27/02/22 – Re-side the Vanwide

Good evening all, and welcome to another update from Quorn. This week, being as the weather has been quite good we’ve go on an replaced some of the side sheets on some of the vans in the Van train. If you’ve been following our progress we cut, prepped and painted some plywood sheets some weeks ago for B779978, B850498, B784409 and B854782, all of which we deemed to be the most in need of replacement. Eddie has also spent the weekend continuing the prep on the internal surfaces of the Bogie Bolster which is really comming together, and I’m looking forward to painting.

Nick and I made a start on B854782 where we whipped out the side sheet with relative ease, the impact gun again make its usefulness apparent. In not too much time, we had the sheet out and Nick was scraping the frame of the old sealant and any other contamination. By this point Richard had arrived, and assisted me in drilling and attaching the new side sheet to the van.

Moving onto B779978, well in our stride. Again the side sheet was removed and the new one fitted. Both of these now needs signwriting to replace any markings lost.

We ended Saturday by undoing most of the bolts on the GW-designed Shock Van, and Sunday was more of the same. Having now done it, its probably the easiest van to have replaced a side sheet on. All the bolts undid with just the impact gun, no need to grind or split nuts and only bolts up the sides of the sheet.

Richard and I then made a start on the ex-VEA. We’ve not replaced a side sheet on one of those before, so it was a bit of a learning curve. In this case, the impact gun didn’t help, the coach bolts ended up spinning in the wood. Out came the grinder to slit the nuts and then the hammer to push the bolts through. Some of the bolts were hidden behind the top door runner and took a bit more work to remove.

By the end of the day, we had the new panel sat in the hole, and fastened to the van by 2 of the bolts behind the top runner. Next weekend, we’ll start with un bolting that, applying sealant and then bolting the panel in fully. After that we might be moving on to fitting some doors, exciting stuff! Thanks for reading, and see you next week!