The CF Bedford

Part 1: Getting the van

I arranged to pick the CF Bedford van up on a Wednesday, so hired a car trailer and proceeded to pick it up. The van still had the usual road grime and dirt so headed over to the local car wash place (wash world).
$8 later I was very wet and dirty while the van looked clean, the water blaster did a good job but being on the trailer was very hard to get everywhere. Sadly I forgot to take any pictures at this stage.
Next stop was the sandblasters; the short drive there was drying time.
The van, although having some visible bondo/bog/filler did look very reasonable, I did know it had some rust in it but when the sandblaster has finished just blasting around all the seams and arches I was quite shocked to see rust holes everywhere. It is very hard to find a good van these days so semi expected the result.
Took the van back to my friend's workshop where it would remain until finished (wasn't to be, as he needed his workshop back, which is fair enough).
This van wasn't actually the van I brought to build. The original van I drove up from down south, the paint brush paint job hide a lot but what I didn't see was the bent front chassis section which had been repaired - badly.
I knew the engineers doing the cert. wouldn't ecept this and with the rest of the body being pretty well rusted I was able to find a reasonable body shell I could swap this van for (he only wanted front panels to put on an old ambulance bedford).
What you'll see in the following pages is just what I got and what I did with it. Let's get on with it.

The van shell after returning from the sand blasters - doesn't look to bad does it, or does it? The side windows were the only things removed by me at this point. The rear wheels and diff are borrowed.

The next day was the strip day, removed the old wheel tubs, dash, and every nut, bolt and screw I could find.

Next - Part 2 - The strip down and findings