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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