Hi all fabuglass followers
Well it's been one hell of a busy half year for me. Between wet
weather, family events, working away from home and two bouts
of the flu, I've finally managed to get a start on the Stardust.
I managed to get a start on prepping the body to receive the new fibreglass floor panels.
The beginnings of cleaning up the floor area:
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The plywood between the wheel arches proved to be a tough challenge.
I couldn't get it up without damaging the fibreglass. I ended up planeing the whole lot off - took forever.
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And here's the floor area all cleaned up. As you can see I also
removed the wheel arches. I kinda figured that a clean slate
was a better way to start. I also believe that I can build more
strength into the side walls. Also, I plan to raise the chassis by
100-135mm to accommodate larger wheels - still thinking on that
one. Either way I should be able to lower the profile of the wheel arches.
You can also see that every surface area that makes contact
with the floor has been sanded with a coarse grade sanding disk
and up the side wall where the floor will be glassed to the walls.
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One of the bigger challenges is getting the body and floor level.
As you can see in the image below, I have some adjusting to do.
As those that have done these types of restorations before know,
when the body sags this much, there are fibreglass tears across the front bottom of van.
I'll get to these late when the floors in and the van is all squared up.
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I don't have the luxury of a nice flat concrete slab to level my van
on so I built these adjustable supports to lift the van. I used a
4x4 60in high lift jack along with 3x spirit levels to guide me.
Once I had the levels right, I simply drilled a hole through the
supports and slipped a bolt through to hold them in place. The
was a bit of adjusting, but I got it pretty close.
Oh by the way; if you are taking the wheels off like I did, you
will need to put supports under the axles or the chassis will be
too springy in the middle.
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Now for the good stuff; the 12mm fibreglass floor panels. They
were bought from Fibreglass Design Panels at Northgate QLD.
They made a complete single sheet floor panel and then cut it to
the sizes I wanted. This worked out great because 1) the vans
are all imperial measurements and off the shelf sheets are all
metric so there's a lot of waste and extra cutting. 2) My sheets
were cut perfect to match floor join locations. 3) I had it cut into 5 sheets.
Did I mention it cost $1400
. They're gel coated on one side;
I've elected to set gel coat side down so I get good fibreglass
adhesion when I glass the floor to the sides.
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Below is the floor plan I took to Fibreglass Design Panels. Each
measurement down the page represents the centre of a cross
batten where sheets can be butted up/joined. From this we were able to work out the best places for joins.
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Anyway it was 5pm Sunday and the light was fading quickly but I
managed to get some sheets shaped into place and bugger me
dead they are sitting flat. ;D Not glued in yet though, that's next weekend I hope.
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I do have a question!! Fibreglass Design Panels have
recommended I use a product made by Bostik called Simson ISR
70-03. They say it is used by most coach builders for floor and
wall bonding. They also say it sticks like the proverbial but also
allows some flexing and it works well with fibreglass. To me it
sounds like the right stuff to use. Does anyone have any
thoughts on this??
Anyhow; that's all I have right now. Hopefully more to report next weekend. ;D
Cheers
OZ