Viscount Valiant

[hedonic1]

Hi, Hope you can help me with this 15' Viscount Valiant serial number B2899.

Year of manufacture.
The A frame 80mm x 40mm drawbar is rusty on the bottom, can i weld 40mm x 40mm SHS under the bottom. And still get it registerd?
How can i clean the aluminium finish (acid wash?)

Thanks Ed

[Franklin1]

G'day Ed, and welcome to the forum! ;D

If you didn't already know it, Valiant caravans were built by the Viscount group, who also built the Ambassador model. I've seen your side-stripe design on an Ambassador van that was made in about 1967, based on newspaper advertisements I have in my collection. That's about as close as I can guess at the moment for your van.

I'm inclined to think the rego authorities might frown on your idea of SHS welded underneath, purely from the fact it wouldn't look "original" and they might query the engineering rigidity of it. That's not to say it wouldn't be structurally sound, but anything that raises 'concerns' in the rego process is best avoided. Perhaps an alternative is to buy RHS in, say, 100 x 50mm size and cut it diagonally to give two 100 x 50mm right-angle pieces. You could then weld these on the inside of the drawbar to cover the rusted areas. A good coat of silver paint and nobody would know it was never there to begin with. Of course, a lot depends on how bad the rust is in the present drawbar, and how much steel you need to weld on to cover it.

As far as cleaning the aluminium goes, think carefully about whether you do really want it to look shiny, or whether you just want it to look 'clean'. It's a lot of hours work to get the mirror shine happening. There'll be others on the forum who can give you first-hand information on what they ended up doing, but most of them have trouble typing these days due to the fact their arms have been worn down considerably.

cheers,
Al.

[hedonic1]

Hi Al, thanks for your imformation and ideas.

Ed

[Dave&Tammy]

Hi Ed,

We bought a Valiant/Viscount? Year? for our sons 18th birdthday present, do you have any more exterior & interior shots that we can compare vans to, the serial number on ours is B2990.

Here is a link to our thread about our van:

vintagecaravans.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=photo&action=display&thread=5651

Tammy & Dave