Well Done

Okay okay...so this morning I am so tired I can barely see to write this. Am I too blasted old and decrepit to attempt this project? My mind sez no, but my body sez lay down and contemplate the situation. :-/

Yesterday was another day of good progress. Peter was busy with eBay most of the day, so I worked on everything I could manage without The Big Dude. Scrub brush and solvents in hand, deep cleaning of the entrance and cockpit area ensued. Understand, Peter and I are seriously messy people. But because we're being forced to keep a VERY tight ship in the house due to it being on the market, I am in CLEAN! mode. Besides, I cannot abide the idea of eating and sleeping in a space where 13 years of a zillion stranger's filth has accumulated. Brrr...

First I pulled all the nasty old "black" (grey with filth) rubber caulking out from the front steps, and used a scraping tool to loosen a bunch of hideous stuff I couldn't begin to identify. Then I cleaned, cleaned, and cleaned some more. It STILL isn't "clean," and may never be, but by gum it'll be as clean as I can get it without suffering heat stroke!

In the process of deep cleaning, many small things made themselves known to me, such as how the accordian door is actually made, where the gasket leak is that causes two windows to hold moisture between the thermal panes, the deer whistles on the front. And then I had an idea about a very bad noise in the bus I encounted a couple of days ago. Nothing like mindless cleaning to allow the mind to disengage and thus actually THINK. That kind of thing.

I couldn't figure out what was clearly an alarm of some sort that only sounded when the key was turned in the ignition. I was afraid I had dropped some screw or something into the blower system while cleaning, and THAT was making the sound. Nope, definitely coming from the back of the bus. I figured it was one of the roof hatches not soundly latched. I checked the hatches. They were fully secured, so that wasn't the source of the horrible screeching alarm. As I said, as I was cleaning, it occurred to me the alarm was sounding because I hadn't shut the rear exit door before turning the key. Well, DUH. So I closed and locked the door, then went back and turned the key. The horrible alarm STILL shrieked in anger at me. Oh, I was CERTAIN I had seriously screwed something up. But then I realised that this was a safety measure, and as such, was telling me that the exit door could NOT be locked while in motion. Ahhhhh....so I unlocked the bastard, went back, turned the key again, and was greeted with the blissful sound of nothing. *deep sigh of relief* Guess I can sleep in the bus with the rear door unlocked and the key turned in the lock, cause there ain't NUTHIN' getting past that sound. Seriously, I have GOT to disable those dratted alarms soon.

After taking a break from the heat, I went back out and began crawling around on the floor, undoing the screws holding the seat bottoms in place. I figured that if I could get those out, Peter could get further along once he was available. And indeed, that was precisely what happened. About 4ish, Peter was finished with his "real" work and arrived to start tearing into the seats.

Now you will remember that we had decided to leave the bolts in the floor and simply cut the bolt heads off, because of a desire not to have a bunch of holes in the floor open to the ground. Common bus-nut wisdom has it that cutting them off is the easier method to unbolting them, and I believe that's certainly true if you either alone or smaller than Peter's mass. However, we TRIED using a cut-off wheel where needed (more on THAT in a minute), and frankly, Peter found it a LOT more efficient to simply use a hacksaw. As I've mentioned, he's one big, strong dude. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Peter is NOT a fan of electric tools, and avoids them whenever possible. I'm inclined to agree, but I haven't the mass to back up my preferences. Anyway, I could clearly sense a distinct reluctance in Peter toward the use of an angle grinder or other tool in removing the seats, so I asked him what he'd prefer to do. "I'd rather just unbolt them," he said. I didn't care about anything beyond just getting the blasting things out, method be damned.

With two people, one under and one up top, the bolts came apart fairly easily. I suggested that we could unscrew them just far enough to access the heads for cut off, thinking it would allow the holes to remain filled with the cut bolts as previously planned. After all the bolts were prepped, Peter emerged from under the bus and proceeded to use the hacksaw to cut off the heads. As I have said before and will say again, it pays to be beefy.

With the bolt heads gone, we pulled all but the two seats with heaters OUT! Woo hoo! With a seriously tired back, I suddenly realised I had no place to sit down any longer! Ha! Plastic chairs to the rescue!

Really ready to stop for the day, we still had two seats to remove. Trouble is, they still had the heaters attached, and we had been warned that the heaters were filled with antifreeze that would spill everywhere once we cut the hoses. Not willing to deal with that kind of mess, we decided to use our brains instead of our brawn. Peter had thoroughly examined the underside of the bus while dealing with the bolts earlier in the day, and explained that there were two hoses - input and outtake - that went between the two rear heaters, fed by a similar set from the front heater and engine. Peter decided, rather than disconnecting the heaters, to cut the brackets holding them to the seats.


Once the brackets were severed, the last seats were gone. I happened to notice a small scrap of paper down in a hole the seat had previously covered, and reaching down I came up with a sticker that said "WELL DONE!" Satisfied with the sign that the bus was happy with our progress towards making her new and loved again, we were ready to shut down for the day.


Wisdom of the day comes from Greg, Bus God to the Masses. "A bus is a pretty simple thing, it's just not complicated." Amen, Uncle Greg, simple and STURDY...all you need is beef to get the job done. Wanna convert a bus? More brawns than brains are needed for the task.

Our grateful bodies slogged off to the promise of food, a hot bath, and early bed.