Citroen 2cv van restoration

[Robotstar5]

If you plan to keep it have you considered e-coat

 

[Gas mark 5]

Just when I thought I'd covered all possibilities!

I'll have to look into that, I can't imagine it comes cheaply, but it probably pays for itself in terms of not having to replace rot 3 years from now!

I don't think I would ever sell this van

 

[Robotstar5]

No, it's not cheap, mainly aimed at classic cars you want to keep.

 

[Sean]

Am I being paranoid...?

No they do rust at an alarming rate,

Tractor paint! synth enamel/truck cote etc see stuff on 2CVGB you dont want it looking too shiny

box sections dinitrol it or thin down the waxoyle black stuff (i put some waste LHM brake fluid in too) and flood it

all underneath areas good coat of paint(brush or spray)then shutz and waxoyle black again.

when i re built mine i skimped on the cavity protection and had to replace the toeboard 5yrs in and now after 10 the sills need re doing

mind they are all full of saharan sand/dust which holds the moisture when its wet

sean

 

[Gas mark 5]

I contacted that company and they currently cannot do full body coatings, only stripping. I've been looking at some other companies, but I suspect the cost may be prohibitive. It pains me to spare expenses on this but I'm going to have to start choosing between Citroens and university soon...

Sean, how well does the tractor paint work? I don't care for perpetual showroom standard shininess, but I want it to look nice. What primer do you use?

I'm uncertain about these black gloopy things that go underneath, half of mine had underseal on it, which had dried solid, had a few barely perceptible cracks in it, which the water had crept behind, and merrily rusted everything away. The other half had what I assume was shutz on it, and was still sticky. There was definitely less rust, but it was still there, and getting rid of the shutz to see the extent of it was an absolute nightmare! I quite like the idea of being able to see any damage as soon as it begins, rather than having it hiding behind a thick layer of shutz. But I don't know if technology has moved on since mine was last done, and whether it really is the best stuff to use?

 

[Cris B]

I contacted that company and they currently cannot do full body coatings, only stripping. I've been looking at some other companies, but I suspect the cost may be prohibitive. It pains me to spare expenses on this but I'm going to have to start choosing between Citroens and university soon...

Sean, how well does the tractor paint work? I don't care for perpetual showroom standard shininess, but I want it to look nice. What primer do you use?

I'm uncertain about these black gloopy things that go underneath, half of mine had underseal on it, which had dried solid, had a few barely perceptible cracks in it, which the water had crept behind, and merrily rusted everything away. The other half had what I assume was shutz on it, and was still sticky. There was definitely less rust, but it was still there, and getting rid of the shutz to see the extent of it was an absolute nightmare! I quite like the idea of being able to see any damage as soon as it begins, rather than having it hiding behind a thick layer of shutz. But I don't know if technology has moved on since mine was last done, and whether it really is the best stuff to use?

One of the classic car mags has an ongoing long term test of different rust treatments and prevention measures. I forget which one it is, as I only every have a quick scan through when I am in WHSmiths. I use the POR15 products as a complete system, but all of the equivalents seem to have their own evangelists and are good products. All are expensive and you can't cut corners and expect good results.

The main reason for going for the ecoat is to be sure you are getting the box sections treated, but you can achieve a reasonable level of protection in other ways using Dinitrol or Waxoyl products. There is a Dinitrol kit that doesn't require a compressor too which is what I am going to go for to be sure my repairs last a while.

 

[Gas mark 5]

I'll carry on working on the body and see if any alternatives come up, but I think any form of galvanising / e-coating is probably not going to happen.

Waxoyl / Ditrinol or similar for box sections sounds good, I'm planning a few strategic holes with rubber stoppers so as I can keep an eye on them and top up when necessary.

For tractor paint;

bare metal should be treated with a primer or undercoat of the correct or similar colour, allow overnight drying.

if spraying dilute by approx 10-15% with thinners.

