I started with a few small jobs today to see if I was physically up to getting under the car and doing the exhaust since the weather is okay. Unfortunately I'm not, realistically I should be resting today but I've got stuff that just needs doing so I'm doing energy management instead. Decided to tackle some little jobs and see how far I got instead. Good thermostat is now reinstalled properly which was a nice easy job, and then I tried to fit the air filter box properly and encountered An Issue. Renault use these weird little winged bolts that locate in a couple of brackets on top of the rocker cover, in a spot where water naturally condenses and sits, rusting the nut to the bolt. Typically, one of them sheared as soon as I looked at it so I've replaced that with a cable tie until I can get a replacement. At least the air box doesn't jiggle about now.
I also spotted some damage to the rear door vertical seal, looks like something has been chewing on it, that would explain the little bit of water getting into the back of the van when the rain is in the right direction. Looks to be a generic profile, shouldn't be too hard to get hold of or too expensive. A new seal might make the rear doors rattle less too, that'd be nice.
Finally, I popped the front number plate off and taped the corner that the previous owner had saved in the Box Of Bits, and put it back on with some nice new screws and caps I had in stock. A new plate is cheap and I expect it will get a pair, this solution is cheaper still and should be adequate for the MoT.
It's all fogged up because a bit of water is still getting into the cabin past the black gaffer tape repair* which may or may not be enough to get an MoT pass. I've got to order a new windscreen, that's £200-300 (which honestly isn't that bad really) I'd just rather not spend that until I have to. The van would definitely benefit from a new set of tyres, the ones on it are okay, they're just quite old and I'm used to having quite nice tyres on the stuff I drive so I don't want to run out of skill somewhere by overestimating the ability of the tyres fitted.
Last thing of note was getting a message from an artist who actually rode in the back of one of these vans when they were new and he was able to tell me the company that did the conversion on this one is Atlas, who are still going. I've contacted Atlas but they don't have any workshop info on the conversions that far back but did say I could drop in and they'd have a look. Problem is they're quite a long way away from me, so I'll probably find a different solution for figuring out the missing wiring.
