1978 Millard 16ft M54550

[2lateagain]

Finally got around to putting the laminex in place along with the cooktop and the sink



another of the kitchen area.



Now have some upholstery work to be done.

Graham

[ForumMod]

Graham, this continues to be a beautiful job! I'm gobsmacked every time you post photos of the quality of work you do. Congratulations (again) for a truly magnificent effort.

cheers,
Al.

[2lateagain]

Al,

Thanks for the compliments again, it is nice to see it all come together and look something similar to what I had envisaged when it was stripped out, I am fairly happy with the finish so far and hope it all works when it is finished.

Graham

P.S. Have sent you a pm.

[glennv]

What a sensational job ! The cabinetry is spectacular ...

[Deleted]

Hi Graham,

WOW! - what a great job you are doing - wish I was retired as well!

Regards

Bobbie

[2lateagain]

Thanks glennv and bobbie for the compliments, it does look ok when I check the photos. As for the retirement bit, seems to take years to get there and you look forward to it, but no one said about the aches and pains that seems to come along with the retirement and funnily enough they seem to get worse the longer that you are retired, so it is a matter of trying to stay active mentally and physically and enjoying what you have and what you can do.

Graham

[Deleted]

Graham, you mention that new wheel arches were made for your van. Did you make them yourself, or did someone else do it?
I am currently in the process of renovating my 1976 12ft Millard poptop, and need some new wheel arches made. Is gal sheet the best material to make them from, or would mild steel be ok?
I am not savvy when it comes to metalwork, so would have to get them made by a sheetmetal worker. What do you reckon it would cost?
If you made them yourself, was it a hard job? How did you do it?
Thanks,
Lachlan

[2lateagain]

Lachlan, I made the mudguards out of thin Galvanised sheet as it is reasonably cheap and easy to work. I have a small bender which helps (have a better one now). The gal should be better than mild steel as it should deal with wetness better and is lighter in my opinion, but mild steel could treated also and could be welded. but is heavier. Making them is easy if you have access to a bender, but I found that the frame on my van was different measurements on both sides so each one was given a fair overlap on the frames to get them to fit properly. I sealed all joints with silicone and bituminous paint.

Would have no idea of cost to make them, you would have to approach someone in your area.

Graham

[Deleted]

Thanks for your feedback Graham, will take that into account. Will probably go with galvanized sheeting because its lighter. Thanks for the tip about the overlap too.

[ForumMod]

chrislachlan1977m, there are photos of Graham's mudguards in the following thread: Mudguards

[2lateagain]

We picked up the cladding just before Christmas and the rush from the Insurance companies after all the hail storms earlier in November/December. Spent many hours trying to work out how we (my wife and I) could get them into place without bending or denting them as they seem to want to bend in the middle very quickly. We had already caused a dent in one pack getting them off the vehicle, but luckily that section fitted where the door is, so nothing was wrong. The sheets are only available in 6.1 meters, so it took some handling to get them stored where they were not going to be in the way.

After many hours looking I found a couple of window winders that have been hanging around for many years and after some modification they now have a 2.5 meter section of 16mm all thread which is supported above the caravan roof and locked into place on the floor. The sheets are moved with a section of 20mm channel on the bottom and top to keep them straight and then slid onto a box section between the two vertical all threads. From there they are wound up to where needed and riveted into place after sliding the bottom channel out slowly to show the bottom of the sheets where the rivets are placed. It has worked a treat with no problems. Measured each sheet from the top of the van after fitting to make sure that we are running straight.



The windows and doors have since been cut out and the hole in the window section was to make sure that the hole saw was going to work ok and that the power outlet was in the right place.

Graham

[ForumMod]

By jingo, by crikey - you certainly have the knack for sorting out any problems!

What a difference that new cladding makes, eh?! Any tips for others about what the profile is called; price; supplier; etc?

Good to see you've installed a dedicated earth wire to the clearance lights. I love your attention to detail.

One "Magnificent Millard" is really taking shape!

cheers,
Al.

[2lateagain]

Al, All this is really making the old brain do a bit of work. We got the final sheets on the door side of the van this morning and the doors and windows cut out. The router is not real good with the seams as it clogs up very quickly, ok on the single thickness, but very messy. Ended up taping paper to the inside of the doors and windows to control the distance that the swarf went and had to cover any bare skin also as it is very hot when it lands.

