One thing which was obvious yesterday when working with the polisher was that the nearside rear corner was looking rather ratty because of the sealant between the side of the van and the bumper had disintegrated. This has been letting water get in behind there too which can't be a good thing.
Bit of fresh sealant has improved things - though it didn't go on quite as tidily as I'd hoped.
The bumper needs painting anyway so will need to come off at some point anyhow. As such I'm not worrying too much about it for now...keeping the weather out has priority.
Biggest issue I've been noticing in the last couple of week is a downright horrific squeaky rattle in the cab coming from the passenger door. This was rapidly driving me insane. The window winder on that door has never worked in my ownership of the van, though the window could be manually slid down by a couple of inches. So a suction cup had been employed to stop it from dropping open. I was pretty sure that the rattle and the dodgy window were most likely connected.
The moment I started stripping things down I immediately became suspicious. The screws holding the door handle on were cross threaded and this was found wedging the captive nut in place...
Yes, that's a self tapper held in place with blu-tac. This suggested to me that I was very likely to find that Billy the Bodger had been messing around in my door.
Yeah...I wasn't quite braced for what greeted me when the door card was removed.
Okay...that linkage should be straight. It's a good 2mm thick, so must have taken some serious effort to bend! This was wedged around the wrong side of the window runner and jammed against the base of the door, presumably to keep the window up. Cue a bit of investigation to try to figure out what on earth was going on.
This appears to be the root cause of the trouble.
This fits through the whole assembly, with the coil spring slotted into the back of it. Now I need to track down a diagram to ascertain whether something has broken off this or whether there's meant to be an external clip to hold everything together. It looks like there may originally been something involved with a square section involved.
Before I could do anything though I needed to try to get the linkage back into something vaguely resembling the right shape.
I've no idea how they bent it like that...but getting it back involved getting it cherry red with the MAPP torch and battering it with a 4lb lump hammer.
Better. Though they've managed to bend it in this axes too.
Don't think this will stop anything from working though.
This allowed me to reassemble things to prove that everything was there fundamentally - I stuck a bolt temporarily in the place of the aforementioned fastener just to hold everything together for testing purposes.
Well that looks a bit healthier doesn't it? You can see the scratches by the bottom of the window runner showing where the lifting quadrant used to be. The cable ties are locking things in place just now as the bolt through the middle allows a bit of movement so the winder doesn't reliably stay meshed with the teeth on the quadrant. As stated though this was purely a test.
I think once I've sorted that "thing" in the middle this should be back in action. The teeth on both the winder and the lifting quadrant look perfect, the runners all seem fine etc. Just need to figure out what bits are missing and replace them.
While I had the door apart I took the opportunity to make sure the drainage channels were clear in the bottom of the door and vacuumed thirty years worth of detritus out of the bottom of the door. The paint is flaking off quite badly in several areas, so it will shortly be getting drowned in rust convertor and cavity wax.
Reassembly required a little remedial work too as I'd mentioned earlier, the screws holding the grab handle on were utterly cross threaded and good for nothing but scrap.
Luckily the ones on the driver's door were fine so I was able to confirm the screws were standard M6 items. The nuts in the door responded fine to being chased out with a tap.
Suitable replacement screws were sourced from the drawer of random fasteners and the door put back together.
The suction cup previously holding the window up can go now...it was mainly being used to ensure the glass didn't drop on my head while I was working inside the door.
While I've not had a chance to take it out yet, it doesn't rattle at idle any more and now clonks shut rather than clatters shut...so hopefully will be quieter on the move. I do need to look at adding some sound deadening in the doors though as they do drum something rotten...I get the impression some Dynamat (or similar) could knock a huge percentage off the noise levels in the cab. Replacing some of that which has been removed from the bulkhead and floor when welding has been done in the past probably wouldn't go amiss either.
