Learning about our Wayfarer caravan...

[todd]

Hello VC forum members, we've just joined the forum with the hope we may find out some more information about a Wayfarer caravan that we own and would like to restore. Upfront, we are totally new to caravanning and the world of caravan restoration! So there's a bit of a learning curve ahead of us ;-)

The good news is that we know the make because the badge is still on the front of van.



We may also know the date, if the information stamped on the jockey wheel is allowed (or perhaps that's just the date that the wheel was made!). The date appears to be March, 1961 (stamped as: 19613)



We have spent a bit of time looking through various threads and doing keyword searches on this site about Wayfarers in general. The interesting thing is that we didn't find any models posted that have the same/similar shape of our van. Our 3.7 metre Wayfarer has some distinct features: a very flat front, a very curved back, very rectangular wheel arches, and small portal windows on both sides of the van. There are two images we did find that had similar qualities, but neither are Wayfarers (those two are shown at the end of our images).

Overall, the van is in fairly good nick, considering its age and that it has stood out in the open near the ocean for a quarter of a century. Still, there are things that need tending to. So, along with any additional information anyone may have in general about our van (links, clips, threads etc), we would appreciate knowing how one tracks down parts like the missing rear lights etc (who to contact, private or business), and any photos that may indicate what the interior may have looked like back in the day - our van's interior has been painted completely white at some point in the distant past, so we have no idea how it originally looked. Finally, the external cladding - would it have originally looked very shiny like photos of AirStreams or did Wayfarers like ours have more of a matte finish like ours has today?

Lots of questions, we know. Apologies for that but we're keen to give our van some much-needed TLC and any help would be appreciated. We've posted some photos to share with you and are looking forward to the journey ahead :-)

Here are some more photos:



















Thanks for reading :-)

Todd & Mary

[hughdeany]

Hi Todd and welcome,
I think you will find your van has bondwood sides under that silver aluminium,the front and rear lower panels from memory were also bondwood with an aluminium roof.
The pic of the yellow stripe van is a Clipper,and the Hawthorn is a different shape.
Your model also had inset wheels for some reason,I think it’s late 50s or early 60s and I don’t recall ever seeing other pics of one,just going off my memory!
Hope this helps
Cheers
hughdeany

[todd]

Hello Hughdeany, thank you for your comments. When you refer to the bondwood sides and panels, do you mean that the caravan was once just all bondwood with an aluminium roof - and the rest of the aluminium cladding was added later on, or was the caravan built with the two layers - bondwood base with an aluminium cladding? Do you know of photos that capture what you are describing and would you know if the numbers on the jockey wheel are a way of identifying the year of manufacture?

Many thanks,

Todd & Mary

[hughdeany]

Hi Todd and Mary,
Yes,the van would have been bondwood sides and lower front and rear,with aluminium roof down to front and rear window level.You can see with the different profile cladding on sides and ends.I also think the roof has been covered as well ( it was quite common in the sixties to cover bondwood vans to update them)
I have been looking everywhere in my collection to find some pics,but as yet no go!
The jockey wheel is not the date of the van,van is earlier.
Cheers
hughdeany

[todd]

Hi Hughdeany,
Thanks for the clarification. So it looks like our van is a bit older than we concluded, which was based on the jockey wheel. It will be interesting to see if it's possible to get an actual date of manufacture. We haven't explored all of the A-frame underneath the van - perhaps there's a weld date hidden there! :-) Would you happen to know if the aluminium cladding of Wayfarers of that era always had a matte finish?

Thank you.

Todd & Mary

[Roehm3108]

Hi Todd and welcome
Your van seems to have three different profiles of cladding and I fully agree with the master hughdeany about the cladding being a later addition. You're unlikely to have anything relevant to build date actually welded onto the chassis. Some manufacturers had a date system with their ID chassis number, but this generally applied to manufacturers with a large turnover.
I trust hughdeany's judgement a lot, because he has been in the caravan industry a long time. However, because it is such a different style van, my suspicions are that perhaps it may not be a Wayfarer! At best, it might fall into that category of rebadged Wayfarers talked about in the DHL section. But it may be worth checking if that front badge looks like it belongs there, as from the pic it doesn't look to be sitting "flush" on the body curve. I notice that there is also an oval shape in the middle of the back wall, just under the window - a missing badge??? Your van has a similar shape (not totally) to the Litecraft caravan too.
I have had success in finding a build date on a previous van, scribbled on the interior framing of the kitchen cabinet. Perhaps it's worth looking for something inside the cabinets.

