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Post by snoops on Sept 12, 2014 12:43:44 GMT 10
Geez Shane, you're making me look very slack... I'll have to pull my finger out and get mine sorted - maybe for a meet up at Wombat when it warms up a bit?  |
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Post by awbeattie381 on Sept 12, 2014 13:18:45 GMT 10
Nice work! I think I am going to take a leaf out of your book and buy some supercheap paint and a spray gun. As you said, it was recommended by a spray painter so must be good! I am going to buy an aldi spray gun tomorrow to paint our ugly colorbond fence. If it does a good job at that Ill use it for the van (I dont have an air compressor). If not, I may consider hiring an air compressor and gun.
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Post by doublechevron on Sept 12, 2014 13:23:10 GMT 10
Geez Shane, you're making me look very slack... I'll have to pull my finger out and get mine sorted - maybe for a meet up at Wombat when it warms up a bit? That's what happens when your given a deadline. It's supposed to be heading down to the beach for 3months in a couple of weeks  I still have to modify the bed inside so a standard mattress will fit on it too. My wife wants to do one of those "mini-seasons" so she could just go down with the kids in the school holidays etc... and the 'van and everything would already be there setup ready to use. If they like the mini-season deal... I make chase up a much bigger caravan at some point to tidy up. I wouldn't travel distances with a huge 'van, but the old Rangie could tow a huge b@stard down to the coast easily enough ( it'd be slow though ). You'd just do it early in the morning when no-one is around so you don't hold up any trucks/etc on the ballarat->geelong road. 80km/h is a nice speed for towing with old cars and caravans IMO. Yeah, I'm sure you'd have a huge number of people turn up if you mentioned heading back to wombat in slightly warmer weather seeya Shane L. |
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Post by doublechevron on Sept 29, 2014 16:04:29 GMT 10
This sure was fun .... Nothing like trying to rush to get something done I refitted the corner strips without sealant and ran some wide tape down beside them to make cleanup easier.  Then added plenty of sealer ( white roof and gutter silicon ...urrrghh... I hate silicon after trying to clean it off in a few places) ... anyway...     Its sure does squeeze out when you screw the edge strips down .... What a mess !  Then you spend ages and many rags trying to wipe all the excess away and peal the tape off. It took me about 2.5 hours per side ... and that's on a little 17foot caravan .... After everything was already clean (that cleaning and scaping off of old sealant took an incredible amount of time).  Isn't it amazing how lightly built everything is. Look at the frail little bed legs. I unbolted these and lifted out the base (those "spring type" bases are bloody horrible things). I had intended to fit a lift up bed (and probably still will at some point), but have no time or $$$ to do that at the moment.   Those springs were amazingly high tensile. I strugged to remove even a couple with vice grips. The 9" grinder made short work of it all. I lopped the frame in half and added several inches so it's now a standard double bed mattress in size.  Some crappy lightweight pine that has been getting filthy and dirty in the shed was layed down as a base ..... It looked ugly so I quickly hid that from my wife by putting the mattress over the top with a new matress cover on it LOL. I just screw the spats on with tek screw through the spring holes in the frame. The best bit was this gave a LOT of room under the bed without all the spring frames and crap beneath it. You can slide big plastic boxes under there for storage. We then spent a couple of long nights loading everything up .....   It's down at the beach now for 3months. We stayed there for a week last week, and I'll be damned if it's not the most comfortable caravan bed I've ever slept in. We had a torrential downpour ... and the caravan didn't leak a drip anywhere that I can tell. I hope the poor old caravan doesn't feel inferior down there. As it sits there it's a $1250 tow barge attached to a $2500 caravan .... Surrounded by $70,000+ caravans attached to $50,000+ tow cars seeya, Shane L. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 29, 2014 16:52:54 GMT 10
Nothing inferior about the van or the tug,
I know which ones would interest me more!
Well done.