So back to bare metal with brush on the grinder, maybe grit blasting for some fiddle bits, epoxy primer straight onto the bare metal?

Some form of primer to spray / sand back until I'm happy with it? Or can I do that with epoxy?

Synthetic enamel stuff on top of that? What sort of thinners does it need?

Why is life so confusing?

There we go, that should be enough questions for the time being!

 

[Gas mark 5]

I'm even more confuzzled about paint now, after 3 hours of research, but it's still a long way off, I'm sure I'll understand by then...

Back to the interesting metal work now, the upper bulkhead, or firewall or whatever it's called is next on the cards.

That's what I've got currently, it's missing about an inch or two of metal from around around all edges due to rot, it has lots of holes in it and is rather bent and buckled.

I was going to try patching it up as well as I could, but after some head scratching and advice from various members of various forums, I'm going to try making a new one from scratch!

Paul (paul33) showed me what you could do with a hammer and a bit of metal when we rolled my wheel arches, now I fancy trying it out by myself, and it doesn't look too difficult to fabricate. Also 'D1Andrew' of a 2cv forum pointed me to a magazine article demonstrating how to make a 2cv bulkhead, so everything should go perfectly!

I thought I'd post up pictures as I go with this bit, now I've got round to posting all the previous progress. You can watch me learn and laugh at my mistakes as I go!

Hopefully picking up the steel this week sometime (0.6mm steel, which is slightly thicker than the original panel at 0.4mm!! )

 

[boatbuilder]

Paint suggestion - this is what I'm doing to my VW T25....

1. Weld/patch / replace panels
2. Treat bare metal with phosphoric acid - sold on ebay as descaler
3. Wash and dry, then paint with Epoxy Primer - Lechler do a good one
4. Then filler on top of the epoxy primer if needed - UPOL fantastic
5. Then paint Rustoleum by roller or HVLP

 

[Sean]

mind and get the Vin plate off that before the pixies spirit it away in the night

 

[Gas mark 5]

Easter holidays! Woop!

Unfortunately I seem to have an awful lot of exams straight afterwards, so some of this time might actually be spent revising. Why did I chose to take chemistry, physics, maths and further maths?? )

Anyway - Thanks for the advice on paint, I'm tempted to go and buy a load of various paints for myself now and just try them out and see how I get on, there are so many different options!

Sean, I've taken everything I can rescue off the old bulkhead, and stored it in a 'safe place'. For the life of me I can't remember where I put it, but at least it's safe .

Today's news, I popped up to a friendly builders merchants and brought a sheet of steel to work with. Two and a half metres is bigger than it sounds over the phone!



It's 0.6mm (24swg) mild steel with a 'zinctec' coating or something... I took it to mean galvanised, but only a little bit . I'm assuming if I just wire brush off the coating around wherever I want to weld, it'll be all right?

I found it was too big to fit in my shed, so cut a bulkhead sized slice out of it, leaving it oversized to allow for distortion when putting ripples in it, and my own stupidity.



A jigsaw is all I've got for cutting it, but it's surprising how good an edge you can get with it.

Then I started making my rib making tool, slightly following my old article from '2cvgb', but with my own modifications. It's not finished yet, I'm going to put some long bolts in place of the G clamps, weld everything together and trim bits to length and so on, but hopefully from the pictures you can see how it will work?





Then you just bash the middle bit down, the article recommended using an oak former, but I couldn't immediately lay my hands on any hard enough wood, so I made this instead;



It's hollow tube, so I don't know how it'll stand up to the beating, but it's got quite a thick wall. (I'm rather pleased with how my welding's coming on, I did that without stopping )

Here's a few pictures of my test piece, the one on the right is with my final set-up, it seems to be the perfect width, height and so on. I haven't tried making an end of a rib in the middle of a sheet yet, I'll have to play around and see how well it works, but I imagine with patience and a hammer it'll work out all right.





I'm looking forward to this!

