It's a simple fix.....

Ssshhhhhh!

I've found a simple fix to do on Brian that really was a simple fix. It was simple to do, and it fixed it!

I know! You're as surprised as I, dear reader!

Well. Following yesterday's post and video, it was clear that Brian had a brake switch that had let go.

Getting the part wasn't hugely simple but that had nothing to do with Brian and everything to do with the fact that EuroCarParts are ageist in their vehicle parts stocking. I ended up getting the bus (an actual public transport bus) over to Swaffham where our fabulous mechanic usually is, collecting the part and some instructions, and heading back here via Halfords to get some dot4 brake fluid.

This is the offending article.




This is the shiny new replacement. The red stuff is a sealant. The adjustable spanner is set at 24mm.



1) Top up your fluid. We used halfords dot4, on Lovely Welding Man's recommendation.
2) Have everything ready, and a spare pair of hands.
3) Remove old one and slide new one into place, just catching the thread.
4) With your spare pair of hands/feet, depress the brake pedal so that the fluid is just oozing out.
5) Screw the new switch in all the way.
6) Tighten with the spanner.

You are done!

We now have a passenger side rear light cluster with brake light and indicator. More importantly, we have brakes.

(Still nothing on the left except the rear light when all the lights are put on. Confusing much?)

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The moment you realise just how much your VW loves you.

Last week we went to Blackpool, via Llay.  We spent the week up there, we drove back, via Leamington Spa.  I suppose over the week we did about 700 miles, Friday to Friday.

Thursday, we had a bulb blow in the back indicator.  Our friend was following us, and she cheerfully informed us that we had no brake lights either.  Oh we did.  Oh we didn't.  Oh we did.  Oh we didn't.  You get the picture.  Intermittent earth fault, we thought.  Nothing we can do here.

We got back on Friday.

We slept a lot of yesterday.

Today we decided to see what we could fix.

The right rear indicator was indeed bulb blown.  Melted and kaput and fubar.  (All technical terms!)  We replaced it, and..... nothing.  We cleaned the contacts and...... nothing.

Ho hum.

We checked the fuses, cleaned the contacts, tidied it up a bit, and ...... nothing.

We then stopped for a brew, obviously.

We went back out.  We checked the brakes again, ready to check the brake switches, and Jack thought he heard something.  He stuck his head under the van.  I pressed the pedal.

This is what he saw.

Hmmmmm.  I'm not a mechanic.  I've said this before.  I'll stick my neck out on this one though - I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to do that.

Thankfully, Brian didn't lose it on the way home barrelling down the M6, he didn't lose it around a roundabout, he lost it on the drive, at home.  Even now, he's got some braking.  We're just not sure how much!

Today, we realised how much he loves us too.

(Yes, I'm fully aware that this is anthropomorphising to the extreme.  I don't care.)

Living the dream (and too busy to write about it!)

Dear Reader,

I must apologise.

Since from the 5 long weeks that Brian was away having his refit,  Jack and I have been living the dream.  We have been having our one life and living it.

You have missed -

"Alright at the back?"
"A Wheely bad problem for Brian"
"Brian gets nekkid"
"Jack and My Dad Kill some Noise!"
"Oh what an ugly Bay"
 "The Empty Drive"
"The Wanderer Returns"
"Cooking on a WHAT?"
"I see your Ford Ranger and raise you...... a Brian!"
"Aircooled14 - at last!"
"RAC v AA"
"Am I too old for Camper Jaaaaam?"

Admittedly some of those are from before he went away, but I am blaming SATs and all sorts of other stuff for why those didn't get done on time.  I've now made the online drafts, so all I have to do is to put the words in, and we are happy days, full steam ahead.

We've got a show break now until White Noise, (Not doing Bug Jam - too expensive for what it is, but there's a whole post to come on the cost of shows)

In more good news though, another friend has bought herself a van.  Admittedly it's a T5, but she's got to start somewhere!

