My Old Van: 1987 Econoline E-150, or "Scope creep is my friend"

Thanks for the tips, I think I’ll do what I can on the frame patch then put it aside until it’s warm enough for spraying primer in there, then do the skin.  I have plenty I can patch until then.

ill look into those lights, I could definitely use some light as well as heat, especially with the welding hood down.  Even when it’s not dark it’s like wearing sun glasses.  There’s never enough light out there.

ill try peeing the skin away a bit, maybe I can get more of it out and torch/clean up around where I want to weld, that way when I circle back to this hood I’ll be ready to go.  I assume hoods are pretty cheap, since whole vans are pretty cheap, but I’m still going to try fixing this one.

that is indeed an eastwood contour SCT.  I barely used it so far but it feels much less “Chinese” than the other eastwood stuff I got.  The stripping drum eats right through all the layers of hood paint like nothing.  It came with an extra set of brushes too.  It’s quite large, however, so there is no way its getting into tight spots.  It’s not overly heavy, just large.  I’m pretty sure it’s going to become my favorite tool on earth when it comes to stripping all the paint off this huge van.  I’m leaving the paint except where I see rust until then.  This is original paint, truck has been in no accidents, never been to a body shop at all, so there is no hidden bondo repairs.

im going to look into electric garage heaters.  I have a massive propane burner but I feel like it’s a little too suicidal to heat a room with it.

I've got to admit, I'm watching this with the same strange fascination that I reserve for free range hamster farming. 

Free range hamsters?  Are they for kebabs or something? Do they go with honey bbq sauce? I must find out...

I have several propane heaters. They work great for heating garages. 

I don’t have a propane heater so much as I have a homemade propane foundry furnace burner... it has a hair dryer duct taped to it and it can melt a crucible full of copper in no time.  It’s also deafening at full blast, pretty sure it wouldn’t be safe, though the place would heat up in just a few minutes 

In reply to Rufledt :

Imagine you meet a guy, and he tells you he has a free range hamster farm. 

"You want to see my free range hamster farm?"

"Berk yes I want to see your free range hamster  farm!"

"Do you want to work on/invest in/buy my free range hamster farm?"

"Berk no my friend, but you keep enjoying your crazy free range hamster farming life."

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

So you’re saying you don’t want to invest in a once in a lifetime opportunity to own a rusty brown van?  Rats, there goes my end game... 

I do want to visit your rusty brown van, for reals, no euphemism at all. 

Sounds like a plan, and I do NOT want to know what “your rusty brown van” would be a euphemism for...  

Eh... So long as it's not burning too rich you should be fine. 

I have a propane forge that will heat a 1300 sq/ft building in about 45 minutes. 

Or a 12x18 shed in about 10. 

Do it all the time. 

I think the hood patch is a prime candidate for the glue mentioned. 

Is there a temperature limit on that glue stuff?  Is cooooold here.

I actually checked my foundry burner with a CO detector and came up with a whopping 6ppm max.  Actually it was 0ppm but it hit a 6 a few minutes after i shut it off.  My plumbers torch clocked in at 36ppm max.  I turned the giant propane torch off when my IR thermometer showed the ceiling in front of the burner hitting 100 degrees F and the windows on the van started fogging over...  

with some recirculating fans running i bet it would heat the place up in a real hurry, i just don't feel safe since i made the thing and duct tape is a critical component...  I suppose i could stick it in the foundry furnace and use some fans to circulate the air coming out the top? THat way all the fire is contained?  That still seems a bit too death-trap-y.

They make little propane heaters that mount right to the top of the tank. They're only $30~ 

Not quite as fast, but they're pretty safe. 

i've seen those, i have 3 propane tanks, that sounds like a good option.

After you mentioned that straight lines are rarely straight, i went out to the hood with a straight edge.  Looks like the bottom and that crease are straight horizontally, but they bow forward along the full width of the hood.  Not enough to affect the few inches I patched, but it's there.  looks like not quite a quarter inch of bow over the 18 inches or whatever of my straight edge.  I think i'm ok here but i'll keep an eye out for subtle curves in the next patch.  i'm doing the fenders next and there is definitely more curviture there.

It's amazing how much that little flat spot in the arc will stick out once you get it all the same color. 

You're probably in the ballpark you can blend it with body filler, and if you're planning to redo the striping, it will hide a lot. 

I've been doing a little research on weldable primer and decided to try some of the U-POL copper based stuff. Lots of people saying it fights back a lot less than the traditional zinc based stuff. (Which has always been my experience.) 

I'll let you know how it goes. Of course the foreseeable forecast shows too cold, or too wet for any real painting so it might be a while. 

Sounds good, let me know how it goes.  I have below freezing in my future for as far ahead as the weather forecast goes, so I’m in no rush to start painting.

Cool project! The van itself seems really neat. 

Last summer i dug a free old conversion van out of the weeds and have been fixing/driving it ever since. I'm getting attached in a way that makes your saga a lot more relatable, even though I've only had this one less than a year. Of course, my base (debased?) attraction to vans in general was quite strong before i stepped into the full-size world. My father did own a couple of full size vans that he counts as his favorite vehicles, but they were gone by the time i came along. 

