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van building :'3

Yesterday we changed a wheel cylinder on the Bedford.

This may seem like a tiny act, an insignificant little part in the grand scheme of things, but two years ago we broke down in Spain, and to have two wheel cylinders replaced we were charged over €500.

We don’t ever want to find ourselves in that situation again, at the mercy of a garage and whatever ridiculous costs they decide to rip us off with.

We had no mechanical backgrounds, we didn’t grow up working with our dads on hot summer weekends like so man kids had the privilege of doing. We’re not naturals, and we’re learning everything through a painstaking process of trial and error, Haynes manuals and advice, but we’re learning.

And so the simple act of removing wheels and brake drums, unhinging brake shoe springs and replacing a tiny little wheel cylinder symbolises a full circle for us, a hard lesson learned, and seizing control of our futures and our abilities.

P.S. We promise we’ll have a new Bedford video out for you next week. We’ve been fixing a leaking diesel pipe on our own van which has consumed much of our time recently, but thankfully she’s back on the road and chugging along nicely.

In the meantime, here’s a little preview of what we’ve been up to: repainting the Bedford, and building a wall.

What new skills have you been learning lately?

We realise we've been a little quiet on the Bedford front lately, but it's not for lack of working on it; in fact we've been so busy we've barely had time for an update!

Last week we finally managed to get the subframe attached to the van chassis, which may not seem like a huge step but was in fact one of the biggest parts of the project, taking nearly a whole month of our time as we had to fabricate the entire thing from scratch.

The subframe is necessary to build the box onto, and according to the DVLA must be detachable from the van itself, so after weeks of cutting metal, welding and painting we finally got the damn thing bolted on, which has given us an excellent idea of how much floor space we'll have.

Here’s a photo of Ben learning to weld- neither of us have quite got the hang of it yet, but we’ve been learning on the go, and will hopefully be able to apply our newfound knowledge to the rest of the project.

We know this one has been a while coming, but we’re excited to announce that the latest instalment of Bedford conversion videos will be out tomorrow evening on Youtube! We are quite literally laying the foundations of this build, and for anyone thinking of building their own box from scratch this is a must-watch!

We hope you’ll join us tomorrow night at 8pm GMT- you can head over to our Youtube channel now by clicking the link below!

From Rust To Roadtrip on Youtube.com