… and he turned out better than expected. Look:

New dashboard: Nearly all instruments are werking. And they are all illuminated. What a luxury item! 🙂 Well, factually I won’t need much more than that motorcycle multi-instrument and the two gauges on the right side but … the more the merrier, no?

The view from the passenger side would almost be elegant if there wasn’t a door panel fukin up the sight. The wooden dashboard turned out to be a tad darker than in the mech’s photos. Very very nice.

Typical for South Africa: Collection of our vehicle took almost 2 hours since there were – and still are – many little things not really finished. For example the passenger door that, although closing, never stays closed but just flies open. Wasn’t like that when I delivered the van, and took the minion quite some time to get it sorted. And he needed lots of help from his boss and coworkers.

And now the central locking doesn’t work anymore on passenger side. One step forwards, two steps back.

The main part of the whole operation turned out great. Remember what a rusty wreck this was before they started filling up the holes with lead?

See how wary my mech (white) supervises his minion (black)? Is that apartheid behaviour? Sure is. And my mech doesn’t hold back in assessment of his dark-skinned countrymen. Otoh he is the bossman, paying minion’s wages. And this particular minion isn’t even one of his better workers.

And now everything is neat and tidy and will never ever corrode again! Because lead doesn’t rust.

Oh and a window crank motor for passenger side also couldn’t be found till now. And another Oopsie, on my drivers side, why do I have to push the down button to crank the window up? So many little niggles and fails. 😦

The joys of owning a bonafide oldtimer and using it as a daily rider. 😐