Refurbished injectors fitted

Another day, another job. I took the van on a 400 mile trip last Friday.  It was a bit flat on the journey. Now, I know it is a 30 year old normally aspirated diesel and I was not expecting it to be fast but it struggled with inclines on the motorway.
So, I fetched out the injectors and dropped them into Cheltenham Diesel for new nozzles and setup. Only a couple of hours to remove and refit them and wow! The injectors are now a good bit louder with quite a metallic ring to them. I got a mechanic friend to take a listen and he declared that is sounded normal to him and he works on diesels all the time. A quick blip of the throttle and it is now so much more responsive. I will degrease the engine in the morning and take it for a drive. I do this as it is the best way to check for any leaks. I am expecting it to drive much better now. If all is good I will take it for a 250 mile drive on Friday. It used a little coolant on my last run so I will keep an eye on that but it never went over half way on the temp gauge.

Nice.

Will reply about the steel work here.

Bodywork is quite different to spannering. Some of it is art but mostly it is just patience and good practice.ike any job, you need to start with a plan.
The last job I did was rust under the bottom of the rear window seal. I could see by lifting the rubber that the metal was in a bad way but it did not look too bad at first glance. The o ly way to get access was to remove the rear glass and this sounds worse than it actually was as I had already removed a side window for the same reason.
Once I had access it was clear that some old metal needed cutting out and a replacement patch needed welding in. A piece of 18 awg steel was cut just 5mm larger than than the hole.
A little bending and forming and some tack welds and grinding gets somewhere close. Fill and sand and it is ready for paint

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Thanks.

I’m mostly set up for welding and have a POWERMAT 220 Amp inverter welder that can do stick, MIG and TIG (but this just as scratch start). Mostly I’ve used it for flux-cored MIG, which I think is properly called Flux-Cored Arc Welding (FCAW) and stick or MMA (manual metal arc) for welding steel up to ~6mm but not really tried on thin, sheet steel. I’ve recently-ish bought a gas regulator, a 7L bottle of Hobbyweld 5, and a 5 kg spool of 0.8 mm MIG wire so I should be good to go for the bodywork repairs. The lower setting for the welder is ~40A for MIG.

I note that your shied away from ready-made panels and I don’t really think I need these but I wanted to explore what my options were for these.

The places I need to repair are a few smallish areas towards the front, some areas around the front wheel arches (especially LH side, but also below the RH front door). Then I’ve got some holes in various sills between the wheels and around the rear right wheel arch, plus the corners of the rear wheel arches inside the body. Finally I’ve a patch needed near the lights on the rear tailgate and a few areas of the front door skins. Sounds quite a lot but it’s reasonably decent for a 30y old van and I will just have to get on with it. The recent MOTs had advisories for the front left B pillar base area and rear right but everything is somewhat subjective.

I do need to fully explore the areas and get some card templates made (CAD!), but when I've explored the inner areas using an endoscope I see that most of the rust stops quickly at boundaries and the inner anti-rust treatment is still pretty good.

Thanks for saying you bought 16 and 18 AWG steel. Do you know the mm thickness of these, please as I reckon these are ~1.6 and ~1.3mm? Is this really the thickness of the Toyota Hiace body panels?
Were these cold rolled sheet and why two thicknesses? Where have you used each, if you can remember?

A while ago I contacted my local steel supplier, who is:
https://www.austenknapman.co.uk/

and they said that most people who are buying metal for car bodywork buy either 0.8mm (in 8’x4’ sheets), 0.9mm (in 2m x 1m sheets) or 1.2mm in (also in 2m x 1m sheets). They also have 1mm CRS.

So, be good to try to work out the best steel to get. Then I can hone my welding skills and get started. I’ve got a lot to do and it won’t fix itself!

Lastly, I've been devouring YT vids from:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6JPmJ_aicru8XPWr3EvJnw
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB8HF8Pqug-Pc7DFqX9lf_g
and
https://www.youtube.com/c/MakeItKustom

but this doesn't get stuff made.

Cheers!

I used cold rolled steel about 1 2 and 1 6 mm. I used the heavier steel for the footwell as I needed some patches there.
Throw away the flux covered mig wire. I tried this but it is just so messy.. I mostly use stick welding on heavier steel. I did try some thin rods when I did the floor but mig is so much nicer.
If you can find panels it will be much simpler for some things. Bending metal for a wheel arch might be a challenge. A joggler is very useful for patches.
I was quite lucky as I just had the floor, the long sill and a couple of holes at the bottom of two windows.