#van problems

Back on the road!

Hundreds of pounds and weeks of working on the van later, the old girl finally passed her MOT! There were times where I was adamant I wanted to sell the van and start again but Lucy managed to talk me around every time and thankfully I listened. All the memories we’ve had in this van, I don’t think we could ever actually part with it, despite how tempting it may be sometimes. The final problem we needed to fix was the brake master cylinder. The one we had on the van was underpowered as it was taken from a lighter LDV without ABS. It took us a while to find a two pipe 26mm bore diameter master cylinder but eventually we worked out it needed to be from a minibus model. With that fitted, the brakes felt more responsive than ever. A new master cylinder, new bush leaf springs and new kingpins later we were back on the road!

How to replace kingpins (a warning to all van owners why you should grease your kingpins!).

Materials used:

2 x new kingpins £35 each from Euro Car Parts

Grease gun £6.27 from eBay

Tub of lithium based grease

6T Hydraulic press £47.95 from eBay 

Total cost:

£124.22

We’ve been told by many LDV owners that the one thing you should do to keep your van going is regularly grease your kingpins. And what did we do? We didn’t grease our kingpins. As a result this was a massive great fail on our MOT, leading to the truly horrible job of replacing both the kingpins altogether.

We paid £35 per kingpin, and £47 for a hydraulic press from eBay which was the cheapest method we could find: doing it ourselves, as the garage wanted £400+ for the job!

The first step: dismantling the entire front axle. We jacked the van up and made it super secure with axle stands underneath the gearbox mounts and tree stumps under the front crossmember as a backup. Off came the wheels, off came the calipers, brake discs and hubs with our broken ABS sensors; off came our shock absorbers, steering arm, then the four U-clamps holding the leaf spring to the axle. A few taps with a hammer and bang, off it came, its weight supported by the jack we’d slid underneath.

The hydraulic press made removing the kingpins a doddle, and in them we found, among other things, a pair of greased pennies and a handful of needle bearings. Things that most definitely do not belong in a kingpin. Someone had clearly been here before us and bodged the job.

We cleaned up the axle with a wire brush, slapped in a load of grease and pressed the new kingpins into their hubs. Voila! The final step was to reattach the axle, then, using a grease gun, did what we should have been doing from day one: filling the kingpin up with grease to keep out dirt and keep it running smooth, using the grease nipples on top and underneath.

This was a heavy duty nightmare of a job, and one that should only be attempted as a last resort. So here’s your daily reminder: grease your bloody kingpins!

Replacing our broken window (at last!)

As some of you may know, our side window was smashed when we got broken into back in December, and, being an LDV, absolutely no one could get a replacement window for us out on the continent. So we returned with a bodged sheet of aluminium held in with screws and covered with plexiglass and a terrible draft. But today the plexiglass was no more.

We picked up a secondhand window from the scrapyard for £25 (although it was more like an LDV graveyard the amount of sad looking vans that were sitting there rotting away).

Removing the window was a fairly easy process, which involved simply drilling out the pop rivets and punching them through. After just 15 minutes the window popped out.

We fitted the new one in, drilled some new holes for the pop rivets as most of the old ones didn’t match up, then went around it with a rivet gun. Job done! If only we’d known it was this simple. At this point neither of us can resist touching the window whenever we climb into the van, amazed to finally have some glass back in it again!

Fixing our wiper motor (for the third time)...

There are only two types of weather in England: rain and slightly less rain. So when we left Italy, our pockets €80 lighter with a newly repaired wiper motor, the last thing we expected to hear was a loud clunk as we were driving along in the rain back in Blighty.

We were well practised in dismantling the dashboard by this point, and had it off in minutes only to find the motor had snapped off its mount. Again.

This time it had been properly fitted, so it seemed to just be a design fault (of which LDVs have many) that the motor is simply too powerful for the three aluminium brackets that hold it on (if anyone else has any theories please feel free to share). Replacing the entire motor again didn’t seem to be an option, so instead we decided to make our own bracket for it.

We did this using a chunk of scrap steel which conveniently was the right fit for the motor (it helps to have a garage full of odds and ends, you never know what may come in handy). We riveted this onto the plate, making sure the three broken aluminium mounts matched up so that the motor would be in the correct place. Then we bent a piece of steel over the top of the new mount to hold the motor in place and bolted this on too. Now, hopefully, with a proper mount, the motor shouldn’t be going anywhere. And just in time for our MOT too.

I’ve officially been living on the road for one year! Let’s look back at what vanlife has been like through the months… Support my mission, storytelling through travel, and free astronomy outreach with a tip on Venmo or PayPal. And follow me on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube. Mark your calendars! Jupiter & Venus will be side-by-side in the western sky on June 8TH – 10TH. Find me back in San…

Living on the road for nearly a year has been the adventure of a lifetime, but I’ve finally had the first big incident in the van. Support my mission, storytelling through travel, and free astronomy outreach with a tip on Venmo or PayPal. And follow me on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube. Mark your calendars! Jupiter & Venus will be side-by-side in the western sky on JUNE 8TH – 10TH. Find me…