The Wanderer Returns

It was a long wait.



It was almost 5 weeks, in which things took longer than we thought, and we began to despair of ever seeing Brian on our drive ever again. (Yes, that's melodramatic.  We didn't realise how much we would miss him.)



So then we got the phonecall that said that BAT and ATT had pulled out all the stops to get Brian finished in time for Uttoxter Bus Stopover.  We'd already missed Deva Dubs and Rods.  Jack got the train up to York, lovely Adrian collected him from the station, and after tea, and a look around the gorgeousness he drove back.



He got home at about 1am.  It was too dark to take pictures, but I did have a look around it in the middle of the night.  Although I never thought it was possible, I fell in love with Brian all over again.



Here, oh beloved reader, is why.





Brian, back where he should be.





The beautifully upholstered seats, cream centres, Snodgen red surrounds, double diamond stitching.









The fridge and sink unit.  The fridge front was cut down from the one we did originally which wouldn't fit.  See the roundedness of the finished wood.  See the perfection of the vents.  You can't see the little oval properly, but it says ATT number 52.
























See the level of the red cushion with cream piping?  This is significant later on.



This is the extra cupboard.  It holds the gas cylinder and converts into a buddy seat.  It deserves a post of it's own later on and will get one.  It is genius.





This is the floor.  We ummed and ahhed about the floor.  Should we have it checquered?  Should we have it not?  In the end, we had it not, and we are glad.  With the business of the Dandy and Beano everywhere, the solid floor is good.



And the crowning glory, for me, is the bed.  Oh, the bed.  The old bed had 42 yr old foam, fabric with dodgy stains on it, it took 2 people to get it up, took 30 minutes on a bad day to get it up, and I had to have help getting into it.  (What can I say?  good things come in small packages.  Mostly...)

This bed has 5 inches of foam and a memory foam topper.  It has beautiful stitching and no weird smell.  It goes up so simply (I will do a video next time we go out.)  and I can get onto it with no problem.



It also, (smugness alert) takes a kingsize sheet and duvet.  Oh yes indeed.  Plenty of room here!

Two years of planning and doing and choosing and hoping and saving and travelling and meeting, finally came together.  And I do love it when a plan comes together......

Obviously he immediately needed a run out, and so we went to sunny Hunny for tea.  Beautiful fish and chips (from the yellow chipshop at the top of the road by the roundabout) in a beautiful van, with the interior and man of my dreams.






Even the sun shone with approval........


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Oh what an Ugly Bay!

Ok, this is an unkind and snobby post.

No, really it is.

I am not a nice person.

Now that we have that out of the way, here is a modern Danbury. (I hope you aren't eating whilst reading this.)


I like the Zippy character.  I have no issue with Old School education programmes and their assorted stuffed merchandise.  I do have a problem with over stuffed seats that look like my Nan's sofa.




I like the black and white cushions.  I have severe misgivings about the mdf/laminate interior.  Come on Danbury - the owners will have paid over the odds for this van, and you couldn't use real wood?




Hmmm.  Regular readers will be aware of my feelings about check.  We had Burberry Check.  We destroyed it with much delight.  This should be happening here....



I did like the wheels though!



So why do this post?  I'll tell you.  Because I was told "You've got an old T2?  We've got one over there."  No.  No you do not.
NO! I tells ye!
This is a polo engine in a Brazilian body made of metal found on the beach and beaten in to a rough shape.  This is an example of a vehicle which is rotting more after 10 years than ours after 42.  This is an example of people who want image over style, the joy of the waving without the commitment of the tinkering, people who want the way of life that they see, without truly understanding the two-way adoption that is the T2 and the family. I may not always like Brian when he bangs out of gear, but I will always love him.  He is family. This is creation is not an original T2 dear boy.
I shall leave this subject with a quote from an Indian philosopher.

