Sam and Jeff Sort the Westy

The new owner of the so23 wanted the damage at the rear end of the bus sorted out before he took delivery. Ths was going to be a difficult repair as (some time in the late '60s) the roof of the bus had been compressed and rippled the side panel.

There was no way this could be panel beaten as the roof was still exerting pressure on the side panel.

So we cut out the bad bit.............what you can't see in the picture is a hydraulic ram exerting 10 tons of pressure on the roof - once the poorly panel was removed the roof was gently persuaded to go back where it belongs.The window appature had taken a knock

Sam let in some new steel.

And then some more steel - this is a curved panel that Sam fabricated.

Looking better now - just the rear corner to panel-beat
Filled and primed
Now we have a problem - how to finish the paint. As you can see, the surrounding bodywork has all rubbed through over time to show the red paint underneath. A repair in grey would look out of place. Luckily Jeff has just overcome the same problem with his 13 window (see the crew blog) so he knew exactly what to do

The end result mirrors the rest of the bus where the top coat has been rubbed away to reveal the first coat.

Nice job Guys