I'm what you might call a.. uh.. 'high volume' YouTube consumer. I didn't know you had a channel, but i'm hooked. Your mannerisms and humor are right up my alley and the other videos look pretty interesting.. In fact, now i'm a little sad you don't live in Texas. Then again, maybe living here is the main/only reason i haven't delved into many of the things you've made videos on that involve creating more heat. Hmm. 

Regardless, cool project, cool videos, i'll be following! 

Hi Vigo! glad you like the videos.  I plan to get the furnace going in this van project, actually.  If i can get ceramic shell lost PLA casting working next summer I would like to do new badges cast in aluminum bronze, but that plan is a long way off.  I can't imagine why you wouldn't want to stand next to a furnace in 100 degree weather.   Actually i can't imagine standing outside in texas summers without melting.

Nothing to add except my dad is a worse enabler than you guys.  His 2 ideas today were “buy a crate engine” and “get an old E250 with a 351 so you have the bigger engine and beefier suspension to swap over, and all the patch panels you need”

Well he's not wrong...

OK finally had some time to get back to it.  I did some more welding:

that's an in-progress shot.  Did some more welding and grinding:

It's difficult to grind down in the inside of the 90 degree bend here:

Outside:

It's also hard to grind neatly in the edge where the frame makes a little up and down thing:

I don't have a dremel, barely have any die grinder bits. I need to stock up a bit, i was only using a wire wheel in a drill and a flap disk on the grinder.  That hole isn't a blow hole, it's a drain hole.  I'm going to expand it a bit, as i welded half of it shut.  I think the hole was too far from the edge for the water to drain properly, allowing some to sit in the crease there and cause rust.  I'm going to add the 1x2" holes as suggested earlier.

I cut the patch a little oversized on the edge so i can trim it down.  I'll get to that later. Since i want to spray weld through primer on this before doing a skin, i'll probably set this aside and do the fender next.

That's my first patch ever, so I'll take any critiques you more experienced people are willing to throw my way.  thanks for the help so far.

Edit: for filling any blow holes, i backed the weld with a puck of copper i made in my casting exploits.  It's pretty thick, seems to work halfway decently, though I might take a grinder to it and flatten it a bit more and give it an edge to fit in some tighter spots.  Also i had an issue with unpredictable welds, turns out i needed to tighten the feed a little bit.  Also it seems like some juice was stored in the machine when i finished a weld. if i ran a little extra wire out and tapped on the ground clamp, it would flash faintly, then i trimmed the wire to fit, and i didn't have a problem after i started doing that.  Occasionally when i started a weld, it seemed like too much juice was left in the welder and it would FLASH and the wire was burned away.  weird.

Here is how I play this game.

Once you get the welder set up right, you should be able to get a decent tack just by hitting the trigger for a given count.

Lets say that you got the tack I am pointing at.( It is a bit too high for my taste, meaning that it is too cold or too much wire, but will serve to illustrate)

The goal is to hit the front face of this tack and let the liquid metal find its way down the face and into the crack. Gravity and capillary action are going to do the work. 

I use two hands and a bright light to make sure that the end of the wire is pointed exactly where I want it. I do not move during the time that I am pouring molten steel down the front of the bead. ILet go of the trigger after a count equal to what got you the first tack.

As soon as the bead stops glowing red, have the gun repositioned to repeat the whole thing. You are moving like less than 1/8" everytine you do this. Do not try to run a bead on tin because you are just going to make holes.

I fill holes the same way...make a tack and build off the front face of it. Never need backers if you can figure this out. If you can jump over it, you can weld it shut.

I was definitely too high on the wire speed for some of it.  I was thinking i wasn't getting enough wire, when in fact i needed to tighten the feed thing.  I'm using .024 or something wire, and i previously had .030 wire.  I didn't make adjustments and it wasn't feeding consistently.  Before i figured that out i cranked wire speed a bit.  I'm a noob, still figuring this stuff out.  I'll give your method a try, it sounds better than skipping around and grinding at random which is what i was doing.

I grabbed the fender, which had some rust and looked like this around the rim:

A few places looked like then, then i pulled out that eastwood stripper thing with the black drum (stripping drum) and the edge of the fender ended up looking like this:

I guess it wasn't as bad as I thought.  That spot pictured above is the worst looking part, here it is:

It makes a pretty nice sanded surface texture, too, almost brushed in appearance:

I haven't hit the inside of the arch much, so it looks pretty nasty still:

A few pinholes in there, and the 2 chunks out of the side there.  Looks like patching this where needed will be pretty simple, and all hidden when i'm done, since the rim looks so nice.  Maybe i'll hit this with a flap disk and see what happens.

Ran out of time again, but there's always tomorrow.

In reply to Rufledt :

I used to be a member of the thin welding wire church, but found out that it does not really matter. More thin wire fed into the pool is the same as less thick wire. And I got tired of changing as I went from tin to structural projects. I also found that the thick wire fed better with my machine.

As long as your wire is feeding out smoothly ( ie at a repeatable rate) then my method reduces the whole game down to one variable: time on the trigger.