This is almost the exact opposite as what I showed you yesterday. The question is why? To repair another damaged old Dodge van?
Curtis Perry Outtake/QOTD: Why Would Someone Do This?
– Posted on April 24, 2020
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Curbside Classics Archives
Easier to get the engine out with what they had? Abandoned attempt to make a trailer?
Having been involved in a few attempts to extract engines from vans, this method sure seems easier. I can’t guess the year of this van, but maybe it had a 440 that someone wanted for a passenger car.
My Dad did exactly that – he purchased a ’68 or ’69 VW Bus when we lived in LA in the early 80’s that had run into a pole. He then purchased the front end of a ’69 or ’68 at the pick and pull, I think the huge one out in Sun Valley, and cut the bad front off, welded the good one on and repainted it. He did a great job as far as I could tell, we drove it for almost a decade more. My brother even lightly rear-ended someone in it and it held up just fine. There’s a picture of it in this post https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/qotd/qotd-the-van-life-whats-your-van-preference/
Interestingly he became a Dodge van owner later in life.
It’s likely easier to do this with the VW since there is no engine (or much else for that matter) to get in the way, though.
Looks like I missed this post when you ran it for the first time. Wow, your dad did a really nice job on that bus. I suppose I could have given thought to the idea of doing something similar with my Vanagon, but I’ve got no experience welding. And I would have needed a donor van, which would have driven up the cost, given how much rarer VW van are today.
Yeah, he did do a good job, he cut the pillars in pretty much the same place as Paul’s blue van find above. Then the floor cut was just behind the door pillars. Somehow he got it all lined up, welded and made the doors close like new and a new windshield popped in as well. Even the beige paint matched and stayed matched over the years. I was around 12 when he did it and just remember the vaguest bits about it, was too busy with whatever else I was doing to be of “help”.
I was thinking of you recently when I came across a blue ’83 Vanagon in a junkyard. Sadly it was fire damaged inside and aft of the front doors, looks to have started in the engine and worked it’s way toward the front. But the front clip was complete! Only 1250 miles away…
A front body section replacement was a somewhat common and a very acceptable repair for a van back in the day, especially a VW since the engine was not in the way. The current Motors flat rate body manual shows 38 hours for the job on a ’71 Dodge van, and 25 for a ’71 VW. That was after bolted on parts and the windshield were removed. A seasoned body tech could do it in half that time.
Body sectioning came in to play during World War II, when new cars were not available for about four years. You could not replace them, so you had to figure out a way to repair them. On a standard car, a rear body section was much more common. What is left of the van in the photo is a rear body section. That type of repair was still utilized in some cases until the late ’90’s. Today’s cars are too complex for that to be a cost effective repair. Not to mention the potential liability involved.
Front cut for the old cut n shut repair.
A hugely successful anti-theft device?
Virgil was never mechanically inclined but everyone told him that changing out windshield wipers was a very simple job.
Working on engines in vans get become really frustrating!
Looks like a bad attempt at rickshaw fabrication. Maybe a horse between the front frame rails could pull it.
Before the vandals got to it, back when that refrigerator worked and the mice hadn’t yet burrowed through the seats, Dad and his fishing buddies would sit back there with a few beers, chat about the good old days, bitch about their jobs and wives, and listen to the trains.
Before the trees grew over and blocked the path, the old guys would drive right up in a van that looked oddly similar to this one, yet more complete, their kinship revealed by the Frankenstein’s monster welds that Dad was going to get around to painting over. It didn’t matter much, though, because it didn’t travel far once Dad’s license went away. His wounds healed better than the van’s, though his back got sore when the medication wore off.
Eventually, Dad’s dedication to his medicine overcame his love of the outdoors, and junior took over the old van. Like the old man, he had a taste for cheap beer, and he and his buddies would spend summer evenings in their version of the older men’s reverie. They sat up on the roof, legs swinging down, as the back of the van filled with empty bottles and cigarette butts. The boys would pass their time musing over their future prospects, telling tall tales about their sexual prowess, and throwing bottles at the trains.
When junior got a steady girl, he cleared the garbage out of the back, threw a hunk of plexiglass on top, an old blanket across the front, and a mattress in the back. Dad’s vancave was transformed into a teenage love shack. Their ardor knew no bounds, and the square plastic leaves scattered around outside the door made a faint ch-ch-ch sound as they fluttered across the stones in the slipstream of the passing trains.
Junior now lives down the street, with a kid of his own and fond memories of the vancave, and of Dad, who got to meet his granddaughter before his bad habits closed in on him. The van, its best days long past, sits, bearing the scars of Dad’s sawzall, vandals, mice, and the elements. With Mom growing frail and forgetful in the nursing home and the property up for sale, the old van, lonesome and forlorn, awaits its fate, stoic to the end. The trains, they just keep rolling along.
In a logical procession from yesterday to today’s photos, can one assume your post tomorrow will be of a small pile of parts stamped “Dodge van”?