“Do not repeat after me words that you do not understand. Do not merely put on a mask of my ideas, for it will be an illusion and you will thereby deceive yourself.” 
― Jiddu Krishnamurti

Indeed so, dear Danbury owners, indeed so......

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Brian gets nekkid

Now, dear reader, you need to understand that we are slightly pessimistic when it comes to the length of time that Brian jobs will take.  We always think they will take a bit longer than they do.  This is mainly because the first jobs we did on Brian did take a lot longer than they should have done, although this was probably due to our incompetence.

Anyway.

We thought taking Brian's insides out would be a loooooong job.

We started with the long side.














We had hoped to keep the sink, but it had been glued in, and the top end had cracked, and then been reglued in. It was not coming out in one piece, which initially we thought was a shame, but then we realised that we are still keeping the hob rings, and so there will be part of his original interior still there.


This was the view after the sink was out.  It was also our first view of Brian's naked floor.  It didn't look too bad.  This was also when we realised how nervous we were about Brian's naked floor.  We had heard so many horror stories of vans that looked ok, looked gorgeous in some cases, and yet were rotten at the core, that we felt the apprehension.













The icebox came out.

The seatbelts came out.

-

And then there it was.  One massive lump of Dormobile interior, on it's backside.


Ooooh.  See the water marks?  See the grimness?  There was only one place that this was going to go.



And there we go.

One naked Brian.

Importantly, one naked Brian, with a lovely, solid floor.


Apart from the bit under the icebox, which was a hole, and then three holes, and then a new patch of floor, and a new outrigger and a new bit of chassis rail. But as this had had water going through it for the best part of 40 years, it can be forgiven!  Paul fixed it.  It's all good now.

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A Wheely Bad Problem for Brian

We were polishing Brian at the weekend when I noticed this.  It looked for all the world like a curbing.  It is not possible to curb these rims - the tyres come out too far.









Further investigation showed that under the road dirts, all 4 wheel rims showed the same crazing and damage.  They felt smooth to touch, so clearly there was no exterior damage, this was something underneath the lacquer.

We got on the phone to Retrodubs, from where we had bought the wheels less than 2 years ago.  The less than two years is important, because the wheels came with 2 years surface guarantee.

Immediately, the company couldn't do more to help.  All they wanted was some pictures (very reasonably) and they'd be in touch.  The next working day, they were in touch.  They would send us a new set of wheels.  We could get the tyres changed over, they would reimburse us when they received the invoice for it, we would let them know when it was all done, and they would arrange a courier to collect the old wheels, and have a look at them.  Now *that* is customer service.  Oh, and the two years surface guarantee started all over again!

Once again, Brian is looking fabulous.

What did we do next?

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Alright at the back?

This post goes right back to the back of the bus, and back in time, and well, just back.

Regular readers of Brian's Blog will be aware that sleeping in Brian was a bit like sleeping in a very uncomfortable coffin.  He had ancient foams underneath ones derrier, lumps of wood that seemed to shift underneath any boney part of your body, and the roof was low, because the hardboard lining had bowed.





The box came out quite easily.  It took a bit of working out how it had originally been put in so that we could reverse engineer it out, and we did remove everything apart from the actual seat in the end.

The hardboard came out alarmingly easily.



It appeared that the large piece of hardboard was held in by one large lump of black mastic, on both sides of the lump of wood that was supposed to space it all out nicely.





Anyway, it all came down, and we had another early morning ride to Bromsgrove.  It was cold.  Very bloody cold.








The bonus of having the cooker where it is though, is that we can always make a cup of tea.  Even later in his transformation, when he had nothing at all inside of him, we could have made a brew.




In the end, Bromsgrove opened up at the correct time, and we left Brian in their capable hands whilst we went for yet another breakfast and a wander around.  We did see this amazing coat though, which required a photograph.  The balloon tassels were actual ribbons.  It was fabulous.



We collected Brian again, and went home.  In the words of Forrest Gump "And that's all I really have to say about that!"

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A roof (lining) over our heads.

