Azzvan

[ben]

think you gone a bit too wide on the front bro! dont ask me to move your van on the bitcherman your vans steering is really gunna build some decent guns in your arms:)

i ever tell the story how i had a hx panelvan, 400 chev, 245s on the front. i gave a girl a drive of it. she went to turn out of a carpark and told me the steering was locked!!!!!!!!!! of course it wasnt locked it was just strong arm steering ha ha:)

ben

[Bedfordcrazy]

Hey Aaron, i have just been looking at your pics, make sure you take pics of the flares when you start to do them, looks like it will be an interesting build. What colour are you going to have as a final colour on the van ? If it were me, with all that chrome on the van, bumpers, wheels, handles and so on, i would be going with a very bright crisp white, i recon the chrome and white would really compliment each other. I am not a big fan of white, but in this case i think yes. Looking Good.

george.

[jesus_is_alright]

Hey guys, thanks for all your fast replies:

Busy: Bounce steering sounds hard in a manual, buy i'm sure its worth a go, and yes it was the flares i was wanting photos of and the link you gave me was spot on thanks, My front track is also about 50mm wider at the front, which i don't know why its an issue as i'm sure lots of front will drive cars are wider at the front, if people argue with me i'll have to find some proof

Ben: yes armstrong steering is the way to go, i've gone from a tiny Barina with power steering to a big van without power steering, so why not go the whole hog and make it as hard as possible to steer. Apart from carparks, i think it'll just take a bit of getting used to.

George: Dark grey, the current falcon grey to be exact. Hopefully the chrome will look nice with the darker colour. White is not an option as i'm a tradie and every van in the world is white. I don't want anyone mistaking mine for a company van.

I'm going to chat to a body shop soon, will let you know the results

[jesus_is_alright]

Ok today brought me back down to earth with a giant thud.
Went to a few paint and bodywork places. One said he's not touching anything for at least 6 months, and was very unhelpful indeed.
Another one said the cheapest car his working on is a $13000 job (panelwork only), and most of his paint jobs, although impressive were $16500 (and this is for cars, not vans)
Another place said he can paint it and stay in my budget, but in the nicest way possible told me it would look shit and not last long at all.

Finally i went back to the place i originally had in mind, and his reply was "bring it in, we'll talk about it, have a look and go from there"
He doesn't give a price, just charges by the hour, but i'm hopeful that if under my paint the body is immaculate, i might get off under budget, but if there's bog hiding in there...$$$

His concern was the legality of my wheels and tyres, so i'm ringing some engineers (link below for my reference) to make sure that they are legal. If not, he won't touch the van as he feels he is wasting his time doing work that will ultimately have to be undone when i find out my tyres and wheels are wrong

For the record, the front track is 48mm wider than the rear


http://www.transport.sa.gov.au/pdfs/personal_transport/light_vehicles_pdfs/chartered_engineers.pdf

[Bedfordcrazy]

Hey aaron, mate i dont know your budget, but my quote was about $10,000. That included body and paint, my suggestion would be this, b4 you do anything , get your whole van sandblasted, thats when you will know what your looking at. At this point you are just pissing in the wind. I can almost garrantee you will find bog and crumpled up newspaper hidden in there. These guys are always going to over quote like it is now just in case they find crap under the paint, so if you want a more sensible quote then this is what you need to do. You have to remember this is one massive canvas, approx 2 cars in one van. If you want to make the paint stay on, then the time spent in prep is the garrantee.
As for your wheels, if you are going with flares, you should not have a problem, but i am guessing there is something else that we dont know that these guys may know having seen it in the flesh. The hourly rate maybe the way to go, that way you can control the purse, or get a fixed price in writing, all my work has so far been done on an hourly rate, i just pay them at the end of the work day, that way there is now money outstanding. Whatever you do, bedfords are not a cheap project, mainly because of their size, and age.

george.

[BusyKiwi]

for panel and paint, try get a price for the job rather than by the hour, there are many hours involved in panel and paint and lots of unexpected hours can easily pop up.

2 pack/pot paint isn't cheap, just etch primer is about $90 a litre and then harder on top, then bog (about $75 a 3 litre tin) then primer, sandpaper, masking tape .... materials alone will cost a few grand.

If you get someone to do it as a homer try get it done all at once, doing it in stages requires more materials.

[ben]

gees they must be buying damn good bog at $75 a 3lite tin. up uuntil just recently when the price went up i was paying $25 a gallon (3.7 litres) for bog that was for 4 tins at a time thou.. which im sure body shops would be buying..

george.
its illegal to put wheels on a car if they are more than 1" bigger than standard wheels that came with the car. beddies came with 6" wheels right? so legally your only allowed 7" wheels without requiring engineering. 10"s ummm thats almost double the width of standard wheels.

ben

[Merlin]

on my tyre plackard in my van it states the tyre size as 6 inch and 8 inch and the maximum tyre width is 1.5 times the biggest tyre size for comercials and 1,3 times for passenger cars my van is already approved for 12 inch wide tyres but the wheel offset must be no more than 1 inch off neutral offset

[jesus_is_alright]

on my tyre plackard in my van it states the tyre size as 6 inch and 8 inch and the maximum tyre width is 1.5 times the biggest tyre size for comercials and 1,3 times for passenger cars my van is already approved for 12 inch wide tyres but the wheel offset must be no more than 1 inch off neutral offset

Yes, this is what i'm going off, 1.5times the standard tyre for commercial vehicles.
but the rear 15x10's are 49mm or nearly 2 inches positive offset, and the fronts are 32.5mm or about 1 1/4 positive offset. If these wheels are not allowed, why do they make them? just a question

Thanks guys for you paint/panel opinions. I'll probably strip the paint by hand to save money and see what i'm up against. The body is pretty straight so fingers crossed there are no surprises under the paint

[grandad]

yep size is ok but off set is wrong i am running 14x8 on the front and 14x10 on the rear with a flair kit but took me a while to find the rite of set rims