I had to visit a local car dealer (wholesaler, from whom, I have bought the last four of my cars) and thought I would ask him about finding some second hand seats from a car which I could adapt into my truck just to be a little more comfortable.
I have been quoted about $600 each for reconditioning and recovering the existing seats which I don't think were ever that flash.
It went like this:
"Where do you reckon would be a good place to pick up a couple of car seats to put in my truck? The wreckers don't seem to have any or want stupid amounts of money."
"What? You mean like the ones in that commodore over there that I am wrecking?"
"Exactly. Do you want to get rid of them?"
"You'll have to take them out yourself."
"No problems. How much do you want?"
"Couple of cartons of beer?"
"Done. I'll be around tomorrow morning to get them out."
And then when I went around this morning one of the mechanics had needed something out of the car and the seats were in the way so he had unbolted them already.
All I had to do was pick them up and put them in my car.
The drivers seat even has electric squab adjustment if I want to be bothered to connect it !!
We should be using BEER for currency!!
A representative (salesman) called in today from a company which sells all sorts of bits and pieces used in the truck and bus manufacturing business.
Most of it you can get from several companies but one item in particular was VERY INTERESTING!
These guys import fibreglass sheet from Germany in big rolls.
2 mm thick by 2.7 M wide by 70 M long and they are willing to cut off 20 M !!
He had a sample which had been used in a destructive test.
Even so the finish was very impressive and the price seemed "reasonable" at about $40/m2.
The advantage of this material is that there are no joins in roof and walls to leak, it has better thermal properties than metal and doesn't require painting.
Similarly it wont need 10,000 rivets to hold it on.
My friend Sich has clad his bus with aluminium using Sikaflex and it is as strong as . . . whatever!!
The corners are easy with aluminium angles and if I can just figure out how to deal with all the cut edges around doors etc. this will be a very serious contender for the final finish!
Needing to make a bit of room for some paying work the other day I decided to dismantle the "bull-bar" fittings and take the plastic part to a local plastic welder I have used before to see if it was worth doing any patching.
Sure enough a couple of the bolts were rusted into the fittings in the bar and managed to twist inside the plastic so they could not be undone. Only one thing to do, as the bar was going to be written off unless it could be fixed, so the heads were cut off the bolts to remove all the metal work. This had to come off as there are some modifications needed to fit my truck.
Today I went to see what progress had been made.
This guy gets the job done but is "as rough as guts".
It turns out that any of the plastics with colouring already in them will not adhere to the bar but a neutral white plastic will!!
Nobody seems to know why - something to do with the pigments we all suppose.
Never mind I will probably (now certainly) give it a coat of flat black paint anyway.
Any reflection at night can temporarily ruin your eyesight.
The major crack has been filled:
And the material round the embedded nuts ground out and re-welded (not quite what I asked for but with this guy there is no point complaining) so now I may have a chance of carefully drilling out the bolts and re-tapping the threads:
On the front of the bar are two areas which have been ground away. This is caused as it was fitted to a tilt cab truck and the bar must be pivoted out of the way to tilt the cab. When it's not properly bolted up again it can fall down when travelling. Quite spectacular with a metal bar but it only grinds plastic away as in this case.
The plastics man has to order some pieces of the correct material to weld onto here so it can be reshaped - it's only cosmetic really but it will make me feel better.
I went and picked up the shower base from Sich today.
He is not happy with it.
A fracture has occurred in the gel-coat.
You cant really see it until you get up real close but it's a potential weakness and the shower base will end up being the hardest thing to get to once it's all installed so it's better not to take the chance.
He talked to the suppliers of the fibreglass and it apppears that they recommended the wrong gel-coat material so he has ordered some of the correct type and we will have another go.
Seeing we have to do it again I think I will take the opportunity to do it white.
Means more cleaning etc. to get the "good housekeeping seal of approval" but I am pretty sure it will fit with my overall colour scheme a little better.
His bus will be more dramatic and black will suit him.
In the mean time we can use the black one for setting up so he is giving me a hand with that tomorrow.
It will go in the front corner
As you can see there are no floor or wall supports in position yet as all the material thicknesses need to be worked out and allowed for in construction (if you don't want to waste space) and he has done it before so will speed things up enormously.
That will let me finish off the final major structural stuff and fitting out can start !!
I just love progress . . .
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