Thanks everyone

George

 

[madkayaker]

i like the home made tooling for the ribs

 

[Sean]

An for anybody that moans about "the youth of today" this young chap has no fear and is getting stuck in where many 6k rsetorations fear to tread!

good man!

George the zintec plating is electro plating its such a thin coating you can just ignore it and weld though it
Sean.

 

[paul33]

You are on the right lines with the tool George, you would be better with solid bar rather than tube tho because you can round the end, if you need anything turned up don't be afraid to ask

 

[malcolm]

I like it.

Swaging is a bit of a pain - you find the edges you don't want to be swaged will get wrinkled. When you swage it tends to draw in metal from either side (slips between the clamps) so there's extra metal ending up at the ends of the swage where you don't want it.

Closest I've managed was very tightly clamping the metal on all 4 sides around the swage, then using a rubber faced hammer to fade out the swage at the ends. On mine I left a gap between two 6mm plates on top of a table, clamped the sides tightly (involved drilling through the panel) and then knocked the whole swage in with the rubber hammer. That made the swage by drawing the steel rather than allowing it to slip so less trouble.

Presses used to make the original panels would have drawn and squeezed. They trim the panels afterwards. That's the equivalent of a bit or drawing and a bit of metal shrinking at the ends.

Of course there are swaging machines but they cost money.

 

[Gas mark 5]

An for anybody that moans about "the youth of today" this young chap has no fear and is getting stuck in where many 6k rsetorations fear to tread

I don't know whether it's bravery or stupidity, but either way I find it much more fun than blowing up aliens on a computer game!

You are on the right lines with the tool George, you would be better with solid bar rather than tube tho because you can round the end, if you need anything turned up don't be afraid to ask

That makes sense, I dug around and found an off cut of solid bar, it works much better with rounded ends. Also I made up some little bits of metal with rounded edges to sit under the ends when bashing, they seemed to help a little. Thank you!



Most of my metal came from a skip outside my last school, and as such it mostly consists of table and chair legs. This would be fine, except that it is plastered in chewing gum, which isn't very pleasant after welding in the vicinity, especially if you are unfortunate enough to sit on it later, and transfer it all over the house. How I hate chewing gum.

Anyway, that was about the worst of my day, the rest went rather well. I spent a morning happily marking out my sheet of steel, then the afternoon really really irritating my neighbours!





All set up, spent 5 minutes prevaricating whilst plucking up the nerve to hit it!



First rib done!



And another!

In fact, I got all the way to the last rib before making a mistake, how easy it is to misplace that decimal point!
But it flattened out without a problem, and the right rib was quickly pressed into place.





So, that's all of the ripples done, I believe. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I think it'll be all right. When I can find the right hammer (Buried in the depths of my shed I suspect) I'll have a go at neatening it all up a bit, and working on the ends of the ribs. The distortion isn't as bad as I was expecting, Malcom I didn't read your post until after I had finished! I'd have liked to try and prevent it in the first place, now I know, but I think I'll be able to deal with it, and there's a parcel shelf behind it and a few other bits that should hold it all nicely in shape. Finger crossed!

Thank you everyone!

 

[Hitch]

That isn't zintec, that is galv. Sheets are electroplated ratcher than the hot dip process which is used or field gates etc, hence the different appearence.

You will want to run a flap disc over where you will weld, especiallly any lap joints.

Get an offcut, lightly go over with a flap disc, you will see there is a colour difference when you have gone through the galv coating., the galv looks slightly whiter than the clean steel.

 

[oz.]

Have you seen the thread about the guy restoring a VW flatbed in Bangkok? A similar process to the beads you're trying to achieve but he replaced the whole floor by hand.

I can't find the thread right now to link to but I'm sure someone will remember it.

 

[Chickenjohn]

This thread? http://vwrides.com/viewtopic.php?t=43&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=75

this one? http://vwrides.com/viewtopic.php?t=77

Some of my favourite pages on the interweb!

 

[oz.]

That's the ones. Amazing work considering it's all been done under a tarpaulin.