Page 27 - Transporter Talk Issue 195

ERIC THE VIKING
Spend since last report: £5,962
Total hours labour since last report: 115.1
Nick Gillott nick@vwt2oc.co.uk
That is not a typo. In the last 2 months, spend on Eric the solid gold Viking was a shade under £6,000. That is not the total spend in the ten years of renovation and is almost the entire original budget for the project. The spreadsheet that I built to track everything that I have bought, spent and done also lists the cumulative spend. I can see that number, there is more to go and I still feel rather unwell looking at the cost. I am now at the stage where I could have bought a rather good nearly new T5 and run it for 10 years. The timeline shows that labour is currently 1,475 man hours including the latest 115 hours since the last update.
The back half of Eric has been filled, sanded, filled, sanded and repeatedly so until it looked good then primed. The bottom half will stay in primer for a while and the top half was treated to some L90D Pastel White from the roof gutter down to the bulge and looks brilliant.
The front doors that were teased in the last update were fully restored by a local genius who said they were about the worst doors that he has ever worked on. The driver’s door went straight in the skip but fortunately I provided a used door
sourced from America. 45 hours of labour got the 2 front doors and the sliding door from really terrible to fully painted including the final LH6V Peppermint Green on the bottom which looks ace.
The 2 windows above the rear wheels went in after a bit of fighting. They are converted panel van windows not factory windows and have a different rubber seal to normal. The first window took 2 attempts until we discovered that the aperture was too small due to the extra steel fitted but not trimmed back. Careful templating gave us the right sized hole and round 3 was successful with high 5s at the end of it. The other side was a rinse and repeat, the template for the size was checked, the metal trimmed and painted which allowed that to slot in first time. Hurray. Windows and rubbers really help it look more finished!
Transporter Talk Issue 195 | 27