HJ Panelvan roof turret or floor pan & bulkhead?

[Absinth]

I did several panelvan to ute conversions back in the 80's and they were quite a bit of work to do..... doing the reverse will be a hell of a lot of work and not an easy job. When it comes to a HJ Sandman a lot of what makes it a Sandman is in the missing roof turret... ie the hoodlining rails and tooth strip. I'd be looking for a good donor shell, even a good windowed shell would be far less work filling in the windows.

Good luck with whatever way you choose to go and as others have said, take pics of the process and post them up..... we love to look at progress pics.

[realsteel]

All I did was cut the ute roof off above where I knew it had been grafted so I could track down exactly how they did the conversion.. I got this far (pics attached) then noticed on the left the bog seemed to go to far so followed it & the whole left side has been cut out & replaced. IMG_20160517_155804.jpgIMG_20160517_155828.jpg

I'm honestly starting to wonder if this was ever a proper conversion like I was told.

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I did several panelvan to ute conversions back in the 80's and they were quite a bit of work to do..... doing the reverse will be a hell of a lot of work and not an easy job. When it comes to a HJ Sandman a lot of what makes it a Sandman is in the missing roof turret... ie the hoodlining rails and tooth strip. I'd be looking for a good donor shell, even a good windowed shell would be far less work filling in the windows.

Good luck with whatever way you choose to go and as others have said, take pics of the process and post them up..... we love to look at progress pics.

Thank you looks like I'll need it lol. I'm still not overwhelmed by the whole process, I have time & prepared to take as long as it takes to do it. It's my first major project like this so I'm treating it like my learning curve
I could imagine you did a lot better job than the person did on mine.

[realsteel]

Well, a bit of time thinking about Absinth's suggestion.

I'll be looking for another panelvan body anyway for the proper panelvan side so can do the whole passenger side in 1 piece while there is no turret on it. I am going to see what else is about that has a completely rust & dent free body that can have windows (honestly can't see that happening as nearly everything within a price range of my now non existent budget will require work), if I do find the perfect HJ panelvan body & it's able to be bought & affordable I guess the rolling windowless HJ panelvan body I have now I can use the turret sides from that 1 to close up the windows even though that will be a bit of a shame as the roof turret is the best one I seen in the time I was looking & it'll make them expensive turret sides at $1500 by the time I picked the thing up & got it home from Melbourne.

I'll probably change my mind several times in the near future of what I will end up doing lol. I'll definitely keep this updated when I make a definite decision & it's too late to change my mind. Once the serious work starts I will start a build thread also because there will be a whole lot more than just panel & paint.

In the meantime I'll probably start blasting this other project & etch priming it ready for it's body work.

Thank you for all your input everyone.