Making Some Progress!!

It's been 1 year since the van was first rolled into the shop. We've made some progress, but not as much as I would have liked to over this year. With the van originally being just a restoration project we had limited time and limited budget. The students and I decided that the van could be a whole lot more then just a restoration project. With fuel prices going threw the roof and global climate change, becoming a real concern it only makes sense to make it into an alternative fuel vehicle. The students chose to use a diesel engine because it's so flexible and so much can be done to increase the efficiency. The student recently put a lot of work into making a presentation of there plans. They put together a DVD that outlines there plans for completing the van and a trip around the United States to teach people about conservation. We presented it to our School Board, and were given a full blessing to continue full steam. We are in the process of finding sponsorship for this huge undertaking project. The fact is things are starting to cruise, so expect more postings in the near future.

Bondo

The bondo mix and the hardener before it got mixed together.

When mixing bondo, it must all be mixed together very well so there isn't any soft spots.

When the bondo was getting put on, it had to be put on very quickly before it got too dry to work with anymore.

Dents, Dents, Dents

This van had a lot of dents in it. Which, they had to be pulled out. then our help came; Emmit Mitcham came with a dent puller. thank you, it helped us move alone smoothly!
Drew was trying to pry the dents out as much as possible, while Emmit put more studs in to pull out the dents.
Alex, Ole, and Bugs all put a few dent pulling studs into the sides of the van.

As you can see in this picture at the tip of the gun it has a red glow. The end of the stud gets hot and welds on to the side of the van and then gets pulled out with the dent.

Perfect Tank

Jordan is taking the gas tank out in this picture because that area needed to be cleaned. the tank also needed to be checked for leaking and rust.
As you can see from these three pictures, there is no rust on the inside and barely any on the outside. There is also no leaking. We got pretty lucky with the gas tank.

The floor even had to be replaced!

When we first got the van, the floor was coming out and it was totally trashed. So, Brycin cut the floor out, so a new one can be put in.
After they began to cut out the floor, they had to push it out of place to see how much they had to cut and how much would just push out because of rust.
This is what it looked like after the floor was cut out.

The motor got taken out because it was completely TRASHED! We would have used the one from the other van, but that was was trashed as well. This is the motor that was taken out of the van.

The Front Axel

After the van got put onto the side, the axel needed to be removed to be undercoated and to get the rotors turned.


After the axel was taken completely off, it was cleaned and sprayed with rust inhibitor and undercoating. The break shrouds and the caps were grinded on and cleaned, sprayed with rust inhibitor, and painted. We then got the rotors back and put it all back together.