Well it is free isn't it.

The welding day started late and ended even later. I was surprised that it was gone ten in the evening after I'd welded the floor plate in place. I had to double check the camera timestamp but it was correct. Thus I'd spent more than eight hours under and around the van which was rather satisfying.

I started off by disconnecting the accelerator linkage from the pedal and let it hang down. The pedal, once freed from the linkage came away in my hands. That saved me having to cut it out. It seemed to be in good nick but the remains of the floor will have to be separated from the mounting at the bottom of the pedal.

I carried on cutting wondering why it was such hard work. The grinder didn't seem to be cutting very well today. I had to bend bits of floor up to be able to cut them off.

After a hour of work I got down to the chassis members where I realised I had more work than I'd expected. Not only was the outer chassis leg in need of a patch but there was also a triangular brace tying the two chassis legs together at the join. This was a thick section steel and would need grinding off. A laborious process at the best of times and one that generates lots of heat (not good on a hot summer's day).

I grabbed the angle grinder as I realised I'd need to change the cutting disc for a grinding disc. I then discovered why the grinder had been cutting so slowly. It already had a grinding disc on . A grinding disc is about three times as thick as a cutting disc and creates much more friction when used to cut through metal. In comparison a cutting disc goes through bodywork steel like a knife through butter. Oh well at least that mystery had been solved.

An hour later most of the triangular brace had been ground away leaving a view of the top of the chassis members. I still needed to do some cutting and grinding in preparation for patching and also replacing the brace panel. I had to keep on stopping to let the heat out of the garage as grinding makes the bits of metal orange hot as they are scraped off the surface. The angle grinder itself was extremely hot too.

Then after some more cutting and grinding, and the making of a patch it was time to finally do some welding.

With the patch seam welded in place I needed to grind down the welds, spray some weld through primer on the bare chassis legs and start making a replacement triangular brace.

I spent some time cutting out the brace patch. I used thicker sheet metal to make this patch taking the time to make it fit. I took fifteen minutes to weld it in place......

....and a further ten minutes to dress the welds and spray the area again with weld through primer.

Whilst I had access to the chassis area, I vacuumed out as much off the rust scale I could get to in the chassis member. I also made a patch on the accelerator linkage near to the front wheelarch. This has had loads of play in it for years due to wear between the shaft and mounting point. I made up a simple L-shaped patch and triangular brace to remove the play. I figured that this was the safest way to solve the problem. There is little chance of the linkage jamming.

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