portafold.co.uk

Hi everybody, as you can see in another thread in this forum I'm restoring a '70s Portafold. I'm looking a bit ahead at rubber seals. I'm pretty sure i have a handle on most of them, including suppliers. The ones that i need a definative answer for are the front and rear upper and lower seals.
I think that the upper seals are fairly self explanitary, as this picture shows. As far as I can deduce these are the original seals from 1970, so to replace them is not a problem.
My concern is the equivalent seals on the main body, to seal the front and rear walls when raised. When the Portafold came there was a sort of seal on the main flat area, so that when the end was raised the seal was way too thick and damaged the hinge panels on the actual end.
When I look at this picture, it looks like there should be a seal in the stepped portion of the main body. I say this because, from measurements taken, it mirrors the rubber seal on the top of the wall. Added to this, is the roof fits down onto the top of the wall and seals onto the rubber seal. With the walls down the roof would fit down onto these stepped areas.
So the question is, what was the location for the original seal for this area?
Any help in this area would be appriciated, thank you

Forgot about this, should there be a seal between the top of the lower door and the botom of the upper door?

Pretty sure mine has the original seals intact on the front and rear panels if you want to come and check for measurements
I'm in A/shot

70sfreak wrote:Pretty sure mine has the original seals intact on the front and rear panels if you want to come and check for measurements
I'm in A/shot

That would be really useful, thanks. I've PM'd you for a phone number so I can call first.

The seals on my end walls are original and they now look like this:
Hope that's useful.

Admin wrote:The seals on my end walls are original and they now look like this:

Hope that's useful.

Thanks for that Matthew, I have also had a look at Steves (70sfreak) Portafold on Saturday with the same result. So that's me sorted for those seals, but then it begs an answer for the question, what are the black rubber seals for on top of the end walls?
Because the roof fits onto the "clasps" on the end walls, but doesn't actually seal on them. What I have there does look original though.

phunkie hiboy wrote:Thanks for that Matthew, I have also had a look at Steve's (70sfreak) Portafold on Saturday with the same result. So that's me sorted for those seals, but then it begs an answer for the question, what are the black rubber seals for on top of the end walls?

Because the roof fits onto the "clasps" on the end walls, but doesn't actually seal on them. What I have there does look original though.

They could've been put there as a water barrier to stop rain water blowing/running under the roof edge and reaching the sponge.

I don't remember seeing any of these seals on mine at all. This could explain why when she's laid up, water is pouring in, can someone tell me if there is supposed to be some sort of seal between the two vertical sides (a frame end) as I always thought this was where the water was blowing in through?? Also should there be any seals between the long edge folds for the length of the van?? Thank you peeps!!

Does anyone have any advice on this please, just about to open her up after the winter...not looking forward to what I may find...

Hi Vanessa, there should certainly be a covering over the joint between the folding side-walls & the hull. On my Ansfold when I got it, this consisted of the remains of a strip of plasticised canvas-type material glued to the top surface of the hull & also to the horizontal-when-unfolded face of each side wall, covering the hinges. After repairing the hull, folding sides, hinges & so on I replaced the cover-strip with carefully built-up layers of Gaffa-tape (a favourite repair material of mine). This has proved entirely satisfactory - also, it was cheap & easy to do. To my surprise, it's been durable as well. Encouraged by this, I stuck more tape over the fold-joints for each of the end walls; this time on the outside which is only visible (as a right-angle joint) when the end-walls are folded down & the roof temporarily propped up. In the past, I've had to tow my 'van through tremendously heavy rain in the course of "enjoying" British holiday weather, happily though without ever getting any wet inside at all. And when it's erected, it's proved to be cloudburst-proof then as well.

I still have the original 1/4" x 1/2" block-rubber seals along each end of my hull, but it's the Gaffa-tape wot does the actual weather-sealing, even when the 'van's erected & the seals are vaguely compressed. The seals do make a nice "boundary" for the tape & prevent it being visible though!

Steve Lord