Today has been another very productive visit to the lovely people at BAT. The reason? The dire state of our front cab lining. This was it.

We knew it was torn.



We knew it had 42 years of dirt..




We didn't realise that it held the original colour underneath though. This is just further proof that Brian's current colour is not his proper colour, but a 'best guess' from a spray shop some time ago.




The abrupt removal of the rear view mirror showed the extent of the dirt. The original colour was white! Who knew!



This is a workshop. A proper workshop. With tools and spare fabric and heavy duty sewing machines and everything a girl could want.....





Anyway, away from workshop-envy, and back to the job in hand. The very efficient Stu took an alarming number of screws out of the van and was telling me all about how the conversion was done at Dormobile. Apparently this would have been the original tin top roof lining, and when the cutting out was done for the Dormobile roof, they just folded it up and nailed it into place, putting the metal frame on the top to support the roof.



Honestly, what BAT don't know about vans isn't worth knowing.

Anyway, then J and the boys and I left to get out of the way, and spent an enjoyable morning in Bromsgrove. Ahem. Well, we spent the morning in Bromsgrove. There's a lot of cafés and charity shops. In fact, there's so much to do, that when we have the back lining done, we're going to get the bus to Worcester.....

Whilst we having yet another cuppa somewhere, we had the magic phonecall that freed us from the town of excitement, before it all got too much. The roof lining was finished.

We came back to this!



Beautiful, shiny, white, smooth, untorn, unpuckered, and in our roof! Hurrah!

On top of that, lovely Stu had found a bracket that lowered my seat belt for me. Being vertically challenged, the belt was going across my neck, and I had visions of being decapitated if we had to slam on the brakes! Now I have no such worries, and am much more comfortable.



I am easily pleased. Next week we are making a special journey to get the back lining done. (And getting the bus to Worcester because a second morning in Bromsgrove would be too exciting for us...)

More photos next week!

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Catching up 3 - A Wet and Windy Dubfreeze

Roll forward 2 weeks from the last post, and you will find us at ASDA near Stafford, having lunch before heading into Dubfreeze.  We parked up, The Mark parked his T2 next to us, and by the time we came back, these two lovelies were also parked behind us.


Off we trundled to DubFreeze.  And the rain started....  We did, however, discover a bonus with The Mark having bought a (as yet unnamed) left-hooker.


We can go from van to van very easily!

Sam loves sleeping in the van, and although he ended up sleeping in tracksuit, hoodie, and woolie hat, and giving himself a stomach ache trying not to go to the loo in the middle of the night (it was that wet and cold!) he had an excellent time.


And although the weather was wet, and the van was small with all 4 of us tucked in it for a considerable length of time, Tyler had a good time as well.  Something to do with grumpy avians.  Or naughty porkers.  Or something.


We had burgers, beans and sausages.  I think.  We had burgers anyway.  They cooked quite nicely in the end.  (As a side note, I have several recipes that I want to try when we are up and running.  Possibly another page on the blog might be required!)


Of course, whilst the camping was good, and the company was lovely, there was really only one reason for being at a cold and wet Staffordshire showground.  Brian's new seats.....


We went straight to BAT when we got in, and collected them, all bubblewrapped, and they were beautiful.


Jack and The Mark installed them, and the colours were just right! (Well done Mrs BAT!)


This picture isn't great, because the wind was well and truly up again by now, and we were keen to be on our way back to the FlatLands, so it's a bit hurried, but you can just about see how everything matches in the way it should.



Now we are all caught up.  Now, we just have to wait.

The waiting is so hard.  Brian goes to ATT at some point in April, and ATT and BAT will work together in harmonious synchronisation to produce the Brian of our Dreams.  The one where the cupboard doors shut properly, where the space under the bed can be used for storage and, the best, the one where the bed goes up and down as easy as anything, and can be slept on by two grown adults comfortably!

Well.

Two grown adults and this fellow!





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