The CF Bedford Rebuild Begins

Part 1: Getting the van

This van wasn't actually the van I brought to build. The original van I drove up from down south, the paint brush paint job hide a lot but what I didn't see was the bent front chassis section which had been repaired - badly.
I knew the engineers doing the cert. wouldn't except this and with the rest of the body being pretty well rusted I was able to find a reasonable body shell I could swap this van for (he only wanted front panels to put on an old ambulance bedford).

I arranged to pick the new CF Bedford van body on a Wednesday, so hired a car trailer and proceeded to pick it up. The van still had the usual road grime and dirt so headed over to the local car wash place (wash world). Eight dollars later I was very wet and dirty while the van looked clean, the water blaster did a good job but being on the trailer was very hard to get everywhere. Sadly I forgot to take any pictures at this stage.

Next stop was the sandblasters; the short drive there was drying time.

I was expecting a little bit of rust so the plan was for the sand blaster to just blast the seams, wheel archs and other common rust areas and get the rest blasted later.

The van, although having some visible bondo/bog/filler did look very reasonable, I did know it had some rust in it but when the sandblaster had finished just blasting around the seams and arches I was quite shocked to see rust holes everywhere. It is very hard to find a good van these days so semi expected the result.

Took the van back to my friend's workshop where it would remain until finished (wasn't to be, as he needed his workshop back, which is fair enough).

What you'll see in the following pages is just what I got and what I did with it. Let's get on with it.

The above is the van shell after returning from the sand blasters - doesn't look to bad does it, or does it?

The side windows were the only things removed by me at this point.
The rear wheels and diff are borrowed.

The next day was the strip day, removed the old wheel tubs, dash, and every nut, bolt and screw I could find.