Leicester to Mongolia - Baby Don't Yurt Me!

[BabyDontYurtMe]

Finally got round to making one of these threads. Our project van is certainly not pretty, but it works (for now..). The only aim is to get us and the van there in one piece.
The basics: 2006 Mark 6 LWB Hi-Roof with a 2.4L TDCI RWD motor. (I know I made a bad choice, but I found that out afterwards by joining this forum!)

This is the as-received van. It was an old builders van by the look of it, but it also was a potato merchants van for a while too apparently. Its 182k miles on the clock but the speedo was borked within 5 miles of leaving the yard I bought it from so im assuming its done closer to 200k miles.



Its got a bit of "character" in bodywork and general condtion, I am seriously hoping its not a sign of how badly the engine has been treated.




The back is boarded but it looks like a non original job because its all screwed to the metalwork. We all love screws touching metalwork, perfect opportunity for rust to have a party.



Before we go, I want to redo the back into a rough n ready camper with a bed, plug socket so we can charge stuff, access from the drivers/passengers seat to the back and I also want to do a full service where I replace all consumables and fluids. Fingers crossed.

[BabyDontYurtMe]

SIGNWRITING.
We have 10 sponsors with us for the rally, all who have donated either their products or donated money for fuel costs etc. Part of the deal is that they get their logos on the van.
First, give her a damn good wash and get all the greasy sh*t off her so the vinyls will stick:



Then its the fun bit, getting the signage put on! We used Sign Shop Loughborough we have used them before for other signs and what not, really nice guy and he loves his job. Win for everybody.








Dead chuffed with the work hes done, now the van looks proper professional and it looks like we mean business! This really got us excited for the rally, as suddenly the whole thing became very real - we now have signage that everyone can see so people know that this van is doing the Mongolia Charity Rally. We have a few more stickers who were given to us by the charity rallies people themselves, which we havent put on yet. I will pop an update on when we do!

[BabyDontYurtMe]

Next we tackled them horrible boards in the back, as the wife point blank refused to sleep in the back on those boards in the knowledge that theres 8 years of grime and dirt bedded in. So we went all out and stripped the entire thing back so we could see what we were dealing with, and then worked from there.



The rust, dust and other crap became apparent pretty quickly, with some screws breaking clean off while we were trying to undo them.




Yep, we were right, its was bloody filthy.





The previous owner even left us a little gift to keep us motivated while mucking out the van

[jonochap]

Lookin very good

[mealic]

Needs a couple Forum stickers on her. Good luck .

[BabyDontYurtMe]

Next up was a spring clean in the back, which we did by sweeping first, then hoovering using the horsehair attachment so we could do all the panels and roof, and then finally washing with sugars oap. The difference was more than we expected, which was pretty cool. This took us longer than we would like to admit, but glad we did it nonetheless.

Sweeping:





Hoovered:





Washed:





The wheelarches were rusty, which was predicted by this forum. Since this van is going to be pretty beat up and need a big service at the end of July anyway, we figured we can just do a temporary fix by removing the big surface rust and lacquering over it for now. I know full well it will not completely stop the rust, but it will hopefully slow it down somewhat. The physical holes left by the wooden panelling was also filled in using silicon sealant as another temporary fix. If I had time, I would weld these all up (possibly just replace the entire wheelarches). And yes, this was done BEFORE we hoovered, im not that stupid!







We also gave the front a good scrub, 8 years of steel toe caps and rigger boots left some nicely ground in dirt to deal with, so a quick going over with the bucket and sponge did it a world of good. The whole van feels much more comfortable to be in now. Also air fresheners work wonders

[BabyDontYurtMe]

This is the most fun bit to date so far, the actual converting! We want it to be comfortable, but not overworked. We also dont want to be spending much money on it since its going to be gutted and turned into whatever service they need at the other side. So here is what we did with regards to converting into a camper so far:
First and foremost, we wanted to be able to get from the front of the van into the back without getting out, and vice versa. So I took another piece of advice from this forum, headed down the scrappy and bought me a second drivers seat!

Of course it was filthy under the old one...



As many of you will know, we had to change the side of the seatbelt for the chair. Again, since this isnt a van made for aesthetics we just butchered the plasticwork. I prefer to use the term "modified" but lets be honest it looks awful



New seat fitted:




Secondly, we wanted to put a comfy bed in there. Since we are travelling for roughly a month, and theres no point in taking a tent if youve got a lovely Transit to sleep in, we wanted to do something with that space. We have received a ton of donations for the trip for supplies when we get there like medical gloves, childrens clothes etc and we were worried about fitting all of this in along with a bed. So we decided to build an old Ikea sofa-bed we had lying around into Transit bed by butchering it a bit and constructing wooden legs high enough so some plastic crates could slide underneath:

The bed in question:



Slightly too big to just fit in the Transit, so out comes mr angry!





Next was the legs - we recycled the old legs from the bed and then cut some wooden batons from some of the old wood from the van.



We gave it little feet to add stability so it hopefully wont shift too much during the trip. Also we used tons of cable ties to make sure everything was nicely bolted together, along with wood screws and wood glue!



Before we installed the bed, we put in one sheet of new ply up on the wall as a headboard to protect us against the sharp metalwork while we try and sleep. We dont see much point in boarding the rest of the walls of the van at this stage since it will just be full of stuff and doesnt need to look nice.



We like high pillows so we dont mind the mattress like that, and I just about fit at 5ft9 provided i dont try and stretch out



Finally, we laid a floor to the drivers side back door, which is where our main entrace to the back of the van will be due to the bed being there. We wont be using the passenger side rear door much as that corner of the van will be stacked floor to ceiling with medical supplies and whatnot destined for Mongolia. Hopefully we will carpet this strip of floor if we can find some offcut of carpet.


Like I already said, a lot of the work is not top quality, and I certainly would never try and pass this off as a holiday camper But it works for now, and the bed doesnt seem unstable at the moment. Next steps with this will be to carpet that back bit, and probably do a trial run packing all the stuff we have... hopefully not too much!
I will also be carrying out the big service on the working components in the coming weeks, but there probably wont be many photos of that because im forgetful when I have my head in an engine bay

[BigMonty]

Great thread matey. Keep up the good work.