The Last 2 Weeks - The Undercarriage

In a covid free life we would be in Europe cycling across the country right now. But it is 2020, the year of the not going anywhere. The upside of this is we now have an abundance of holidays to use plus we get to work on the bus.

The perfect opportunity to cut holes in the bus!

Fred started on building the bins under the bus. Now this may sound straight forward but it is much more complicated than I thought. Cutting, welding, racks for wiring, doors, new floor, make sure there is room for water tanks, make sure everything fits like the bbq, spare (code for drinks) fridge, washing machine etc, etc, etc. So much to get sorted!

I may have said this before but I’m lucky that Fred is a jack of many trades – this is saving us mega bucks plus he is all over it. Now I don’t speak tradie but here’s my summary:-

Plan out on paper first where everything is going, then scrap that and plan again and then one more time for good measure
Measure up and order the materials. Steel, checker plate, inverter/charger station, wiring, tanks, struts, door seals and sheet metal, the list is endless
Pick up steel and checker plate

Grab a nikko and mark out where you are going to cut
Cut openings with the trusty grinder and cut-off discs
Save cut out panels for re-use
Weld the steel framing in place ready for the floor, attaching to the old seat anchor rails, definitely not the chassis

Using the flash harry plasma cutter, cut the checker plate to size and weld flooring to frame leaving some unattached at this stage because you are still waiting for the tanks to arrive

The plasma cutter made life so much easier

We now have 6 openings, 3 each side of the bus. The passenger side openings will house the gas bottle, bbq, spare fridge, washing machine and another gas bottle, in that order, from front to back. The driver’s side, front to back will be the electrical box, batteries, generator, spare bay, wet bay and hot water system.

Back to the summary:-

Find that the inverter/charger station doesn’t fit by millimetres, too tall, so cut out the floor and re-model it 40mm lower
Now the inverter/charger station fits like a glove, just as if it was supposed to be like that

Of course it can fit – with a little modification

Pick up the flat steel and using piano hinges attach the doors
Attach struts, well the ones that have arrived, to doors

It all sounds so simple and is looking smick but it wasn’t without casualty. Fred has the war wounds to prove it. He left several pieces of dna on the bus. I though after the first bash he would of started wearing a cap.