Let The Build BEGIN! Fire Truck to Expedition Camper

welcome back everybody got some good news for you this week because for once it's not going to be John that's dripping down but the pins we need to get all of the fire equipment out everything pulled out from the inside so that we can see what we've got and get on with the build but before we do we've already had one small change of plans so let's show you what we're going to do so last week we told you that we were going to try and make as much use of this battery box space as we possibly could but we've realized there's actually 120 L worth of space here because that's what's on the other side with the fuel tank so we're going to put an 80 L freshwater tank in here and then an 18 L waste water tank under there which will do a couple of things for us it gets the tank out of the inside which gives us a lot more space and also it will help to keep it nice and balanced so that's probably going to be the first of many idea changes that we're going to come up with and it is probably the biggest piece of advice I could give you when you're building a camper is to look around and try and find any little Nook or cranny that you could hide something in so you remember when we did the Land Rover build that we hadd the toilet waste the batteries and the diesel heater down underneath the vehicle in the wheel wells or even just in the undercarriage and doing those kinds of things it's unbelievable how much space you'll save yourself in your vehicle because they all add up now first job on the agenda like J said got to get stripping no but I've got to get all the brackets off and everything like that the bumper and all that stickers because I want to get them all off get it painted and start getting everything prepped but she's 33 years old and I got a feeling there's going to be a lot of things they going to be a bit stiff oh for the love of God well that's not a promising start by the looks of it is in one of those moods again today oh God [Music] [Music] just a look in your eyes smile on your face now what makes me feel that way so we're getting there anyway cuz we're pretty much stripped down on the outside we just got the roof to do on the outside now I've got all the stickers off and that was a bit of a pain to be honest because they were reflective stickers so they gone real hard and brittle so they wouldn't really peel off even with the heat gun but I've got most of the front end off now as well I'm leaving the lights on for now and then remember was saying about this uh the battery box down here so I've taken that off but unfortunately some of the wires ran through the battery box and into the chassis there so I've had to pull them apart cuz obviously inside you've still got all the fire equipment in here so as you can see down there there's quite a lot of wiring to work out what's for the vehicle and what's for the fire system and then I've got all these side sliders off as well and you can see they're pretty rotten so we'll have to redo them where they're bolted too as well so they're rivy nutted off and as you can see when I was trying to undo them they were just spinning in the riv nut so what I've had to do is I drilled the head off the Allan cap bolt to get them off and then I'm going to have to cut that and then put rivy nuts on because pretty much the whole way along is like it around the other side was the same so I've done this side I've got all the new rivy nuts in and then obviously she's all Des stickered this side as well and then I've got all the back end stripped as well I've just got the number plate bracket to do but I can't get to that cuz the water tank's in the way so once I pull that out I'll get that off but one bit of advice I would say as well is when you come to taking off lights and plugs and everything like that just get your phone and do a little video and video the lights and where all the wires go to if you write it down you're bound to lose the bit of paper aren't you whereas at least if you had a video when you come back to put it all together you've got that for a reference anyway no I haven't seen you much this week so far and that's because I've had friends visiting from Australia but I'm back and I'm ready to smash it so while I get going I want to talk to you about what this week sponsor incognit does so I used to get loads of annoying marketing and Robo calls and I had no idea where they were getting my information from that was until incog opened my eyes to the world of data brokerss but if you're like me and you have no idea what data is it's also known as data shut up so data Breakers collect your personal information and create profiles about you that they sell to financial institutions marketing companies recruitment agencies and even insurance companies and the information includes things like your name your address your date of birth and all kinds of other information these companies then use this information to try and sell you things or make decisions about you 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control of your personal information then incog have given us a 60% discount if you use the code true blue at the checkout and I'll put a link in the description [Music] now I'm trying to get these door trims off and there's been too many sexy firemen walk over them over the years and all of the tops of the screws have worn out so I can't get them out I tried the old trick of getting a screwdriver and whacking in what do you want I heard the term sexy fing so I thought I was wanted get out anyway so I tried whacking it with this no joy so there's only one thing to do [Music] yeah sometimes violence is the answer looking around for Jess can't find her wonder where she'll be no like usual you know what my new nickname for you is what gspot cuz I can never find you oh my God look at this little beauty little Blast from the Past here now if you're not from the UK or you're a younger you probably won't know what these are but these are tax disc holders and I always remember when my mom and dad used to buy cars we'd check these and some people used to stack them so you'd have like 10 years worth of tax disc in there and you go through them it was so much fun and would you believe it now they even sell on eBay just random tax discs and it got me thinking about the old Auto Trader remember the auto trader when you used to buy it in the old 500 section at the back good old days eh so another thing I love about working in Old Vehicles is seeing the weird and wonderful things they used to do so that there that's the front light unit big block of wood bit of oak or something but all