We purchased 18 sheets of the shallow profile SP10 from Barnes Caravans at Lansvale. It has a coverage of 250mm and is 6.1 meters long, no other length is available. Tony is very good for information as to how to handle and fit the cladding and they have a very big display of bits for repairers and caravan builders. Do not have a web site as yet, but we were told it is on the way. Also got 4 sheets of 1200 by 2400 mm for the front and back of the van in the same profile and sufficient edge mould for the entire van. Was unable to get the old style edge mould and were informed that it is not going to be made any more either. Total cost was in the area of $2400. We decided to pick it up as we were quoted some $600 for delivery and $150 to make a crate to keep it flat and that only got it part of the way to a depot in Nowra, we then had to arrange other transport to get it home. We have a tray top Mazda BT50 with racks and another bit was made to fit over the nudge bar and up to the height of the racks and then 6 meter long pine was added along with ply sheets cut to 300mm to fit between the pine sections. The 18 sheets had a weight of around 80kgs and were less than 140mm high when taped down. Cost was about $50 worth of diesel and 6 hours driving and one hour to load and tie down. Just loved the traffic on the Hume highway at Lansvale at 7.40am on a work day.

I learnt a few caravans ago never to rely on the chassis or cladding for a good earth, but this is the first that I have been able to 'do it my way' totally from the ground up. Have been trying to think of a good word to add to the Millard sign and 'magnificent' sounds like it will fit nicely. Thanks Al.

Graham

[supreme78]

Well I must say I am very impressed with the work you are doing Graham. You must be pretty handy with the wood working tools. I am pretty good at the wood but steel work is my thing. I could never do a job on the wood as nice as you have done. It's going to be pretty fancy looking van once complete.
Keep up the great work.
Paul 

[2lateagain]

Thanks for the compliments Paul, I do not mind either the wood or the metal for working with, at least with the metal you can weld it back together if you make a mistake, have always been told to measure lots of times and cut once, but it makes no difference if it measured wrong lots of times .

Graham

[ForumMod]

but it makes no difference if it measured wrong lots of times

And it makes no difference if the plan you draw up has the wrong measurements on it too!! That happened to me with the vintage van I'm working on at the moment. Made a plan for the chassis repairs and put the wrong measurements on the plan. Cut the steel to those measurements (and checked the tape a few times before cutting), and then went to fit the bits to the chassis. D'oh!!!

[2lateagain]

Been there and done that too, but did manage to build all the buildings on our block without anything like that happening. We purchased the framing channel in 6.5 meter lengths and cut and welded it all to build a 18 by 9 meter garage, 12 by 6 meter rumpus room with shower and toilet and kitchen (granny flat to all but council) and a 24 by 8.5 meter house.

The other half knows that I have to made uncountable 100 mm mistakes, either too long or too short, I blame the tapes as they are hard to read, but all the framing and trusses were cut and welded and all were the correct size and shape and it all went together like a big mechano set with no alterations needed, but despite that the same 100mm mistakes now seem to occur on a regular basis, not too bad if you only want one half of what you are cutting, but if you wanted both halves the same length it is a problem. Plenty of 'short lengths of timber' in the roof of the garage just waiting for the right job to come along.

The caravan so far has not suffered too much from the unreadable tapes syndrome because I got 3 new ones before I started and they had big easy to read numbers on them.

Graham

[2lateagain]

Will try again for the second time tonight, last attempt just disappeared into the where ever

Found these a few weeks ago and ordered some from e-bay, wanted something that was easy to use to get all the silicone and muck off the roof prior to painting that did not require days of manual scraping. Tested it one a block of steel that was heavily rusted and a bit if the new cladding to see what it did to the aluminum, and all appeared to be good.






I am using them in a 115mm angle grinder and both edges and hatch area have been cleaned in about 4 hours and I used 3 of the discs, they are only worn on the outside edge so they are being saved for use on the drawer bar of our trailer which is in need of attention also. They require fairly easy touch to just remove the rubbish and just get through to the surface of the aluminum and must be used with the rotation of the grinder spinning towards the outside edge of the roof.