[todd]

Hello Roehm3108,
Thank you for your thoughts on the van. We really appreciate the feedback provided by you and hughdeany, especially given the years' of experience and knowledge you both have! Learning about our caravan has already produced some interesting twists - it is older than we thought, had a previous life with a bondwood & aluminium external finish, its style is very different and not readily seen, and... it may not even be a Wayfarer! :-) Now we're really intrigued to find out more! Tonight we went out and checked the front badge and your suspicion is well-founded. It does appear to have been placed in that position at a later date. There is a screw hole inside the badge's area that doesn't tie into the cladding:



However, when one goes around to the van's rear, the measured screw hole distances for the badge area are set the same distances apart as for the front screw holes - and there is an extra screw added to the rear cladding which matches the position of the inside screw hole found on the Wayfarer badge. So perhaps it has been moved from the rear to the front of the van?! Or the rear badge may have been taken by the same people that turned up one day uninvited and took the van's tail lights! In its factory condition, would it have been customary to have seen a Wayfarer badge on the rear of the van, sited on the original bondwood cladding?



All the best,

Todd & Mary

[Don Ricardo]

Hi Todd & Mary,

I've dug up a bit more information that may assist you with your van. Below are some photos of a Wayfarer which is of the same vintage and style, and appears to be of a very similar layout to yours:











These photos were posted on the forum some long time ago, but unfortunately my "failsafe" system failed me, and I can't tell you quite where. (I'll work on that!)

Based on what I've been able to learn about Wayfarer production over time, your van would have been produced in the late 50's. One clue on that is the Wayfarer badge you have on your van and the one shown above. In the very early 60's Wayfarer changed over to using a cast and chromed metal 'Wayfarer' badge.

Wayfarer was always a bit innovative and often tried new materials a few years before other manufacturers. That included aluminium cladding (although I'm not saying they were the first to try aluminium, just that they were a bit ahead of the pack). You'll notice that the van above is clad in plain aluminium and there are other examples of their late 50's vans being clad in aluminium. However, I certainly agree that your van has been reclad at some point as Hughdeany and Roehm have said, because of the ridged profile of the cladding, some of which wasn't introduced until about 1964. I'm not saying that your van was originally clad in plain aluminium. There's a good chance it is/was bondwood underneath, but you'll only get an idea if you have a look underneath what's there.

There are a couple of interesting things that come out of a comparison of your van with the van above. One is the back windows - the windows in the van above are original, while yours have been replaced at some point, possibly with a domestic or home made window frame. I can't think of any manufacturers that used the type of back windows you have, in terms of shape.  The normal fold down hatch on the door has been similarly replaced with a fixed window.

The second interesting point is the shape of the wheel arches. Yours are rectangular and with 90 degree corners, whereas the ones on the van above are tear shaped. Wayfarer had vans with both shapes, but my guess is that yours were originally teardrop shaped and were then squared off when the van was reclad, to make them "tidier" or easier to remove the wheel, perhaps.

As to origins, your van is definitely a Wayfarer, in the sense that that's what it is badged and that's who it was sold by. However, up until the late 50's - possibly the very early 60's - Wayfarer didn't built its own vans, or built only some of them. That was not uncommon in that era (or now, for that matter). So who may have built yours for Wayfarer? My guess is that it was built by a South Australian manufacturer for Wayfarer. My reasons for saying that are (1) we know that Wayfarer sourced a lot of their vans from South Australian manufacturers in the 50's (Globe and Ambassador principally), and at this stage we are not aware of other sources of their vans from any other state (including Victoria); (2) the van is a 'South Australian' shape (don't laugh, it's a thing), and has several design features typical of South Australian vans from the era, namely the front window configuration, and the shape of the wheel arch on the van above. Beyond that it's hard to know, but I am wondering if C H Gray may have been involved? Gray built vans for Harris, and also sold some under the name 'Grayline'.

The photos of the van shown above may give you an idea of what your van looked like inside before it got the 'whiteout' treatment.  Of course it's impossible to know whether the van in the photos has been repainted inside at some time, however I reckon we'd be pretty safe saying that the cushion covers, the laminex and the lino on the floor are all 100% original, so they may give you a starting point.

Regarding dating your van, you may find a serial number on your A-frame created out of weld.  It may be something like 'Wxxx' with 'x' being a number.  Some Wayfarers had a serial number, but not all seem to have (just to trick us!).  As Roehm has said, Wayfarer didn't include a coded date in the serial number, however, if there is a number we may be able to compare it to some other Wayfarer vans which would then give us a bit of a hint about where it fits in, and a broad idea of date.