they've done is routed out the inside and the old blues and twos stuck in there but I think we have to get rid of that and go for something a bit more modern so I thought it was time for a little progress report as you can see we've got this bulk head out and I'm so happy with how much more spacious it's looking in here already and then in the back I've got all of the matting out and I have to say I am really happy with the Bodywork and how little rust there is especially considering she's a fire truck and how wet it was back here but I'm not counting my chickens until we get in the back and get all of that out down here you can see John's got all these electrics out and I can't believe how much we took out I reckon she's lost some weight just in the amount of electrics we' taken out my next job is I've got to get all of these roof Linings and side Linings out and I'll get John to show you what he's on with so my next job is I'm removing the front dash because there's only about three panels on it and about 10 screws not like a modern Dash but the reason I'm doing it is because I want to get underneath and I want to sound dead and everything I did contemplate whether I wanted the Drone of the engine noise or the Drone of Jess's voice but Jesse's voice is slightly less annoying so yeah that's why I'm going to do that anyway but yeah like sound dead and it all tidy up all beyond the dash as well cuz I've taken quite a lot of wiring out as well from where all the light switches were and everything one bit of luxury look at this little beauty this down here you Defender owners won't know what one of these is it's a glove box all right it's a very crude one but at least he's got one anyway bit more vintage cab styling for you we've got the old insulation panels here so cardboard on the back sponge like you wash your dishes with in the middle carpet on the front might stink to higher Heaven 30 years later but it does the job now I'm on with what's a little weird fascination of mine and probably my favorite job of the old STP out the clean cuz look at this 30 years of dirt and grime down [Music] there what are these tank things for anyway tank that one's not even connected yeah you bumped it out oh you probably hoovered up The Grommet that was in there for sake like to say morning everyone got three things to tell you this morning firstly Jess's foolishly left me unattended in the workshop on my own secondly I bought a new tool and thirdly it's a Tuesday so that only means one thing to talk Tuesday now this isn't just a prop for Triple T today I want to use this as an example as well but basically when you've got a seiz bolt or what we normally do the old school way is to get a blowtorch or get some oxy acetylene and we used to heat the nut up or the bolt up until it gets glowing in red and then we used to undo it now this is all well and good but gas is quite expensive oxy acetylene is really hard to get and the thing with it is if you're doing any bolts near some electrical wires or like a ball joint or something like that where there's rubber it's pretty much going to wreck it and I know what you're thinking farm and John could come and help you out but there's a new way of doing it enter the induction here so firstly I need to say thanks to Richard cuz he's got this and he recommended it to me so it's £185 from Amazon and all it is is a 240 volt unit with two little prongs in the top and you get loads of these so all different sizes and everything and all you do is you stick them in the top like that and then lock it in and then when you press the trigger it obviously creates a short which then gets this red hot which is what's going to heat your bolt so I'll show you how it works so just slide it over where your N bolt is and you just want to touch it ever so slightly don't want to put much pressure on it and then just press your trigger Now watch how quick this gets hot so you can see it's starting to glow red now and she is glowing now like I say to do this with a flame obviously everything behind here would have been melted by now anyway another thing this comes in handy for as well is to heat up steel to bend to make make brackets and things like that and also one of my personal favorites is to make your custom spanners so if you've got a bolt that's in a bit of a awkward position you could put this in the vice heat it up bend it to whatever angle you want jobs are good in so you know what I'm going to say don't you brilliant little bit kit for the workshop so the next task is a bigan because I got to get all the aluminum out the back now some of it won't be too bad like the bracket is up here and the brackets down there but that big old girl is the water tank and obviously it's one piece so it goes up and over the arch that side and the same on that side as well and when I was talking to the bloke Dow who we bought it from he was saying I think what we'll have to do is we'll have to take one of the roller shutters off the side to get it out so it's going to be interested anyway so let's get [Music] cracking well he's made a start but of course he's stuck already and that's why he's had to get the big guns in [Music] well it's gone pretty well this morning so far apart from the fact that the good old British weather's struck again and it's raining but we've got all that alley you see behind me out so John's got lots of practice material for his new welder and dream come true he'll get to do a scrap run but we're down to just the tank in the back now and Dale was right it will not fit out of the Roll shutter doors so the good news is though all we need to do is cut off the brackets so we can get them off with the old angle grinder [Music] Moment of Truth see if she [Music] fits well the old Tank's out so there's only one thing like to do three two one no she going nowhere might try Plan B all right give her a rest I think this might be a bit easier [Music] not looking too shabby e well it's bit of M stake actually but it's solid anyway so the heavens opened last night so we called it a day but we got the old girl steam cleaned out anyway and I was really dubious what we'd find underneath the floor mats and that because obviously the tank being in the back and it have had leaks all through the years I thought we might have a bit of rust issues on the old body but the good news is she's galvanized so there's hardly any rust whatsoever we have got these big holes to fill in the floor but that's not an issue but we'll rub it down and get it all painted up and then today's job we're going to get the roof off now there's a million and one rivets in it so it's going to be interesting