Whooah,and its green .

Is it?! Seriously?! (I'm colourblind).

So I have a charge warnin light that's the wrong colour am isn't warning me that the battery's not charging. Great.

And James its either 250ml or 500ml - cant remember!

Hetty's carb was beginning to have issues. Viking noticed this when I was at his place and noted the idle adjust was buggered. As was the choke mechanism. As was the acelorator pump. I ahdn;t noticed how bad it was until I fitted a spare carb and noticed the difference.

I sent Hetty's off to The Carburettor Exchange in Leighton Buzzard about 3 weeks before the ICCCR and now it's back!

In their words 'it was pretty sorry for itself.' What hadn't helped was that the breather was breathing into the air filter which was dumping excess oil into the carb, hopefully the catch tank will keep this carb cleaner.

Their service was super, my carb was shipped with a courier and they included a new gasket. The chaps at the company are ex solex and have a solex vacuum bench so everything is tested prior to dispatch.

The standard charge is £95 ex VAT and delivery. All moving parts are replaced as are jets, bushes, springs and spindles.

I really recommend them!

Phone: +44 (0)1525 371369



Above is Daras Rich's (chevrons 2) spare Solex 40 (left) with my AK350s original refurbed carb (right). Mine look a LOT worse than the one on the left!

Nice 1 Sam, good to know such services exist

Looks great!
Have you had it working yet? How long is their refurb guaranteed for?

Been driving around with it today - it's great so far. I need to adjust the choke because it's working its way on but I think that's in the cable. Guarantee is for 12 months

Did you note that on the left (ugly one ) is solex for centrifugal clutch ... ?

Really? No I hadn't - how can you tell?

Must be something to do with the linkage

So think this is WELL overdue for an update.

Since the above this little van's done about 5000 miles.

Went to the ICCCR (Yorkshire):


Did some camping in Essex:


Went to the international Van meeting (Netherlands, followed by a sojourn in Amsterdam):




Went to Spa:

That was fun.

And finished the year on display at the NEC in Birmingham:


So after all this excitement and having not really done any maintenance since I initially put her on the road I thought there were a few areas I could tidy up and do some preventative work.

The floors were looking a bit scrappy and as my windscreen leeks like a sieve I thought it would be good to protect them.




I ran them over with a wire brush drill and after cleaning them up put new seem sealer along the toe board, sills, etc.. I unbolted them and left the bolts to soak in cellulose thinners to clean them up. Before bolting them down I got some waxoyl between the floors and the chassis and where the floors rest on that lip in front of the first van box section. My floors are only welded to the sills and bulkhead, not the van body. Lack of/poor welding is about to become a theme...




Looking much nicer, and well protected.

Next, during my many nights spent sleeping in her, I'd noticed this:



This is on the inside of the van box looking forward. The side window is on the left. This didn't look good and occasionally would get water dribbling down it.

So I set to with a grinder and...



I should probably have stopped there, but I kept going.



Until...




Not pretty.

I also tackled the same area outside:






So as you can see the B Pillar isn't really attached to the van body.