So I thought i'd share the pics of our new T5 that arrived on Tuesday.
As someone who is new to the whole T5 conversion world ( I had a 1969 VW beetle when I was 17 and then a VW golf driver until I was in my early 20's) i've fully immersed myself in this forum and purchased £40 plus of T5 magazines over the last 4 months , spent way too many hours pouring over adverts on various auction sites and van selling sites, until finally I found the following.
T5.1 Panel Van, registered late september 2011, T28 102 with tailgate. One owner, full VW service history & 55k on the clock. Delivered £12500 including VAT. After looking at pricing etc I'm fairly happy with the final sale value.
I could have continued looking for ever but there was always something that was missing or the price was ridiculous. The main things I wanted was a base panel van with tailgate as I didn't want to redo others peoples work it seamed the best place to start.
I'd have liked the electric pack but I can fit electric windows and the AC isn't a huge loss.
So it starts here.
The first issue I had was to redesign the drive as the turning circle is much greater than our other vehicles and I didn't want to reverse out onto the main road so this week I've been mainly digging wet mud and repositioning wooden sleepers to create a usable drive.
I've ordered two sets of sliders and rear windows thanks to VEEDUB TRANSPORTERS , Tailgate out of stock but I've got enough to get on with.
Rear parking sensors on route also and 2 x Silent Coat 2mm Bulk Packs arrived for sound deadening.
So the journey begins, I will try and post pics as and when things get done but I hope you enjoy reading my post as I have with many others on this great forum. Just to note I am a novice at this and will no doubt ask many questions so please go steady on me if I ask questions that have been asked a thousand times before.
its like they where sisters! I will do, fitting it as soon as I get a chance, spent the week I had off changing the drive so that you can drive in , drive out. Took longer than expected.
mines a Lwb with tailgate, twin sliders and tow bar. Ticked all our boxes, its a blank canvas inside, gots lots of plans for it. Will watch your thread with interest mate
Tomorrow is the day, a little nervous but using a garage work shop so shouldn't be too much trouble. All the windows and bits and pieces have arrived so we are all good to go.
Will post pictures of the whole procedure and some timings so others can see how it goes.
Ok so over the weekend and with the help of Steve Adams overs at Adams MOT Center in Forton, Somerset we went about the task of fitting four windows to the panel van. There will be a rear tailgate window but I'm waiting for them to come back into stock.
All the windows came from veedub transporters as the advice and help from them has been invaluable, thank you especially to Charlotte I've not been the easiest buyer to deal with.
The first job was to cover as much of the vehicle as possible with plastic sheeting, I opted for a medium weight painters plastic from B&Q the sort that covers furniture and is pretty cheap.
Steve and I have never fitted any windows so with lots of research to hand and with a selection of tools to choose from we set about practicing on an inner panel,
Firstly we removed the inner strut with an air feed grinder, to be honest through out the process this turned out to be the most labour intensive due to having to cut four cuts on each strut In order to remove an area so that the nibbler could cut a continues line.
The obvious choice for cutting the hole was the air feed nibbler and so after some initial practice we set about cutting a hole and inch bigger than we needed for this first hole.
We started on the sliding door as that's the easiest part to replace if it all went horribly wrong.
With the practice hole all going to plan we drilled pilot holes from the inside and then with the aid of a ruler and a steady hand drew the cutting area on the outside of the van.
Luck would have it that for the most part the nibbler followed the inner panel part from around the strut areas where the panels are closer together. Some tidying up is required around this area with the grinder or a hand file.
Just to note we did at this point try an air fed jigsaw but it rippled the panel a bit and so we quickly decided to stick with the nibbler and grinder.
From advise read and due to the amount of small fillings that the nibbler and grinder produce we decided as we where under cover to cut all the windows in one go. This was probably the most daunting area of the process, suddenly to be left with a van with four large holes cut into it and no windows in place.
Here is a close up shot of the edge after the nibbler has done its work. I rust coated the edges on all the cut metal.
Ok the next stage was a though clean of the whole area, an air line came in very handy to remove all the fillings without scratching and surfaces.
Next we offered up the first slider for fit and also to draw around the inside with a pencil.
I should note that I'm using inner surrounds so no need to cut out the bonding and apply the rubber u trim. Also to note because of this the carpet will be fitted later and all windows will be covers during this process to protect against glue over spray.
The next step was to clean the window and apply with bonding agent around 10mm inside the line in one continues motion. In Fact maybe 3 or 4 continues motions as the woollen bud needs topping up.
I applied the same bonding agent around the outside edge of the cut hole on the van.
Leave to dry for a min of 15 mins.
Now apply a 2-3mm line of glue around the window making sure to keep it 10mm from the edge and to feather off at the end. For passengers side start at the right hand corner and wrk clockwise, for drivers side work from the left hand corner and work clockwise.
Whist using glass holders between the two of you offer up the window being careful to apply even pressure to ensure a good level fit. This is where we found it invaluable to be able to use some batons and cardboard to be able to wedge the middle or corners. Some may argue that you shouldn't need this but we found it helped a great deal and with out the odd baton we'd be left with an uneven fit.
We repeated the same process for the rear window. This is where we made a slight error looking back and as it's our first attempt I can forgive it as we can over come it.
We left a slight gab between the sliding door glass and the rear glass as we where worried it would fool the sliding door, this was not the case. We can hide this 2-3 mm gab with a painted back like this time.
With both windows battened in a few places for piece of mind we called it a day.
We started at 12am and finished at 7am so not a bad day.
Day two 11am start
With the battens & tape removed and the van taken off the ramp we inspected the windows. Apart from a slight corner showing a couple of millimetre difference we where please as we could apply a little more glue under the edge due to the fact it was reachable once the sliding door was open and could re-wedge.
We repeated exactly the same process as we did for the passenger side sort from this time we didn't leave a gap and the two windows married up beautifully.
A few battens where added just for piece of mind and the van was left for another night in the work shop just to guarantee and full dry time.
We finished today at 1.30am do the total time for all four windows was 9.5hrs not bad for our first fitting.
So there you have it, I'll post some pics of the inside as soon as the surrounds have been fitted.
I'm happy to share any further info I have if your interested and thanks for all the advise from members from this forum. Just PM me your questions and I'll reply amateur to amateur.
Yes really pleased just a bit gutted we didn't work out the slider & rear window spacing as I said but its the first time we fitted any so its all a learning curve.
My next issue is removing the window, most people on here have said cheese wire which I can understand would work well but my main issue is how to remove the old silicon from the paintwork and the window.
Hi Guys, just joined the site as come across whilst searching for more things to spend my money on. I have attached a few photos of my van hope you like.
I've tried to start this thread before from my old pad, but it doesn't seem to have worked - apologies to mods/everyone else if it appears twice....
Anyway, as I was saying, I got some alloy wheel repairs done... and damn my eyes for a fool, I decided to go full white. Yes, I know, they will be...
just thought I would share a couple of pics of our van. We've had this for almost a year and the end is finally in sight.
we will get some smart graphics done for the exterior and might put an awning on it but that has to wait for the budget to catch up.
We opted not to put on a pop top as the...
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