conflict, scrapes and a large missing piece on the passenger side. I was considering buying some regular replacements but when Phil began his business I watched with interest.

So here they are, they fit well, look good and cover the scratches well.

Unfortunately for me they don't cover the large gap on the passenger mirror, but no covers will do that.

And here they are on the van, apart from the side bars and A-bar the only shiny parts on it!

Easy peasy

Sometimes the smallest jobs make the biggest difference.

During the latest cold snap my sliding door became a real pain to open, grounching, bouncing and generally nasty to open. I ordered a replacement bottom roler but strangely as soon as the weather got better so did the door.

So the roller replacement was put on the back burner.

As I'm a little financially challenged right now I'm going through the small jobs I've got parts for, but never got around to doing because of something shiney (the magpie effect).

So today, ably assisted by my stunning fiancée I set about swapping the arm over. I'm glad I did, I was supporting the door as my partner undid the bolts (loosened by me of course!) and when she removed the original arm it came out in 2 bits, arm and roller.

New arm on and a clean and grease of the channel and it's like new, almost silent and glides effortlessly.

On the tiles

Once the sides were carpeted I turned my attention to the floor. Originally covered in a black "made to measure" carpet which was showing signs of everything that had happened in the van. Wood shavings, metal swarf, sand mud, grass, dog fur...

Now I was happy most of the messy side of the conversion was out of the way, I ordered some self adhesive carpet tiles from ebay.

These aren't bad, they came in beige and anthracite and are corded - I know, I ranted about this before but oh well, and seem fairly hard wearing. The benefit of using tiles is I can replace an individual one if it gets too dirty to clean.

Yes I need a new step cover...

They fitted well, but the adhesive was applied in a wavy pattern and doesn't always go to the corners, resulting in them lifting slightly. This was solved using some of the remaining carpet glue from doing the side panels.

The edges at the side door and tailgate were tidied by using some Aluminium treadplate corner protectors, cut and profiled to suit each opening.

Bling bling

It's a fine line.

Since buying the van I've wanted to make it look less like a builders hack and more personal. But the line is where it gets gaudy.

The paint is quite subtle, and the VW sticker on the bonnet is not as large as some I've seen so I think I've balanced it fairly well so far.

But  always want more.

I've already fitted some stainless side bars and after a good spell selling on ebay I got the green light to buy an A-bar.
Originally I wanted the old school type, all aggression and angular steel but since they are rare second hand, I settled on a stainless "Style bar" instead. This was on offer at the time and to be fair it does match the sidebars better than the older one would.

At the same time I got some new pressed licence plates made. These are sold as UK legal so should be no problem come MOT time - my rear plate had started to de-laminate which made new plates a necessity.

To go with them some plate holders were also bought, this way I don't need to drill my shiny plates.

I also sprayed the bumpers in my favourite black Krylon, and yes I have some overspray on the tailgate to clean up...

Carpet bagging

This has been an eternity in the making. I've waited for some decent time off and decent weather so that I can finally recover the inside of my van.

When I did the original conversion I went for some grey corded carpet that was ok, but soon looked so bland and dull. This time I wanted something a bit brighter, still neutral but something that suits the van better. And I didn't want horrible corded carpet, this is not the seventies!

I ordered sand coloured carpet some from Mega van Mats, an offer which included 5 cans of high temperature adhesive. This was delivered very quickly.

I had already stripped the van, and just had some small bits of surface prep to finish. I have a few plans for organising the interior so where I needed fixings I drilled and installed rivnuts wherever possible. This includes some for MOLLE panels on the rear sides and a work light in the rear boot area.

With some help from my glamorous assistant (my girlfriend) we set about glueing the new carpet in place in 1 piece (per side). Ultimately this is more effort, but definitely worth it as the whole interior is now seamless.

A notoriously difficult area is the tail light "swell", but the carpet is so flexible these complex curves could be tackled with only a little swearing.

The MOLLE panel is actually part of a dog guard, with some MOLLE pouches looped through it, but it works well and keeps necessities handy (like poo bags, wet wipes and the dogs muzzle as seen here...).
As many different MOLLE pouches are available I plan to get a medics pouch for my first aid kit - essential this is easily accessible.

While I was tidying the van I got my torch out of the glove box and fitted some "quick fists" (unfortunate name) to the lower dash panel, sandwiching an aluminium treadplate trim panel in place. Not only is the maglite nice and bright but it's fitted with a glass breaker tailcap in case of emergencies.

For other emergencies, a small fire extinguisher was fitted to the rear D pillar, the plan is to cook at the rear of the van, so this is the best place for it. I will get another for the front soon.

I still need to cover the lower panels, but this will be in a different colour and after I have finished wiring in things like lights, sockets, flux capacitor, etc.

Now it's recovered the van feels so much more comfortable.

It's all so quiet

Yup, not been up to much lately.

getting a few things in line before a massive work-splurge. But I've treated the van to a mini service. Ironically in the week before I changed the oil I developed a small leak from the oil cooler.

Once the filter was off for the change I found a nut had worked it's way loose and was no longer sealing the cooler to the block. A quick turn of a spanner and all is well again.

Mostly.

I've fitted an oil pressure gauge as I'm a bit concerned about my oil light which started to flash when I slow down after a run. Looking at it now I seem to have decent pressure when the oil is cold but it drops off dramatically when hot.

The van has done a lot of miles (215,000 of them) and reading up on high mileage motors it used to be common practice to use "High mileage oil", basically an oil that is thicker at operating temperature so it maintains pressure through worn oilways. I still have decent pressure when the engine revs so I may look at a quick change to a thicker oil and see how that works. At worse case I imagine it could be a new oil pump, and with that being a garage job it's something I don't really want to do first.