Quote Originally Posted by Vombil View Post
i never said they were easy to find, i never said you'd have to find rust free. what i said was that your van is Fu4ked. It's too big a job for the end value... unless you are Womboot who has free skilled labour in his father in law. It might be worth the effort if it was a 350 GTS coupe, not a sandman where it's only ID is in a few body identifiers (assuming it's not xx7 or xu3 stamped)

RIP rusty panel van
That's a bit heavy mate.... I must be old school now as (in my opinion only) there once was a time that if someone wanted to do up a car of any description they rolled up their sleeves and got their hands dirty and/or involved mates with a similar passion and either learnt the required skills from them to do the job or the mates helped out and got their hands dirty. However it doesn't seem to be this way these days with FIFO peeps away at work for long periods of time and young fellas with bags of money that we could have only dreamed of at that age.

That said I am my own hardest critic and after years of building engines (quite often for very little or nothing in return from mates or people I knew were struggling with kids/mortgage etc) I recently subbed my own engine rework out as I haven't set up a lathe or bed in over twenty years and I'm not up on the latest spec stuff. Part of me was full of trepidation about it but the rest of me was cool with it knowing that someone who was recommended to me by two other people and had a great name in the industry was doing the work (we were modding the oiling system in the block too and I wanted it done right) and above all guaranteed his work. As it turned out wasn't that a mistake... Over the last two years it has been running for about three months... Not very happy, should have begged/borrowed the machinery and done it myself.

I already had the basics of body work (kinda) sussed from mates in the game in the 80's but my mig welding was rusty and I knew nothing of how to apply 2-pak paint so I got busy and learnt how to do what I was going to need to do to repair my own ute. It isn't for everyone as repairs like the one in that gutter can look daunting but can be fixed if you are willing to either hemorrage cash at it or take your time and learn the skills yourself. To my way of thinking there is more satisfaction in doing it yourself but I also tip me lid to someone who comes to the realisation that those skills (for them) are not achievable and they sub the work out so to speak, but get hands on involved in the rest of the build.

The question comes back to the motives behind the build. For cash or for 'the jouney'.

D.