History
It started with a “yes”, and a plan to get married, the wedding and all that comes with that one special day. But… what if instead, we decided to eff the wedding, and just took off? What if, instead of throwing all our cash on one day, what if we bought an old Sandman, and got her going together, and sent her down the road where adventure lay, with a quick splash of paint and tidy up? In 2017, we brought our new project home, and then the adventure really began.
Meet Jason Ackland, renal AF restoring extraordinaire who is now eating his “trailers are for boats” humble pie. A quick fix up turned into, what if we strip her back to bare metal and tidy her up properly? The bare metal strip down turned into, lets also strip down all the original nuts and bolts while we are at it. Actually, you know what, let’s go all out, let’s restore this bad girl to EXACTLY how she would have rolled of the GM production line back in September 1976. What did Jess do? Told him he was batshit crazy of course, but challenge accepted!
Despite going back to bare metal, we were very mindful to keep the original and not damage the factory spot welds. We were lucky to be starting with a relatively rust-free body.
A huge amount of this build is new old stock, or re-furbished original parts right down to the nuts, washers, and bolts. Some notable parts inc: New Old Stock (NOS) GTS Steering Wheel, re-furb interior, using NOS parts rebuilt factory retractable seatbelts, correct satin chrome grille badge, spare wheel, rims, NOS headlights, near full factory NOS A/C system inc the hose clamps and one of the holey grails an original GMH (Lucas) 1976 battery. If New Old Stock or very good repro items could not be found, eg. the air conditioning relay, it got stripped down, re-zinc’d the correct colour, contacts all cleaned and tested and reassembled. Twenty odd years of photographing every paint assembly marking Jason could find on wrecks and parts has finally paid off. For the first time being able to use them on our own build.
All the pollution running gear is all NOS, and the exhaust, we were lucky to track down a bloke with the original jig and he was fantastic, making up a new exhaust for us. Through searching through old mechanic shops, we were also able to track down the correct flat top clamps.
The air-cleaner, anyone who followed this build on FB would know how obsessive Jason has been about the air cleaner being 1000% perfect. Perfect being colour matched black to the original paint with no filler used to make sure you can still see all the original pressing stretch marks.
The engine has been thoroughly re-built with genuine everything; fuel pump, dizzy (date coded), coil (date coded), water pump etc. Complete with the correct inlet manifold, correct colour zinc bolts, brackets, and springs. It took Jason three months of procrastinating before Jess told him to just do it already, and thus one of the biggest “just off the production line” effects were added to the engine; red paint overspray over the inlet manifold and surrounds. We love it.
Dates were a big thing. Everything not already a part of the van and beyond the sandman tags, needed to be date coded to match the tags and factory roll out dates. To cut a long story short, EVERYTHING we could is correctly date coded, even the new old stock ignition leads! If Jase could get hold of it, he’d even have date correct fuel in the tank, and air in the tyres.
The windscreen, we went for the original full clear glass, and fluked finding someone with the original “GMH” Hot Kit, which gives it that original black edging.
The paint is Mint Julep, and we opted to once again stay to original standards and did not finish with a modern clear coat. All black outs are correct to original HX Sandman specs. The paint job you see on the top half, is just as flawless beneath and within.
Stripes and decals throughout the van are all screen-printed reproductions which we reproduce and sell under our business Stickthis Automotive Decals and Stripes. We were both very excited to finally being able to sticker up our prints on our resto as opposed to sending stripes and decals out to everyone else for their projects.
The goal of this build was to slap together an original Sandman and elope in it. She’s taken a couple more years and a bit more care and precision to “slap” together, and get her running, but she’s been re-built with love and to the imperfectly perfect standard of the original sandman panel vans of yesteryear; production line GMH cars rolled fresh off the line and off to the dealership yard, where so many of you first purchased them and had your first adventures in them.
At the reveal of our Sandman at the 2021 Australian Van Nationals Easter just been, we eloped. Finalizing the build and story. Hence the name for our van is "Eloped".
Thanks for taking the time to read.
Jason & Jess Ackland
Modifications
Figure we have covered it in the above.