Cheers
hughdeani
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Post by doublechevron on Sept 30, 2014 15:10:20 GMT 10
Well that lasted a long time .... The caravan park rang my wife to tell me the annexe is down ..... Sigh .... So I rang them back to find out how and why (so I could take tools as required).... "Which site are you" ... "You rang my wife, our annexe is down" .... "yeah which one" ..... So it managed a whole 4days without us being there. They have trees down and everything. The bit that's got me is I used massive "stakes" that look like railway ties to peg down the annexe (not tent pegs).  Good grief .... 48knots on the south channel That's 90km/h .... I'm figuring were going to be needing a new anexe.... this one is going to be blown to sorento in a dozen pieces.... That's a shame, it was a nice clean period TEBS annex  seeya, Shane L. |
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Post by awbeattie381 on Oct 1, 2014 13:11:09 GMT 10
Looks good mate. I hear what you are saying about how lightweight everything is. I was amazed at how little timber there was holding up my two single beds when I removed them. Makes me feel the double bed I am currently designing is well and truly over engineered (and I am mainly using 42x42 posts and 42x18 timber for everything else! Its a fine line between it being too lightweight and too heavy...you dont want it to be flimsy but you dont want to be towing a lead weight around either.
In the scenario you mention about setups in the caravan park, mine wont be much of an improvement over yours...a '89 Paj and '74 van...still, give me our setups any day!
Good luck with the annexe!
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Post by doublechevron on Oct 1, 2014 16:06:54 GMT 10
Looks good mate. I hear what you are saying about how lightweight everything is. I was amazed at how little timber there was holding up my two single beds when I removed them. Makes me feel the double bed I am currently designing is well and truly over engineered (and I am mainly using 42x42 posts and 42x18 timber for everything else! Its a fine line between it being too lightweight and too heavy...you dont want it to be flimsy but you dont want to be towing a lead weight around either. In the scenario you mention about setups in the caravan park, mine wont be much of an improvement over yours...a '89 Paj and '74 van...still, give me our setups any day! Good luck with the annexe! Hee,hee. It took me a while to find the old Rangie... trying to find a 4 door with a manual gearbox and twin carbs that wasn't buggered up with "enhancements" isn't as easy as you'd imagine. I wanted the suspension standard without crappy lift kits or anything. And a working boge leveller under it (the rear axles under them have a centrally mounted boge leveller, so if you load the sh!t out of the towbar and drive around the block, it lifts the back up and levels it) ... The old heap of junk sure is a capable tow vehicle/offroad vehicle. The annex? I went down last night. The wind was so strong it had split the wooden part of one of the annex ropes in half (the wooden bit with the two holes drilled in it that holds the tension on). The two halves were laying on the ground. The remaining six poles/ropes couldn't hold up against the wind. 5 of the poles were very bent, two were bent into "L" shapes allowing the ropes to come off them at the top. The little clips that hold the side wall to the caravan were ripped out of the cladding. One of the poles managed to stay up and only slightly bend... the force of that one not bending over pulled the stitching along the top of one of the side walls. Basically if I take down some new wall anchors for the caravan, some straight poles and a needle and some strong thread it should be good as new. The new annex on one of those "A" frame caravans infront of us looks ... well... stuffed. seeya, Shane L. |
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Post by atefooterz on Oct 1, 2014 21:02:14 GMT 10
Looks good mate. I hear what you are saying about how lightweight everything is. I was amazed at how little timber there was holding up my two single beds when I removed them. Makes me feel the double bed I am currently designing is well and truly over engineered (and I am mainly using 42x42 posts and 42x18 timber for everything else! Its a fine line between it being too lightweight and too heavy...you dont want it to be flimsy but you dont want to be towing a lead weight around either. In the scenario you mention about setups in the caravan park, mine wont be much of an improvement over yours...a '89 Paj and '74 van...still, give me our setups any day! Good luck with the annexe! Something that becomes obvious, if you do not already know, is (was) the availablity of decent lightweight strong timber, that many would use just as firewood, when these vans were made! Replacement cost of much stuff i see sadly rotted beyond repair & dumpstered on projects, is loony tunes nowdays and mostly heavier plus not as strong. |
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Post by awbeattie381 on Oct 2, 2014 12:19:00 GMT 10
