www.dsk.com.au

Panel beater doing his best work.

And slowly things started to look good.

Paint time….

One month to the day, we loaded Kevin back on the car trailer and headed home slowly. The colour was certainly a lot brighter than I imagined but the wife and daughter loved it luckily.

First job was to attach the front emblem and fit safaris.

Time to reminisce about the boat we sold to finance (half) the kombi resto.

Time to point out some more rookie errors we made. Firstly, the front indicators should have been cut out and welded in before painting, and secondly, the dash indicator lights are in the speedo and not external so all those extra holes weren’t required. Oh well…

Looking good man!

Thanks that is a great yarn, with a happy ending

Is this bus finished, I don’t believe I’ve seen any pics of fake grass yet
Some updates would be good

Been a bit slack with continuing the story so here’s a bit more.

The steering wheel was pretty cracked and missing a few small chunks. Having never taken a steering wheel off before, I thought it couldn’t be too hard a task. I was wrong, apparently you need a purpose built steering wheel puller which we didn’t have. I did have hay baling twine (the blue stuff that holds hay bales together for you city folk) and a pulley puller and man, did that baby not budge a millimetre but did successfully remove more chunks off the steering wheel.

I borrowed a steering wheel puller and it came off in 0.45 seconds without further damage. Rookie mistake number whatever…. Use the correct tools for the job.

Anyway, the wife is good at fixing stuff like steering wheels with missing chunks after YouTubing the method and it came up sweet as. I even got her to use a file to recreate the rippled lines. Bit more paint from the $2 shop and job done (still good after three and a half years driving).

Cab door window frames needed rebuilding. Got told it was a mongrel job not for the faint hearted and it helped to have special jigs made up so you don’t break stuff etc etc. That was a big enough hint for me that it would be outsourced. Not sure if $600 on labour charge was money well spent but anyway, it was spent and the two frames came back complete.

Problem was, the frames fitted but doors wouldn’t close properly. Another job to be outsourced.

An extra picture of all the excess holes I didn’t actually need…

About August 2017 (2 1/2 years into resto) there was no more we could do on our list of “Things we can actually do” so the van was shipped off to Champ up at Nhill to finish off. When I say finish off, I mean, do all of the mechanical/electrical work, fix the doors so they close, rebuild the ‘rebuilt’ motor, rebuild the gearbox, and do heaps of other stuff in order to get the vehicle roadworthy. Champ was very diplomatic when it came to complimenting me on my ‘workmanship’ but I was highly suspicious he was full of shit and just trying to make me feel good. I have never gone over the itemised bill as it didn’t matter, the bus was now drivable.

Nice write up and finish to the bus build
Still keen to see some fake grass install pics tho

Who said it’s finished!

Passing comment from the mechanic was he was impressed with the way the sand blasters cleaned out the inside of the steering box but left the sand behind.

Speaking of sandblasting sand. It’s nice to turn the heater on still and watch sand drift out of the dash vents. The gift that keeps giving.