Conversion Diary – Week 3 – Removing AC fans and almost losing the battle of the Driver’s seat

Week 3 went nothing like we thought it would, but we are pretty sure this is exactly how the entire build will go.

We though that week 3 would be all about the floor (grinding, treating rust, and painting), but we spent more time under the bus than we did in the bus. I’m pretty sure we were the dirtiest we’ve ever been.

We started the weekend off trying to remove the driver’s seat which proved to be much more difficult than we imagined, and both of us left the bus Friday night feeling defeated. We shouldn’t have been surprised that this seemingly simple task took way more time and emotional stamina than we had originally anticipated. What we thought would take 30 mins, an hour max, took at least 4 hours and each of us uttered way more expletives than we ever have. SIX measly bolts took us more than 4 hours to remove…Actually, 1 bolt required most of that time.

We were working this weekend without power. We weren’t able to keep the generator we were borrowing for the weekend, but we thought we would be able to use it the following week so we didn’t want to go out to buy one right away. Had we had the generator, we would have given up and just used the grinder to remove the bolt, but without power that wasn’t an option.

The nut was stripped under the bus, and nothing we could think of would allow us to remove it. We tried WD40, Vise grips, vise grips with a towel, we cut off the finger tips of our grippy gloves to try to get a better grip with the Vise grips, but it wasn’t budging. We spent about 3 hours Friday night after work trying to remove the seat, working by the light of a camping lantern and our phone flash lights, but had to give up.

After watching some youtube videos about removing stripped nuts, we started Saturday with renewed hope, and another plan, a chisel. We each spent another 20 mins or so under the bus with the chisels and a few more expletives thrown in, but we still weren’t getting anywhere. We decided to move on to other projects until we had power. It would be a job for the grinder again.

After giving up on the seat, we decided to continue working under the bus. Another project that we thought would take us just a few hours, ended up taking almost 2 days.

We had removed the AC units from inside the bus the week before, but still had the freon lines and power cords that ran from the compressors to the fans and to the inside AC units coming into the bus from under. We wanted to trace these lines to the engine and remove them so we could get them out of the bus. There were also 2 big fan units under the bus that were no longer serving their purpose and were taking up valuable real estate that we can use for storage or water tanks under the bus, so they had to go.

We spent nearly 2 full days under the bus tracing freon lines and power cords and removing the fans. We had no idea what we were doing, and ended up the dirtiest I think either of us has ever been, but we felt extremely accomplished once it was done.

We even succeeded in removing the seat, thanks to our new friend who we can Uncle Frank, who allowed us to run an extension cord from his storage unit.

Lessons Learned

Lesson #1 – Make sure you have the right tools for the job – It will save you tons of time and frustration

We spent way more time than we needed to on the seat, but it was because we didn’t have access to the tools that we needed. If we would have had power, some of the jobs we were working on wouldn’t have taken nearly as long as they did. We should have walked away from the project until we were able to complete it properly. We wasted way more time than we needed to because we were tied to getting this one thing accomplished.

Lesson #2 – Everything is Figureoutable

We have no idea what we are doing…

Youtube has been a blessing, but it can’t prepare you for every issue that comes up and if you wait until you have the answer to every question before you start, you’ll never start.

This has been a huge lesson for me (Ash). I always want to be prepared for every potential eventuality. I want to have the right answer. I want to be the smart one, and anticipate every problem. I’ve been trying to not allow that to hinder me in this build. From deciding on what we wanted in a bus, to buying one that isn’t “perfect”, to jumping into each of the projects, I’m trying to fight against my natural tendency to delay every decision until I know the best way forward and just jump in. So far, I think I’ve done pretty well with that.

I’ve surprised Liz and quite a few friends with the fact that we just jumped into this. It’s not my nature, but I’m ready for a different life and I’ve realized I’ll never have all of the answers. I just have to move forward in the best way I know how, knowing that I’m going to screw up along the way.

I know that we’ll be able to figure it out…Everything is Figureoutable (This book by Marie Forlio is great also).

Lesson #3 – We were right about Lessons #1 and 2 last week

Our first 2 weeks were not a fluke, everything will take 3 times the amount of time you think it will and don’t fight with stripped screws, or bolts, or nuts…just break out the grinder. You’ll thank me later.

Next Steps

We thought that this week would be all about the floor. While we did try a few things to treat the rust inside, we are no where near where we thought we would be.

We did find out that we would need to be prepared to prime and paint the floor right after we treated the rust and prepped, but we have some holes that we need to deal with before we paint with the rust inhibitor so we are tabling this project for now. We need to decide if we are going to hire someone to weld some of the floor patches in or if we are learning to weld ourselves.

Our goal for this week is to reseal the windows and try to fix any leaks. We’ll be removing old calk from both the inside and outside of the windows and recaulking/resealing each.

Many people remove all of the windows to reseal, but we don’t plan to do this. Some people claim it’s the best way forward, but others have found that this causes more leaks. So we are going to do our best to clean and reseal for now and hopefully, that solves our issues.