Looks good mate. I hear what you are saying about how lightweight everything is. I was amazed at how little timber there was holding up my two single beds when I removed them. Makes me feel the double bed I am currently designing is well and truly over engineered (and I am mainly using 42x42 posts and 42x18 timber for everything else! Its a fine line between it being too lightweight and too heavy...you dont want it to be flimsy but you dont want to be towing a lead weight around either. In the scenario you mention about setups in the caravan park, mine wont be much of an improvement over yours...a '89 Paj and '74 van...still, give me our setups any day! Good luck with the annexe! Hee,hee. It took me a while to find the old Rangie... trying to find a 4 door with a manual gearbox and twin carbs that wasn't buggered up with "enhancements" isn't as easy as you'd imagine. I wanted the suspension standard without crappy lift kits or anything. And a working boge leveller under it (the rear axles under them have a centrally mounted boge leveller, so if you load the sh!t out of the towbar and drive around the block, it lifts the back up and levels it) ... The old heap of junk sure is a capable tow vehicle/offroad vehicle. The annex? I went down last night. The wind was so strong it had split the wooden part of one of the annex ropes in half (the wooden bit with the two holes drilled in it that holds the tension on). The two halves were laying on the ground. The remaining six poles/ropes couldn't hold up against the wind. 5 of the poles were very bent, two were bent into "L" shapes allowing the ropes to come off them at the top. The little clips that hold the side wall to the caravan were ripped out of the cladding. One of the poles managed to stay up and only slightly bend... the force of that one not bending over pulled the stitching along the top of one of the side walls. Basically if I take down some new wall anchors for the caravan, some straight poles and a needle and some strong thread it should be good as new. The new annex on one of those "A" frame caravans infront of us looks ... well... stuffed. seeya, Shane L. Funny after reading your initial post I went looking for old rangies on carsales, but in my dream world I wanted a manual. There is only one on the market that I could find at the moment, a nice original looking country car that needs a polish. If only I had some spare coin around and a farm to keep all my wish list vehciles. Good find with the old girl! |
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Post by awbeattie381 on Oct 2, 2014 12:19:49 GMT 10
Looks good mate. I hear what you are saying about how lightweight everything is. I was amazed at how little timber there was holding up my two single beds when I removed them. Makes me feel the double bed I am currently designing is well and truly over engineered (and I am mainly using 42x42 posts and 42x18 timber for everything else! Its a fine line between it being too lightweight and too heavy...you dont want it to be flimsy but you dont want to be towing a lead weight around either. In the scenario you mention about setups in the caravan park, mine wont be much of an improvement over yours...a '89 Paj and '74 van...still, give me our setups any day! Good luck with the annexe! Something that becomes obvious, if you do not already know, is (was) the availablity of decent lightweight strong timber, that many would use just as firewood, when these vans were made! Replacement cost of much stuff i see sadly rotted beyond repair & dumpstered on projects, is loony tunes nowdays and mostly heavier plus not as strong. Yep the stuff I am ripping out is really light but quite stiff. I can see why it was used! What the hell is it and can you still buy it? |
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Post by atefooterz on Oct 2, 2014 15:06:31 GMT 10
Something that becomes obvious, if you do not already know, is (was) the availablity of decent lightweight strong timber, that many would use just as firewood, when these vans were made! Replacement cost of much stuff i see sadly rotted beyond repair & dumpstered on projects, is loony tunes nowdays and mostly heavier plus not as strong. Yep the stuff I am ripping out is really light but quite stiff. I can see why it was used! What the hell is it and can you still buy it? You need to start drinking with timber boat types who then introduce you to guys who have stuff stashed away for "worthy projects"! The species or name of timbers used by the various manufacturers will vary but the properties are the same light & strong. Anyone ripping out the interiors that the strong timber bits are not rotted away may be surprised at the interest from those close by & even more so laminating into very strong light structures rather than fork out $20 at bunnings for some matchwood over the counter rubbish. |
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Post by doublechevron on Oct 3, 2014 9:37:43 GMT 10
