Kitchen and water

I also installed a water provision: due to limited space the faucet is one that usually is used for bathrooms. The water container is a flexible 20 liter container which is mounted on top at the former luggage rack. No pump is necessary, the water flows (very slowly) out by gravity.

Project Updates

The seats: sold. Last week, James from Rotherham became the highest bidder for these 8 seats which I wanted to get rid of. Today he came and picked them up.

The tax: still unresolved. I had sent everything in to the DVLA last week, but the vehicle still appears as being un-taxed. I was told that it may take 10 business days. So I will wait until mod next week then, before I can take the vehicle on the road.

The water ingress: Last week I put some duck tape on parts of the front windscreen seal where I suspected that water would come in. There was still water on the front side under that rubber mat, near the driver's seat. I put a few more patches on the seal, will have to see if the amount of water is increasing or decreasing.

The rust: I removed bits of rust along the wheel arches and at the lower edges of the side panels. Used rust desolver to convert the rust back to metal. Also put a bit of white primer on some of those rusty parts. Most is only surface rust, but on one spot the rust has eaten through the metal and has made a small hole. I probably have to fill this. The repairs are currently mostly cosmetic.

The mileage: I checked on the DVLA website: https://www.gov.uk/check-mot-history where one can just enter the registration and make and get a MOT history back to 2005. This provided more information than the vehicle history check for which I paid.... The DVLA site shows a consistent low mileage, beginning with 5867 miles back in March 2006. Annually there were not more than 3000 miles driven in average. So the low mileage appears to be correct. Except that possibly before 2006 there could have been some kind of excessively high mileage.

Further plans: Are for now put on hold. I first will use the vehicle as a transport van. Still have to find a good way of attaching the window tinting film. My previous attempt in the past two weeks were unsuccessful, as the large window area was difficult to manage. The foil crinkled and tore. I have to either find a better foil (maybe 3M ?) or have a company do that professionally.

First Problem: Water Ingress

Yesterday evening I did a closer inspection of the van. Should have done it before I bought it, but I was not thinking very thoroughly then. At my first inspection on Saturday morning it looked OK, and the price was reasonable. But now I did look closer, and I noticed that the front windscreen moulding is very brittle and is broken in some sections. This means it will let the water through.

Today was a quite rainy day. The LDV stood there in the rain, and I wanted to check if some moisture got into the inside. Upon a first glance - nothing. The whole floor dry. No wet spots, while it was pouring down outside. The side windows appear to be tight. Nothing on the dashboard. So I wanted to leave the vehicle happy, but then I stepped onto the rubber floor in the driver area - and as I stepped on it, a bit of water seeped out at the opening of that rubber floor, where the driver seat is mounted. Now I saw the reason for those rusty bolts: water must have come in from underneath that rubber floor. The only reason for this I could see in the defective windscreen seal. The water probably ran down inside the seal, then dropped into the floor. I tried to identify, but in order to really find it, I would have to remove the rubber floor and check where the water was coming from.

So the next most urgent thing is to get the window seal repaired. I called AUTOGLASS - they do not do these kind of jobs. Strange, why not - but they only put new glass in. I would have thought it would be the same: to take the old glass out, put a new rubber seal around, then put it back in. But for some reason they so not put in back the old glass, but they want so sell a new glass. That is not what I need.

On some blogs I read that people tried to repair these leaks, and changing the window glass themselves is a real pain (see the comments to this blog post : Fixing water leak in LDV van). So this I will not be able to do myself - instead I am trying to find a garage. Have contacted two in Leeds, am waiting for their response.

In the meantime I started to put "stuff" into the LDV van. Some of my car repair things, some stuff from my previous conversion. Those roof shelves are great! Very sturdy, and provide lots of storage space. These roof shelfs (left and right side above the seats) will change the design I had originally for this... I will have to rethink where I put the bed and the shower. I thought I would place a bed on top, as a kind of bunk bed, but I will probably not do this, and instead keep those robust shelve in place.

This evening it continued to pour down. I decided to take the van for a random drive around Leeds, through the night and the rain. It drives really well. OK, is a bit loud, and feels like driving a truck (sorry, a lorry, for UK readers). But this is OK. It goes reasonably fast, with a slow acceleration, but is sufficient. At least I may have a better chance now driving at the speed limit and not get another speeding offence...