A little van that needs a lot of work
Dad has put me to work on the family’s 1969 Morris 1000 van. It feels a bit of a busman’s holiday, going from bodywork prep on the 1950 Lowlight tourer to bodywork prep of the van – it would be nice to do something mechanical for a change.
Unfortunately, this project has succumbed to terrible mission creep, which means it’s having a bare metal respray rather than a more general tart up with a paint brush. This in itself might not result in a huge amount more work on a normal restoration (if there is ever such a thing?). However, the van has been subject to a long history of being hastily repaired, but never restored. Indeed, my dad says that it was already brush painted when it came into family ownership back in the 1980s. It was very nearly scrapped, but saved when road tax was abolished for classic vehicles, before being quickly smartened up for my brother and me to learn to drive in.
It’s been a hard-worked vehicle all its life and it shows. It was purchased by my late grandad for his newsagents in Bristol, where someone drove into it. It’s been stolen twice. The first time it was returned by the police with fingerprint detecting dust on it (and some extra tools). The second time, the petrol pump packed up after a mile or so and it was abandoned. It was passed on to my mum, and later into my dad’s custodianship, used by my parents to carry salty windsurfers on a roof rack, even to the South of France. It went through Checkpoint Charlie a few weeks after the Berlin Wall came down on the way to Poland. Then it was abused with numerous trips to builders merchants and the dump with rubble when their house was rebuilt. My brother was nearly born in it on the way to the maternity hospital!
Looking at the paint layers, we think that it has had at least four coats of brush paint and undercoat, resulting in an incredibly thick layer to remove. There were also generous applications of filler, cracking away in many places. Originally it was a yellow Post Office Telecoms van, but the bonnet and the doors (front and rear) are from a Post Office mail van, with the holes for the special locks still badly covered up.
Stripping was first attempted with some industrial paint stripper, which didn’t seem to have much effect. So we turned to some water-based stuff, which worked, albeit slowly and very messily. A needle gun was good at chipping some flaky areas, but unsatisfied with the progress we were making, we turned to using an angle grinder with a sanding disk. This cut through the layers of paint and filler quickly, but it was messy and created lots of dust.
With the paint finally off the car, a number of old repairs of various quality levels were revealed. Although none of these necessarily constitute a bodge, they would definitely prevent it winning a concours prize. They include a rather crudely fitted secondhand replacement complete rear body van side from the 1980s, while side windows were once fitted and more recently the panels have been welded back in. It had a sunroof for a while too, new wheelarches, light clusters and sundry patches in many places. Most of the gutters have been replaced, some of them before the proper repair panels were available, while both door bottoms were full of filler. These bodywork issues are further compounded by the associated knocks and scrapes from learning to drive, plus two of my brother’s friends sat on the roof at college making some interesting dents.
Dad said that he didn’t pay much attention to the bodywork last time he painted it, as he didn’t think it would survive the use of two teenage learner drivers. Mind you, the total lack of soundproofing, the generous speedo and 4.55 diff undoubtedly proved to be some sort of limiting factor on how fast either of us could or would drive. It certainly sounded very loud and felt frighteningly fast!
None of these problems are insurmountable, but they will make sorting out the bodywork more time consuming than we hoped. One of the biggest issues is that many of the panels are stretched, and pop in and out like the side of an oil can. If you watch a video on the internet about this, you would think that linishing a panel back into shape was a relatively simple affair. Unfortunately, in reality this is about 300 times harder than it looks or sounds. I’ve got the utmost respect for anyone who really possesses the skills to do this well and get a panel smooth without any real need for filler. However, by using a small blow lamp to heat stretched areas, then cooling them with a wet rag, it is possible to shrink an area so it holds its shape. Removing all the distortion is much trickier, and the best I can do is to knock back the high spots. With a bit of practice I have managed to reduce the need for filler to millimetres rather than the centimetres it was before.
We haven’t bolted the back permanently on to the chassis yet, as we want to be certain that the vulnerable cab-to-body join is properly painted. This was useful when I discovered that there were no signs of the body stays that brace the lower body sides in front of the wheelarches. Dad didn’t think the van ever had any, which explains why the filler in that area cracked off. It was simple to make a pair, and flipping the rear up made it easy to weld them in, stiffening up the area nicely. Dad has bought a very powerful long bed air powered sander, which has made the task of smoothing the filler much quicker, although it can only be used for a short period before your hands go numb. At present the roof, doors, wings and bonnet are close to being ready for primer, but the back still requires a lot of work. I am sure the Tourer, when I get to it, will be much easier...
“I am sure the Tourer, when I get to it, will be much easier...”