Funny after reading your initial post I went looking for old rangies on carsales, but in my dream world I wanted a manual. There is only one on the market that I could find at the moment, a nice original looking country car that needs a polish. If only I had some spare coin around and a farm to keep all my wish list vehciles. Good find with the old girl! There's was one locally here advertised for quite a while that I was itching to go look at .... R380 5spd manual, no lift kits, not accessories, but was running a fuel injected 4.4 (the old P76 motor).... Only $1800 bucks ... it look really tidy too. You put them onto a club permit, 'cos there really only going to be a toy and you'll find you never drive it 90days a year. I couldn't afford to drive one daily ... 20L/100km from the wheezy little V8 would bankrupt you in no time  But gee's you'd have some fun. you'll struggle to find one wihout heavy duty lift springs. People fit them to try and lift the tail back up rather than just getting the Boge load leveler repaired. Lifting them stuffs up the caster angle so they don't track very well, and you loose the ride quality due too the stiffer springs. you also loose axle articulation offroad if you lift it up so it's all tipsy. I reckon the 99% of poeple that lift 4wds do it to copy everyone else 'cos it's the latest "fashion". I'd love to chase up and original set of springs for mine (and a full rubber bush set) ..... Oneday.... Anything worth doing takes time seeya, Shane L. |
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Post by snoops on Oct 4, 2014 0:31:16 GMT 10
Hi ya Shane - you can get new OEM springs for it still... Good to see you didn't follow the herd and bung aftermarket springs in it. Mine will have club reg on it early next week. I have to find a replacement boge leveller for mine, or someone to repair it, as it finally gave up the ghost after 369,000 KM. Nothing lasts these days... I'll pop up one day and take a look at those nice looking Citroens you have. |
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Post by doublechevron on Oct 8, 2014 9:42:40 GMT 10
Hi ya Shane - you can get new OEM springs for it still... Good to see you didn't follow the herd and bung aftermarket springs in it. Mine will have club reg on it early next week. I have to find a replacement boge leveller for mine, or someone to repair it, as it finally gave up the ghost after 369,000 KM. Nothing lasts these days... I'll pop up one day and take a look at those nice looking Citroens you have. Nah... Mine is almost 100% original... Trav purchased it from the original owner but never got it back on the road. He did a staggering amount of work to the old Rangie... New water pump, all new fluids/oils... all the floors out to fix up the grub screw in the transfer box (it was stuck in high range as the grab screw had come a loose). He removed all the A/C and fitted a new alternator up where the compressor was (the A/C had melted down all it's wiring and was stuffed). It still had it's original springs that were flat as pancakes... so he fitted new heavy duty king springs. It sits waaayyy to high. I think the leveller still works though. It never seem to drop below a certain point, even when towing a loaded car trailer. I think the old bushes and rubbers under it have given up the ghost now it's back on the road. I'm going to replace all the bushes with original rubber and original super soft springs......................................... As soon as I have the $$$$ (yeah so probably 2025). Anyway ... that annex ... The caravan park rang to say the wall where the stitching had pull has come away (I was going to go down on the weekend and fix that). I'd tried google to find some needle and thread that might work on canvas and stumbled across this .... www.ebay.com.au/itm/SPEEDY-STITCHER-Sewing-Awl-Repair-Tool-three-piece-Kit-made-in-the-US-/151405740688?pt=AU_Sport_Camping_Hiking_Tools&hash=item23407c4290 I googled it ... and found this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=k40kKKCGyacMade unchanged since 1903 ... and looks dead simple to use. So I hit "buy it now" on ebay on Sunday, and I"ll be damned if it wasn't here Yesterday morning in the letterbox. So I jump in the old ID19 and headed down to the beach last night. Pull the annex down and broke the needle on the 3rd stitch .... sigh ... Lesson learnt, push evenly so the needle doesn't bend if your going through 6layers of canvas. It took about and hour ... But I reckon the repair is easily as strong as a machine stitched one... What an absolutely amazing tool!! I can't think of anything you could stick togother so long as your physically strong enough to push the needle through whatever is to be sewn. seeya, Shane L. |
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Post by tasmillard on Oct 27, 2014 13:23:59 GMT 10
Nice old rangie, I am a LR fan myself, had a 1983 4door rangie with the 3.5ltr V8, a number of Discovery 300tdi's. In fact, I am on the lookout for another 300tdi but manual and unmolested to tow the Millard |
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I still have to modify the bed inside so a standard mattress will fit on it too. My wife wants to do one of those "mini-seasons" so she could just go down with the kids in the school holidays etc... and the 'van and everything would already be there setup ready to use. 
But gee's you'd have some fun.