Well, today's post is about the move away from the Ambulance interior and going back to a van interior.
I gave a lot of thought to what should be done with the front when it was turned back into a passenger carrying seat, ie whether to go with the single passenger seat with a swivel plate so that the seat could face to the back as an extra seat for the camper part, or to put it back to a standard bench seat.
Thinking of what I need to do in the back, I've decided the conversion is going to go along the same lines as the T4 as I liked that interior so much. So behind the drivers seat is going to be an L shaped seating area that turns into a 6ftx4ft bed for sleeping. This set up can also be used as a quick bed by just lying out along the longest side of the L as a single bed.
So with this in mind, I will need something for the seat to sit against for the backrests. What happens in the front is not going to interact with the back now anyway, so it doesn't need to have swivel seats. I put a board across behind the drivers seat in the T4, will have to do something similar with this too.
My mission, to find someone selling lots of bits from a Renault Master van to convert the front back to its original format, ie twin seat, plastic door step liner where the night heater had been, and all the bits of trim etc and seatbelting that is either missing or damaged. Also need to get a spare wheel and brake compensator valve to put the rear brakes back to normal.
We found a guy on eBay selling renault parts, and more importantly was breaking a van. I emailed him through eBay with my list of known bits, and he didn't reply. Luckily he put his mobile number on the auction so got in touch through that. He replied saying he thought he had most of what I needed, but was going away for three weeks. Luckily I managed to get a day off to go down to Trowbridge where he was, thanks to Jen taking over my jobs, on Friday 23rd September. When I got there, he'd asked me to go to his home address, he had me follow him down some lanes and then out into a yard with a few vans around, 2 or 3 of them being Masters.
Richard, the guy in Trowbridge, was keen to get away, so we decided on the bits I wanted, which were as follows -
Twin passenger seat
Passenger seat belt
Passenger door step liner
Passenger door pillar trim
Fuse box cover under steering wheel
Ash tray and surround
Rear door centre brake light
Rear door hinge trim
Spare wheel
Wheel brace
Vehicle jack
Brake compensator valve and linkages
Towing hook
String net document pocket
All in all, if these were listed 'off the shelf' on eBay separately, I'd have spent in the region of £300-£400. He charged me £120 for EVERYTHING as long as I removed it all. Even better, he was keen to get away, it was Friday afternoon, and he wanted to get down to Devon where he has a guest house / hotel in Dawlish, so as soon as I paid him, he shot off and left me to strip the vans to my hearts content ! I could have taken advantage here, but I didn't, not really, might have ended up with a few more spare screws and bolts than I would have done, but that's it.
Anyone interested in what this brake compensator valve looks like ? You get them mainly on vans, where it's likely to change in weight regularly, ie carrying loads then running empty. This requires the brakes to work differently. So they put in a load sensing valve, which makes the brakes work more efficiently when carrying something heavy. Because of the air suspension that had been fitted, this set up was removed, and for the MOT Jon and Malcolm had to 'fashion' something to get it a pass as we couldn't find a donor one easily.
It's the bar with the spring on, going up from the axle to the right hand chassis. These things were going for around £65 second hand on their own when we were ringing around at the time of the MOT.
So all in all, it was a very successful day, I left around 12pm, and was home with it all by about 6.30pm, a very productive afternoon :).
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Trowbridge
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