Well today was the day we have been waiting for, for months. We got the bus home last night and today finally began work. Its funny how you see things differently in your memory than they actually are; my parents' driveway is the perfect example of this. In my mind there was plenty of space to park it, it could really go anywhere, but in reality, it was a tight negotiation.
The first part of the conversion is simply taking the seats out of the bus. Easy, right? They should just pop-off, or be able to be unscrewed with an Allen Key, like Ikea furniture.... NOPE.
The first part of the conversion is simply taking the seats out of the bus. Easy, right? They should just pop-off, or be able to be unscrewed with an Allen Key, like Ikea furniture.... NOPE.
We tried a few different ways to get the seats out and by the time we were losing daylight we finally found a method that worked, removing the first seat, just as the last of our toes froze.
Most people remove the seats by cutting them with a metal cutting blade on an angle grinder. This is often because of the level of rust that comes up through the flooring and ruins the bolts. Our bus had very little rust so we hoped we'd be able to simply undo the bolts. This worked easily for the screws attaching the seats to the railing along the wall, because we could hold the nuts still with a wrench while undoing them with an impact driver, however the bolts and nuts on the bottom of the bus were too rusted to undo. With Phil lying under the bus on a crazy carpet using the impact driver and myself holding the top of the bolt with a clamping wrench we sure tried, but screws broke and nuts stripped and even once undone some screws were rusted into the floor.
What we ended up doing was cutting the bolts attaching the seat to the floor with an angle grinder just like everyone else. At the end of the day one seat was out and we were ecstatic.
Most people remove the seats by cutting them with a metal cutting blade on an angle grinder. This is often because of the level of rust that comes up through the flooring and ruins the bolts. Our bus had very little rust so we hoped we'd be able to simply undo the bolts. This worked easily for the screws attaching the seats to the railing along the wall, because we could hold the nuts still with a wrench while undoing them with an impact driver, however the bolts and nuts on the bottom of the bus were too rusted to undo. With Phil lying under the bus on a crazy carpet using the impact driver and myself holding the top of the bolt with a clamping wrench we sure tried, but screws broke and nuts stripped and even once undone some screws were rusted into the floor.
What we ended up doing was cutting the bolts attaching the seat to the floor with an angle grinder just like everyone else. At the end of the day one seat was out and we were ecstatic.
Seems like a lot more seats once you find out how hard it is to get even one of them out.
Phil getting ready to crawl under the bus and use the impact drill. 1/2 inch socket (13m)