1976 Viscount Royal R66040

G'day griswalds, and apologies for this late welcome to the forum. ;D

You certainly did well to get a van in such good condition for that price from a dealer. It's amazing how much the price of good Classic vans has gone up in the last year or so. A dealer not far from me would have a price of up around $8000 on a van like yours these days.

It's a bit unusual to see a Royal model without the wrap-around windows front and rear, but seeing as how you've got the double bunks at the front, it would be hard to fit those windows to the van.

I shouldn't think you'd have to do much to the van to keep it in good shape. By the look of the shiny outside paintwork, the van has been well looked after over the years. Lucky you!! ;D

cheers,
Al.

G'day Mick,

Gees, looking at your photos, I wouldn't think the paintwork would need much done to it!

I've been-there-and-done-that with spray painting the panels, and found the quality of the cheap paint cans I bought to be sadly crap. Up close, you can see the blue paint on my van is pretty 'ordinary', but from a distance the van always looks pretty good.

I learnt on this forum that the "10 metre rule" is a pretty good way of determining whether it's worth doing anything about the paint coating or not. If you stand 10 metres away from the van, and the paint looks pretty good, then you can consider the paintwork to be ok, and not need any further work.

Personally, based on your photos, I would just go over the van and scrub off the oxidised chalky layer on the paint, and then polish what remains. I wouldn't bother doing any repainting. Even any bald spots or scratches on the paintwork can be considered "beauty spots" in a 35 year old van.

I bought a Capricorn van last year for a project that ended up not happening (sold it again). During the week or two that I had it, I mucked around cleaning it up a bit. Got one of those nylon scouring pads they use in the kitchen, and with a bit of liquid cleaner from the kitchen cupboard, I spent a bit of time seeing how good the old paintwork would come up. Even though the old paint was fairly dull, you could see a big difference after the clean-up. Not sure if these photos show my efforts clearly, but it'll give you an idea of the result...

This is the van...




...and this is the section of the brown stripe I cleaned, to compare with the other part of the stripe that I left alone...




When I did the Millard restoration, I had a lot of brown crap on the surface of the white cladding on the roof. I spent a lot of time with the nylon scourer and liquid cleaner to get the marks off. It was time well spent, because the marks disappeared (eventually) and the paintwork underneath came up looking pretty good.

These photos show the 'before' (top) and 'after' (bottom)...




So...long story short, I would clean up and polish what you've got there already, and then go and proudly show your "antique" van to the rest of the world. ;D

cheers,
Al.

G'day Mick,

Yeah, I reckon "Jif" would be the go, if you've already got some in the cupboard. I used the various "house brands" from the Supermarket. The Coles brand is called "Cream Cleanser", and from memory the other house brands had the word "cream" in the name, or something like that. A 500ml plastic bottle of the stuff costs about $1.50 or thereabouts.

It's the gritty stuff in the cleaner that does the hard work, so don't try and spread the cleaner out too thinly. I found that one squirt of cleanser out of the bottle (a blob about the size of a 50 cent piece) was enough to do about one square foot of cladding, and then another squirt to do the next square foot, and so on. If you try to make each squirt spread further than that, you end up rubbing hard for no real effect. Conversely, if you squirt too much on in one go, you end up wasting it unnecessarily. You'll soon get the hang of how much to apply and how far that will take you.

cheers,
Al.

Hi Griswalds,
your Viscount is looking good.
I see you also have the original Viscount windows!I can tell by the little clips holding them shut!
Cheers
hughdeani