Hope all this helps?

There's not many Wayfarers of the vintage of yours around, so it is exciting to see another one emerge.

Don Ricardo

---

PS I found the original post from 2007 here! Apparently my "failsafe" system isn't a total failure!

The van belonged to Retrovan. The thread doesn't tell you much more about the van itself, except that it was 12 ft long, and the photos show it as purchased. There are references to posts by other forum members that were deleted when they cancelled their forum registration, so don't worry if you can't make all the comments fit together.

[Roehm3108]

I was wondering why you were taking so long to respond DonR I should have guessed you were busily researching!!! A great find of those pics!

[todd]

Hello Don Ricardo,
Thank you so much for joining the conversation, your amazing knowledge and taking the time to track back to 2007 to find some photos of a very similar-looking van! Your comments together with Roehm3108's and hughdeany's have all helped tremendously. We now have much more of an idea of our van's history. From what you have described, we're delighted that now it is highly likely to be of actual Wayfarer stock, rather than just being inadvertently badged as one later on. As soon as we saw the interior photos you provided we immediately recognised the similarities - the positioning and shapes of the shelves and the cupboard design to the right of the doorway. Just wonderful :-) We're curious if the 2007 member 'retrovan' is still on the scene to make contact with?

It's also great that it brought you joy to discover that another ol' Wayfarer (ours!) is still on the scene (adding its little part to Australia's caravanning history).

Sadly, a lot of our van's interior has been stripped out. The kitchen and cupboards have long gone, as too have the seats and dining table. There are a couple of strips of what could be the original laminex and lino coverings (for use as reference material), aside from that it's all white :-)

As you mentioned, there are not many of these vans about. So replacing parts is going to be a challenge to say the least :-)
I imagine we'll re-build most of the cabinetry ourselves and summon up the courage to peel off the cladding to get a better idea of the frame's condition. All the window rubbers need replacing and the exterior given a damn good clean, re-screwed and re-sealed. Tail lights are also needed, along with new wiring throughout etc etc. There's plenty to do for years to come!

One thing that would greatly help is to see a photo of any van that has the dual aluminium and bondwood finish as described earlier by hughdeaney: "the van would have been bondwood sides and lower front and rear, with aluminium roof down to front and rear window level". If you know of such an image, that'd be brilliant.

Once again, thank you - you've been so helpful. If you think of anything else at a later stage, please send it through :-)

All the best,

Todd & Mary

[sportsman 1]

Hi Todd, the white van with the yellow stripe you posted above is my Clipper. If you go back to where you found it you will see it is a bondwood van (sides, front and back) with an aluminium stone guard panel across the front and an aluminium roof, all of which are as original.

I trust we have convinced you that you need to remove the non original aluminium cladding, but dont throw it away as someone else might need some for their later model van. This will expose the original bondwood underneath and might reveal original paint details, etc which are currently hidden. Most bondwood vans were reclad in aluminium for two reasons, one to modernise them and secondly to cover up areas that needed repair. It is most likely when you remove the cladding those areas are still going to need to be repaired, at least at that stage you can repair/replace as necessary from the frame up and you will end up with another old treasure.

Good luck with it.

Leigh.

[todd]

Hello Leigh,
Thank you for your post. We searched back through your Threads and found a trove of helpful photos that documented your caravan's rebuild. It was great to see images of the framework behind the cladding and you posted some great info about the names of businesses that still supplied materials, even after all these years! There's a long road ahead for us, but we've already received some wonderful support from this forum - so we'll give it our best shot and fingers crossed, our little Wayfarer will be out & about touring again :-)

All the best,

Todd & Mary

[shesgotthelook]

Hi Todd & Mary, great little van you have there. Below is a pic of what was under the aluminium on a Globe caravan of mine. Hopefully yours isn't that bad!



vintagecaravans.proboards.com/thread/17511/globe-caravan-rescue-restoration

[Roehm3108]

That's cruel Lindsey!!!!! You should have shown the AFTER pics as well Yes, I noticed you put the link in too!!!!

[todd]

Hello shesgotthelook (Lindsey), thank you for the pic and especially for providing a link to other photos of the re-build! :-)
If that first image is indicative of what we may discover, the cladding is definitely staying on the Wayfarer ;-)
Seriously, it's really good to see the process and stages that are needed to recapture a van's former glory. The reality is that it's a significant commitment that requires planning and perseverance. We've got a lot more research to do!!!

All the best,

Todd & Mary