My Little Grey Van Rebuild Part 1

Le Petite Van Gris Part 1

It’s an odd title but very apt. I bought a wreck on e-bay in 2018 it was a car that had been converted to a van and I thought it was Villevan but it turned out to be a Rico van conversion. So instead of having two doors at the rear it had one big door, a tailgate that lifted up like an estate car. The van conversions have much more space inside as it has the inner wings of the car not like the van which has two box sections running the length of the body taking up a lot of space on the inside but does have the fuel tank and spare wheels hidden below it. 

I have been progressing quite slowly with this and the weather this autumn has been quite wet. I have no workshop to do anything in and my garage is full of motorcycles so it all has to be done outside on my drive. There has been other interruptions in that I have been on a bike trip to the Himalayas in the Ladakh region of North East India in September and then again to a different part of India in November and by all accounts missing the worst of the wet weather. This does nothing to move the project on. I have ordered a 4X4 chassis from Louis Barbour, who lives in Croatia and his time scale has slipped mainly because of the 2CV World Meeting that he organised along with their local car club in Samobor. You will find something about this in “Something for the Museum” the other blog. In the mean time I have got a few things done. First of all were finding two suitable van gearboxes. I need two for the lower ratios I want to use because of the extra weight of the van and four wheel transmission. This I did over the summer months and are ready for the internals to be transferred to a modern disc brake casing. Next was to get hold of 8 inner driveshafts and 4 outers in good order. The original ones were beyond use being exposed to the elements for years and the gaiters rotting away. The inner driveshafts were lengthened by 35mm which is why I needed 8 and this one done by an engineering firm in Old Sodbury near Bristol. 

 Standard inner driveshafts left.

 Extended driveshafts right.

I just need to get to Bristol to collect them at some point. I had removed the van tailgate to try to get some replacement hinges and there is nothing around that I could find on the internet in stainless steel. In the end I bought something that I thought would do and, after a bit of messing about straightening them they fitted quite well. I needed something to hold the tailgate up so got hold of some gas struts for the job. Sounds like a good idea but I had problems with the brackets as the company were not able to supply me with any internal ball brackets only flat or with the external ball. I got my mate Bob to find a bit of metal that the 13mm ball would go into, clamped it all up in the vice and with a little heat from my oxy-acetylene torch applied enough to bend the flat bracket to the right shape making an internal ball bracket. 

After doing this I realised that if the company were prepared to send me a ball and a bent bracket I could have saved myself some work and achieved the same result by just assembling the ball on the other side of the plate as it is a tight fit with an extension that is peened over, like a rivet, to hold it in place. Hey ho job done but some people don’t make it easy. I have now the appropriate brackets and have fitted them and adjusted the struts by letting some gas out to adjust the pressure on the tailgate so it is easy to close but stays up for access. I have this system on the gull wing doors of my Burton. 

You can just see the inboard fuel tank in the left corner of the picture right.

The next problem to solve is the locking mechanism for the tailgate. The original van doors used 

flat metal strip that engaged in a slot in the floor and behind the top support beam of the door working off a lever on the back of the door handle mechanism. I have the handle mechanism but need to construct the metal strip set up. Not being able to use anything from a van I will have to try to find something suitable. I wonder if I can get the door mechanism from Burton. Now that could do the job?

Another trip to India

Another Trip To India.

I was sad to hear about the recent death of one of Britains famous motorcyclists who was much talked about at the London Motorcycle Museum as we had on show a big bore Norman Hyde converted version of Slippery Sam. Named by the man Percy Taite, Triumph Works Rider, because it peed oil on the rear tyre and made life interesting for him during a race. It was characters like these with their anecdotes that added much to the interest of visitors to the museum.

