By this time I'd finished my uni degree and had started working as a graduate engineer. At least now I had some money coming in, even if afternoons were spent in the hottest and most cramped positions. The heat meant I was lucky to complete five welds per night. I can't remember how many spot welds had to be drilled for each car. The number was closer to 200 each I reckon. Like I mentioned previously, it took all summer to deal with both cars. I chose to leave a section of floor attached to replace the Flintstone holes in the van.
That was the summer of 1998. For those in Victoria, September 1998 was the time that Longford Gas Plant blew up, causing many Victorians to experience at least a month of cold showers. I know it well because in April 1999 I found myself with an incomplete van on one side of the country and me walking down the bleak, windswept streets of Melbourne (for six weeks apparently).
By then dad and I had cross-wired everything, lined it up and welded the two sections together. It was a rudimentary setup however, according to the drawings in the green book, we had one non-body measurement out by 2mm and everything else spot on.
So there we were at a standstill again, waiting (sort of). One thing I've learnt with 140s is that there are two front ends and three lengths of trailing arms. For six months in Melbourne I was either living in a hotel or sharing a company apartment behind Melbourne Central for six weeks at a time, interspersed with a few days back in Perth. Those short stints were enough to replace all of the bushes in the early front end (yes, the one without those horrible cut-away bushes). At the same time I replaced all bushes in the shortest trailing arms and panhard rod. Why the shortest arms? The shortest arms minimise the likelihood of the tyres scrubbing on the rear arch.
After six months I moved into a slightly different role, permanently in Victoria and without the regular trips back to Perth. Things ground to a halt, sans paint, sans interior and sans completion. It was time to get some help.
Cue Tom Bujna. Tom was a panelbeater-spray painter who worked on jobs at his house, like a number of painters seem to do. Tom agreed to take on the job, knowing that I was not in a hurry and wanted a good job done. What colour though? I hated that sky blue colour on such a big scale, so colour 105 was a no-go. I wanted something period and 'cool'. White? No. Baby poo yellow? No. Colour 102? Yeah baby!
So, now the van is out of the way what do we do? Time for the interior. Working with Armadale Canvas Works we came up with a design that would suit the heritage of the vehicle and make a statement. It had to be leather. Leather is one thing that Melbourne has that Perth does not. Feeling cashed up I visited Leffler Leather and walked out with a couple of hides of their finest Australian hide, the same stuff that graces BMW and the top end Statesmans.
https://www.leffler.com.au.
I'm going to skip a bit ahead now to 2001 or early 2002. Still in Victoria I received word that Tom was moving back to Hungary and was finally completing my van (yeah it was dragging on). I booked some holidays back to Perth to take delivery of my shiny new van. Over the next year I spent as much time as possible putting things back together to get her mobile to shift east. That finally happened in 2005 after I changed jobs and moved to Adelaide. Here she is before the move by Westfarmers Transport.