get it off but let's get cracking [Music] so we have just found an absolute gem to show you and this is one of my favorite things about like stripping out old stuff find the coolest of things so we found these random bars in this bag at the top there no idea what they were for until I found this little box here says who stretcher carrier fittings and it clicked because at the front here there's these holes in the bumper we had no idea what they could possibly be for until I picked up one of these little Beauties and they roll out they're marked up with what side they go on so this is passenger side they've got little r Clips in the bottom so they can't pop out and then the driver's side one Clips on like this too and then there's just a bar in the middle that secures it up then the bag that they come in straps in over the top and you've got a stretcher carrier how incredible is that we found money before enough to buy us dinner actually in the old High build but I think this time we struck gold so talking of the history of the old girl we've had quite a few of you asked where it was stationed now a lot of these were made for the ARA man have since been auctioned off but this one as you can see here was based down in Dolton in Somerset and we've had quite a few of you send in some photos of her in her Heyday so we had Kelvin he sent one in and if you look really closely you can see where it's all sign hand written on the side of it it wasn't stickers back in the day then we had Steve he sent one in when she used to glass custom every year she was a bit of a party animal apparently and we've had one from Ben where she can be seen waiting through some water as well [Music] [Music] well now about 500 rivets later the roof is officially off but on that note got a new segment I want to do with you guys because John's got his triple te we're called TBT so I've got btb back to B6 so now I know that a lot of you watching are seasoned Pros but I also know that a lot of you are looking to do your first van build or you haven't done a lot of DIY before so I wanted to share some of the tips and tricks that I've learned along the way and today I've got a riveting chat for you so today I want to talk to you about one of John's favorites the old pop rivet so as you can see they come in a huge variety of sizes and they're brilliant because they're so quick to do up they give you a goodon hold and you can use them in places where a screw wouldn't hold or you couldn't get on the back to do a nut and bolt up so this is your pot rivet and this is what it looks like pulled apart and you can see it's got a bit of a nail head on the end so when you apply pressure to the shaft of the pot rivet it pulls it through this casing here and it causes it to swell and that's what's creating your fixing another variation on the pop rivet is your peel rivet so you've seen with the potp rivet the casing just swells to create your fixing whereas with the peel rivet the casing literally peels back and what that does is create a wider surface area for your fixing and to get them off nice and simple you just drill through the head and the back will pop off so my last little tip is if you've got a hole that's too big for your pop rivet when you put it through and tighten it up it will swell but not wide enough and you won't get you fixing so what you do is you put your pop rivet through the hole then you put a washer with the same diameter as your pop rivet on the back of it then when you tighten it up it will make a nice secure fixing and I can't go without telling you about the tools cuz we all know how much John hates it when I talk about his tools so the manual rivet gun brilliant but it requires a bit of strength and I always seem to wrap my bloody knuckles whereas the air rivet gun does the job for you I've also heard there is such a thing as a battery rivet gun but we all know John won't be getting one of those anytime soon well she's stripped and she is looking rough she's not looking her best is she but I promise she will look beautiful when she's done and speaking of when she's done we've had a lot of questions about how long we think the build's going to take and truth be told we've got absolutely no idea no like this one it's so hard to judge really because when we did the S van and the defender well the defender we went on looked at loads of people's bills like we watched Expedition Rose tour like 20 times and you sort of put them all together and you make your own sort of stamp on a vehicle whereas this I can't find any other videos on YouTube of people doing these as campers and there is someone forums and things like that so you can steal some ideas but it's just not the same anyway and there's a lot of new things in this build for us so engineering designing and making our own pop chop and all kinds of other bits and Bobs plus the fact that she's a beautiful old truck and we want to make sure that we restore her and really do her justice so that she's good for years to come so and speaking of that as well we've had a lot of questions about where we're going to take her when she is done and I have a huge big long list of places I want to go skig record oh God we need a Bloody Vector with all the people who's offended there we armor plated but there's a load of places on the list like I'd love to do Albania and Greece and Turkey I'd also love to go to Iceland and do the F roads but obviously if it started to snow by the time we finished the build we can't take it there because the roads are closed so just depends a bit the other thing to consider as well is we're taking the S V to Canada at the end of the year and then obviously down through the states up to Alaska and everything like that so we've got to sort of we back in time as well so yeah so we don't know where we're going to go but she will go somewhere fun and we'd really like to keep this one for a while so yeah she's got some cool Adventures to come so thanks so much for watching this week don't forget about that incognit link in the description and we'll see you guys next week now it's my turn to strip it no I'm sorry avert your eyes

Channel: True Blue Travellers

Views: 93,128

Keywords: van build, van conversion camper, van conversion build, self build campervan, self build camper, overlanding, overlanding gear, overland camping, overlander build, overlander truck, overlander camper, offroad, off road camper, 4x4 camper van, 4x4 camper truck, 4x4 camper build, expedition overland, 6x6, 6x6 truck, overland truck, expedition truck

Id: 3FNDMj4F9O0

Length: 22min 20sec (1340 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 08 2024