So after 4 attempts I think I now have it so it will post and stay in place for a while.

Graham

Had 3 photos at 56 kb each and it tells me I have exceeded the limit. Now it will not let me even add the missing photos on a new entry.

[ForumMod]

Graham, I'm blowed if I know what's going on with the pictures you're trying to post. Obviously there's a glitch somewhere. Usually when my computer is not cooperating with certain websites, I close all websites and go to my browser's headings and find the History tag. Then I delete all the history of internet connections (known as "cleaning out the cache on a computer"). Once that's done I shut down and restart my computer. That seems to often fix any problems. Sometimes there are little glitches that get stuck in the cache, and they keep upsetting whatever it is that I'm trying to do.

Other than that, I'm stuck for suggestions.

cheers,
Al.

[2lateagain]

Will have a try this morning on a laptop.

Same problem it comes up with "Error: this forum has exceeded its attached space limit. Your file cannot be up loaded"

Al, I did try turning everything off and tried restarting last night, even had a try with the laptop, but all the same result as this morning.

The file size is 50.54 kb. I must have said something along the way that has upset the Forum.

Graham

[ForumMod]

"Error: this forum has exceeded its attached space limit. Your file cannot be up loaded"

Ahh...that's a different situation. I thought you meant you were having trouble posting photos via the Photobucket method.

Posting photos via the attachment method is fraught with problems relating to the monthly allowance we get from Photobucket for those attachments. It is an ongoing issue, and requires a long-winded explanation to help you understand. Fortunately (to help you feel better ), many have suffered before you on both this forum and the Vintage forum. See this recent thread from the second post onwards.

The only way to overcome the problem is to learn how to post photos via the Photobucket method. Either that, or wait until our monthly attachment allocation is renewed, and post your photos quickly after that before the allocation is used up again. The more photo attachments that get added to the forum, the quicker the monthly allocation will be used up each month. We can pay to increase the size of the monthly allocation, but my pockets have got holes in them and so I don't bother having money any more.

cheers,
Al.

[2lateagain]

Al, very sorry about that, have tried on numerous occasions to understand and use photobucket, but at this stage it is beyond my capabilities, can get the photos to go to the bucket, but I think my bucket must have a bad leak as it either has photos that I do not want or a number of the same ones repeated. Finally figured out tonight how to actually delete the ones that I did not want so I suppose that is a start.

Your explanation made sense and I will try to find how to post other than using the forum space. Thanks.



Graham

[ForumMod]

Graham, have a read of these two threads from the Vintage forum. I'm not saying it will make it easy for you to understand, but you never know, something might 'click' and you can understand how to do it:

This one for Photobucket: Instructions on posting photos using Photobucket. Ignore the 2005 date at the top of the post. All the info was updated on Jan 14 this year.


The alternative to Photobucket is Flickr: Posting photos on the forum using Flickr


And just by-the-by, the monthly attachment allocation restarts each month on the day-date the forum started. This forum started on the 4th September 2007, so the allocation resets on the 4th of each month. Since we are near the end of February, it doesn't surprise me to know we've used up our allocation already. If you were to try again on the 4th March, everything should be working correctly.

cheers,
Al.

[Deleted]

Oct 10, 2013 11:41:14 GMT 10 2lateagain said:

We purchased a Millard 16 foot caravan in July 2012. It had been sitting behind our bit of land on a block at the rear of us. It was amongst a lot of trees, but looked reasonable outside. We talked to the owner and parted with $300.00 knowing that it was in fairly bad shape inside as it smelt very strongly of mould and a lot of timber rot could be seen. Has chassis No M54550 with gas compliance plate stating that build date was 3/1978.



My wife asked if she could remove some loose tiles on the floor and the following is what I came back to a few hours later.



It was decided to keep going as the ceiling was rotted in numerous places and all the doors had expanded like pine board has a tendency to do when it is moist.




Graham

[Deleted]

Hi Graham. I can see where my windows came from now Your caravan is similar to mine, but looks great now looking at your pics, great work! I can see now how easy it is to get carried away with restoring, i am replacing one sheet on the ceiling but i am now thinking of re-doing the whole ceiling. I have come across a huge ants nest as well grrr. What fun!

Bruno