The start of my van's body build

[Steve Bryant]

THIS WEEKS UPDATE  DEC. 12 '22

I needed to paint the body pan underside before I got into the body build proper as once things are done I don't want to be pulling the body off to do this. I went in to the shop on Saturday and set it up on saw horses.

   
   

I thought I was done until I read Reckless Rat's comment "I note that there are no access holes in the floor for the rear spring retaining nuts or the 'U' bolts.". I realized that this made perfect sense to add these while I had the body pan off and accessible. So today I modified the floor pan to include these:

I made a card pattern taken from the frame:

   

I transferred the holes I cut in the card pattern that matched the frame to the masking tape placed on the body:

   
   

After careful marking out I carefully drilled and cut the slots and used a hole saw to  finish the job:

   

Success ! Things lined up quite nicely. Thank you Reckless for the suggestion - it will make the job of removing a rear spring so much easier when the time comes.

   

The rest of today was spent putting the body back on the chassis and getting back to the point where I took the body off to paint. One step forward etc. !

Proper body building to start next week.
Cheers.
Stephen