Viva Re-VIVA-l

With The Special’s MGB GT project dragging on courtesy of a cracked cylinder head it’s time to turn the spotlight on Mrs Special’s HA Viva van.

The background to how and why the van is as it appears today is a lesson in NEVER, EVER trusting specialists. When she bought it nearly 20 years ago Mrs Special used the van for her gardening business: Rammed full of gardening tools and pulling a trailer it could cover up to 300 miles a week.

After a few years good honest toil it was clear the HA was getting tired – its original engine used more oil than petrol and body-wise the guttering had rusted through. The answer? An honourable retirement and a re-build in 1960s kustom-guise.

The specialist who undertook the job failed in every respect. Take the de-seaming: rather than doing it in the way any competent 1960s Mini de-seamer would, the ‘specialist’ removed the guttering and between side and roof panels filled the gap with… a mixture of filler and old nuts and bolts. So-called specialist also failed big-time on the roof, with the section above the driver and passenger doors being completely different size-wise.

Rescued from the ‘experts’ (after they hid it in a barn and we had to wait outside their house for six hours to find out where it was) off it went, in virtually kit-form, to another Welsh specialist. After a year they succeeded in putting the instrument cluster back in. And nowt else.

Now, after a good few years in storage it’s time to put right the results of  those lame, over-confident, under-skilled ‘specialists’. A full-on rejuvenation has started, initially concentrating on getting it running properly and reliably and getting it through the MoT-test, after which the roof will be sorted out.

There’s plenty of work to do and it’s not going to be achieved over a couple of weekends, but we have a list of parts to buy and we’re already on track. Watch this space…