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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Catching up 2 - Back to BAT

I have just dredged back through the annals, and I can't find a picture of his front seat, although I know I have some somewhere.  Until I find one, here is a photo that I have robbed from somewhere ages ago. Unfortunately, I can't remember where from.  If this is your photo, I will cheerfully add the acknowledgement or take it down or whatever.  Anyway, this is what the seats used to look like.  Ours had a rip and were dirtier.

Ah ha!  What is missing from this picture? Yes.  The seat.  My seat I think.  This is because we were at the lovely BAT again, and they were taking our seats away. Not because we had been naughty, but because the plan was that they would recover them and we would get them back at DubFreeze, which was, back then, a fortnight in the future. (Ignore the temporal shifts, I promise it's easier to write at the right time!)

Passenger seat, on the pavement.


Passenger seat on the bench at BAT.




Sneaky photo of someone else's van at BAT, with an ATT interior, showing us what an excellent decision we had made to go with this particular combination of craftsmen.


Now, the decision made at BustFest was to probably go with the 'Snodger setup'  Now that we had decided on the oak, we thought we would check the colour against the wood.  We also had the advice of Mrs BAT, who knows more about colours and matching than I would ever know.




Deconstruction of the seats begins.






In the meantime, we we borrowed a couple of seats. Look carefully at these seats dear reader, because this is BAT's idea of a scaggy pair of seats that we can borrow because they are due for recovering.  This is a pair of seats so bad, that if the back of my seat hadn't fitted properly over the hook and the cooker, the chap was happy to slice it out with a Stanley knife.  I actually winced when he said that.  These seats were beautiful.  Fabric inner, cream leathery-stuff outer, fabric piping.  They also had proper inners, unlike our 40 year old inners, and therefore were lovely and comfortable!



So we drove back again, leaving our seats at BAT, due to collect at DubFreeze.

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Catching up 1 - Brian gets given a sample

I'm sorry, dear reader, that we have not updated the blog as regularly as I should have done.  The next couple of posts will bring us up to date with Brian as he stands so far.

This is Brian outside BAT.  We were supposed to pick up the wood samples from ATT as arranged at BusFest, but life had caught up with all of us and the postman actually delivered them after we had been.  Frustrating.



However, BAT being awesome folks, promptly sent them on to us, and the process of holding them up against everything in sight began.

The lighter one is Ash, the darker one is Oak.  We tried it against the floor.



We tried it against the seat backs.



We tried it against the fabric.


We tried it against the exterior.



And we tried it against the cushions again.
Our conclusion was to go for the darker one, the oak.  When I write it like that, it sounds so simple.  In fact, this took several weeks of wandering about with lumps of wood, making a decision, changing it, deciding for definite, changing our minds again, deciding for absolutely sure this time, humming and harhing once more. But it is definitely, absolutely, totally, completely, going to be the oak. Honest. Well, it has to be now.  It's ordered...... (But ATT say we can change our minds until March.....)
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