I saw the bikes being taken away by Bonham’s in October and at the beginning of November when Chris Warland and I, both members of the London Branch of the LE Owners Club picked up the club LE from the museum. It was a very wet Saturday. It had taken us a few weeks to try to find a suitable home for this special LE. This LE was owned by club member Peter Roberts who had passed away and his window donated the bike to the club. It was displayed at the museum for almost the whole of the museums life and was there for the London members to see. After loading up the bike on my trailer we headed off to its new home at Whitewebbs Museum of Transport in Enfield (EDVVS Ltd) on a very wet Saturday afternoon. Chris followed in his car. It was a dreadful drive around the M25. Lashing rain, high winds and flooded roads. I thought my little car would get drowned being air cooled and the spark plugs open to the elements. We were on a mission and it just kept going. We arrived in the rain and unloaded the bike in the car park near the front door waiting for our new acquaintance, Keith Oswick and he was soon with us. He lives quite close and let us in. Saturday the museum is usually closed. It had stopped raining by the time we had got the LE into one of the halls where we wiped it down with paper towels and would come back the next Tuesday to clean it up. The drive home was a little better. 

The following Tuesday I went in the Burton. Chris was there when I arrived and had almost completed the clean and polish. He said himself that he never spends this amount of time on his on bikes. The things we do for the club! We had lunch in the cafeteria there and were introduced to and talked to many people. It is a good venue to meet at and they have car and bike club meetings there already 2^nd and 4^th Mondays for cars and 1^st 3^rd and 5^th Thursdays for bikes. 

There are other clubs too that meet there like Railway Modellers every Thursday and Custom Cars and Hot Rods on 3^rd Thursday. All start at 8PM. Whitewebbs is open Tuesdays from 10AM to 4PM and the last Sunday of the month 10AM to 4PM.

Having got one thing sorted it was time to prepare for another adventure in Assam. The prime reason to go was for my wife, Gita to attend some classical dance lessons at a respected dance academy in Guwahati, spend some time with relatives and generally have a good time. I went with Gita to her dance lessons and spent my time writing up my Himalayan Adventure from two months before. It is some 15 sides of A4 without pictures and will go off to be published in my club magazines. In my stay in Guwahati I had a trip out to the resort, Panacea, that I had visited before, this time on the back of Joonjyoti's 2009 350 Bullet. I had to buy a hemet on the way. That was a non BS rated hemet that will stay in India for all of 900 Rupees! Bargain but only legal for India. I don’t think it would perform any better than a turban. However I have not tested a turban and can only guess at the outcome. 

More fun was had going to see more relatives in Dibrugahr. My cousin, Chinmoy, lives near the town in a village called Tinialli, tini means three and alli means road in Assamese so it is a village called three roads and three roads meet in the centre. When I arrived I had a spin out on a right gear lever, left brake Enfield 350 Bullet. Up and down the road, no helmet, I have left it in Guwahati as we only had 15kg of luggage for the flight. The bike was supposed to be 1982 but other bits were allot earlier. It worked and the next morning Chinmoy’s biker friends came along for a group ride. I had the choice of any bike I wanted, a couple of Himalayans or Bullets. 

I chose the Bullet I had ridden the previous evening and it was a nice classic. I think perhaps I should have been on the Himalayan as after about ten kilometres we turned off the paved road after pictures and selfies were taken while riding along. Now there’s confidence for you. I wouldn’t do that as I know I would drop the phone! Down this cart track towards a picnic area by a river. The only problem is that the closer you get to the river the sandier the surface. It was fine just like in the Himalayas and would send you in directions you didn’t want to go. I took it steady on the Bullet knowing the lower centre of gravity would help in those conditions. Gita was with the rest of the family, who came with us were in the car behind. We stopped to let them catch up and had a photo shoot with all the ladies taking turns sitting on the back of my bike. Time to move on and Gita came on the back. 

The sand was softer now and there were a few ooooh! moments as I wrestled the bike down the tracks and finally to park on the banks of the massive Assamese river, the Brahmaputra. It was clear, clean and the ladies went for a paddle. We had a snack and took more photos, a few using a very long branch as a home made selfie stick. 

The event was recorded with a drone flying around. Gita went back in the car and now I had gained some experience with the Bullet I was a bit more confident on the return. I enjoyed this immensely and this lead on to “We want to do the Ladakh trip with you” I said I would prefer something less arduous and a bit warmer but who knows? I had a great time talking bikes for hours when we returned in the evening after another trip out in the car. What a day!