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Bulkhead Removal - How we did it...

7K views 6 replies 7 participants last post by  mcnamaster 
#1 ·
Hi All,

As we took the lower bulkhead out of our T4 this last weekend, I thought I'd do a little 'how we did it' post (haven't got any pics yet, but will upload some when I get round to it!)

Firstly, you can't remove the bulkhead without removing the seats as there are fixings for the bulkhead on the cab side, ours still has the single seat and the bench seat... at the moment! There's 4 nuts anchoring each one down (can't remeber what size!), undo the nuts and the seats just lift off the bolts fixed to the floor... try not to kneel or sit on these :blg

Next off, we opted to remove the seatbelts, we removed the top triangular trim piece to expose the top bolt and then removed the lower rectangular cover panels to expose the reel with the renowned explosive unit attached to it (our van doesn't have airbags, but the expolsive bit is still present on the seat belt reel). The trims are moulded with clips on the back so no fixings to unscrew, just manoever them in the right way and off they come. There's three bolts holding the seat belt in and these just undo and out comes the seatbelt (we undid the reel last)... don't drop it... (BTW, we left the top guide with the brush in it fixed to the post).

Now all of that is out of the way, comes drilling of the spot welds. There's about 4 down each side on the cab side then a couple down each side in the back and around 7 along the bottom edge. The first thing we did was to grind these flat to give better bite for the drill later. What I found was that my Dremmel was a great choice for this, small and doesn't generate masses of sparks. When you grind the welds flat, if you get down to the base metal of the bulkhead you should be able to see the line of the original drill cut for the spot weld which will help you locate the centre point.

Next we used a spot weld drill bit. I picked one of these up for a little over 8 quid in screwfix and it's perfect for this job. We found that we didn't need to drill out the spot welds completely and that only drilling to just beyond the thickness of the bulkhead steel was fine and hasn't left too much filling to do. At the junction with the pillar on each side is a kind of welded bracket, we just cut this for the purposes of removing the bulkhead and then ground back the weld and the bracket comes off the pillar.

Once this was all done, it was time for a little hammer and chisel action along the edges where the bulkhead sides are welded to the pillars and bottom channel - ours was well fitted! (this is why we removed the seatbelts). Going carefully and using a metal chisel (not a woodworkers chisel) ours came away relatively easily with a bit of persuasion and then we removed the bulkhead via the sliding door.

All we have left to do now is to grind off the few remaining patches of weld for a smooth all round finish, fill a few small holes and then spray it in before we finish the pillars and step (haven't decided on how to do this yet - carpet etc...)

Hope that helps a few of you planning to do this job yourselves. When putting seats & seat belts back in, make sure you torque them back up to the correct tightness and make a note of which bolts have washers/spacers on when you remove them - one of the seat belt fixings has a 3 or 4mm thick spacer on it which I am sure will quite happily fall off and disappear!

On to the next job!
 
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#3 ·
Good one. That's pretty much exactly what I did to remove mine a little while ago. I do have some before and after pics on my conversion/ build thread but no specific details on it. I didn't remove the seats when I did mine, just took off the seat belt reel cover.

I used a standard metal drill bit (no special spot weld drill bits), an angle grinder instead of the dremmel, causing a few sparks and a bit of mess, and the good old hammer and chisel. It got the job done fairly quickly and stress free. Also, quite importantly, filler and primer to keep the rust away!
 
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