Bed and cupboards out

Things have moved on as there was a break in the weather this weekend and I managed a good few hours in the van.   Having removed the cooker last time I was keen to get the rest of the stuff out from that side so that I would have clear access to the seam up the side of the van in case I needed to grind any rust out.  I've pretty much decided now that the whole lot can come and I'll just renew all the panels as well as the carpet.

Some rust around the mains hook up inlet that will need fixing

The main problem was getting the cooker out.  Chatting with Paul at Vale motors, he seemed to think that the cooker went in first (which makes sense) and it seemed clear that removing the bed was crucial.  This was quite simple although it took quite a lot of searching around to find all the screws that held it together.

Underneath the bed box are L brackets holding the box to the floor.  I thought that that would be it, but the thing still wouldn't shift so I had to look some more.  I eventually found some screws inside the cupboard (next to the bed) which screwed in a shelf holder and screwed into the bed.

Once these were out it was a case of giving the whole thing a good heave.  A word of warning here though.  The water pump is attached to the bed for some reason and the water pipe is attached to the ground.  When I heaved the bed out it broke the water pump.  Luckily it was just the filter which was still attached to the pipe and as the pipe was attached to the van it just ripped the end of the filter.

The broken water filter ..oops

This (right) is the water pump that was attached to the bed.  The plastic circle is the water filter and this was attached via a hose which goes underneath the van.   The circle in the middle of the circle is the bit that broke off...it's the inlet that goes into the water pipe.  I found online that they have discontinued this particular filter but another filter that costs £8.00 should do the job.

The L brackets that hold the
cupboard in place

The next job was to remove the cooker cupboard.  Again, it was held down by some L brackets but loosening these didn't work so I had to hunt around for where else it was held together.

I found the culprits in the right hand corner as you look at the cooker.  (see left) The L brackets were accessible once you remove the surround which is pretty straight forward.

Once these screws were removed I had to resist the urge to just hoik it out as I did with the bed. Lucky I did as I found that the copper gas pipe was attached to the base of the cupboard by a piece of plastic.  Once I had cut this off I could pull the cupboard out and free.

The cooker cupboard and the bed have gone

Once everything was out, it was good to see how it was all put together.  One thing that was useful was being able to see down the post to the damage on the rear wing and also to be able to see the seam through a gap in the post.

The floor  around the Carver water heater is slightly rotten which I'm assuming means that there has been some water leakage over the years.  This might account for some mould on a pillow that came out of the bed box.  This should be easy enough to sort.

The view down the post to the rotten wing bottom.

What I'm quite happy about at this stage is that I shouldn't need to remove too much of the electrical equipment from the floor to re-carpet. The Propex heater and water pump are out of the way and as the carver is out of the way under the bed box I might just cut around it rather than risk removing it.

The cuboards above the fridge and cooker are held in by
screws which have rusted (located beneath the letter 'O')

The next thing to do was to try to remove the headlining and side panels in the high top area.  These are both pretty grotty and in desperate need of replacement.  I'm trying to do this without removing the cupboards above the cooker and the fridge, as it will mean pulling out the electrics panel and the carver heater control.  I'm sure this is easy to do but I'd the fewer electrical things I pull out the better.

The material covering the panel on which the cupboard sits is fine and I can live with it.  Besides which the cupboards are held in place by screws which have rusted. If I can't remove the headlining without removing the cupboards then I should be able to dremel these free.

The headlining.  The black lines are dirt where the edge
of the cupboard used to be

The headlining itself is easy enough to remove (I think).  There are screw covers all along the side and once the screws are removed the headlining drops down.  However, I'm struggling to remove a screw behind the cupboard and this is holding me up. I can either dremel it out our remove the cupboard (and all the electrics). I think I might go with the dremel.

Tomorrow I have a mobile welder coming over to look at the work that needs doing from the bump.  I'm not sure whether to replace the entire section including the wheel arch or just fix the base of the wheel arch where I hit the wall and then grind out the rust from the wheel arch and fill.  There isn't much wrong with the wheel arch and I want to keep as much of the VW metal as possible.  Right that's it for the day.  Before I go though can anyone advise how to disconnect the leisure battery.  Do I need to disconnect both batteries give that the leisure battery is fed by the van battery?