The Mercedes van came back from the body shop looking like a new concept vehicle! The metallic paint has united all the work of the back composite door to the rest of the van.  Very pleased with the finished result of the v-trek van.

A great step forward, today we took our first van to the body shop in Spalding to have the boot  painted.  We have got all the problems finally ironed out.  They think that they should be finished by the end of this week.  Then we have got our second van booked in, it will need to be fetched from the fitters workshop, as the interior is not yet finished, but slots in well as our fitter is going away on holiday for a week while the van is in at the body-shop.  When the van returns I will post a picture of the finished painted back and boot of the v-trek van.

I mentioned on an earlier post about the bumper plugs that we had made for the V-trek van, all that they needed was to be painted, well the paint  colour that should have matched was a shade too dark, also because the fibreglass mould is a flat  finish it needs a textured finish.  We have purchased a textured finish  undercoat to try, and also a new shade of colour bumper paint so will shortly see which we feel looks best.  Sometimes a very close match is worse than making a feature of it. Will keep you posted.

After a lot of head scratching and deliberation we have finally got the v-trek back door to open without catching,  for the latch to connect, and for the gas strut to hold at 90 degrees,this makes it possible to stand under the boot lid when it is open,  this area will be used while using the the outside shower. The gas struts were a calculation between the weight of the 20kg door, the pantograph hinge, the angle it needed to open, along with the length and power of the gas struts.  We went to a company in Bourne who specialise in making gas struts and they worked out the power for the struts that we needed, they mainly supply the boating industry.

We now have the vehicle booked into the body shop in a weeks time to be painted.

Once we hung the V-trek back door we realized that it was catching on the hump of the plastic step of the aperture of the Mercedes van,

This was due to the fact that we decide to hide the handle behind the number plate, making it very tight to remove any of the fibreglass mould which houses the door handle. 

To over come this problem we have cut the hump off the plastic trim and replaced it with stainless steel, this has created a very strong aperture for the catch when closed, and a strengthened plastic step for the boot.

The van came back from the fibreglass company on Thursday, were they made small moulds for the bumper.  These fibreglass moulds cover were the hinges of the back door use to be.  You can see from the pictures, (Before & After) that the mould has been made perfectly to follow the lines of the bumper.  We have located a matching paint so that the plug will melt seamlessly into the bumper (yet to be painted in picture) These additions to the bumper although expensive to tool up for the V-trek van will in the future be well worth the effort for such a neat finish.

After (needs painting)                  Before without plug

After a lot of teething problems we can now see the light at the end of the tunnel! Finally we have got the back door fine tuned with the window, rear brake light, Mercedes badge, lighting board, boot handle, and internal locator’s.  As you can see from the picture all within keeping of the styling of the original Mercedes Sprinter van. 

Tomorrow the V-trekvan is going back to the fibreglass company to have some small plugs made to finish off the bumper corners.  There is still the fitment of the number plate to do, this will be hinged at the top so that it covers up the door handle, and then off to the spray shop to be sprayed. The  Gas struts stilll have to be sourced, these need to be pressurised with just the right amount of gas so that they open and close the door smoothly, but all in all great progress!

We carried out work over the week-end and have got the bottom half of the door temporarily fitted, had to make a few minor alterations.  Our biggest hurdle was to over come the handle catching on the plastic trim inside the van aperture.  The handle has been placed here so that it can be disguised behind the number plate to deter opportunist thieves from trying to break into the boot.

In the old V-trek van we had the back made out of fabricated steel which was a long and expensive job.  The advantage of the composite is that it is lightweight and much more detail can be incorporated within the door