The plywood floors we originally installed by screwing them into the metal frame of the bus. It looked like we could just unscrew them and take out the floor boards. But as we are learning, it is never that simple!
The screws were so old that they had rusted. We had to dig underneath the floorboards with a crowbar and popped them out. Using a metal head hammer on the metal crowbar to pry up floorboards meant adding another item to our protective gear - ear protectors so we don’t go deaf. I’m sure we will be using these a lot more in the future too.
We started taking out the floors we realized that the line for the air locking system that goes to the luggage bays run up through the floor and then back down into the luggage bay. You have to turn the bus on to fill up the air pressure to open the luggage bays.
We don’t want to have to start the bus every time we want to get into the luggage bays, but we haven’t figured out an alternative yet. If we disconnect the airlock then the luggage bays have no way of locking and anyone can get into them. We didn't want to just cut the line, so we spent hours unscrewing the lines from the luggage bays so we could pull them through the floors and take the floorboards out without damaging the lines.
Again, it is never that simple. This task looked easy yet took us hours.
It’s been so hot here that we have been waiting until the hottest part of the day to be over before we start working. We ended up working right through the evening until after 9pm. Hungry and exhausted we had to quit for dinner. It was another frustrating day as we just want to get these floors out but everything takes longer than we plan for and we always seem to run into unexpected difficulties. This is the reality of a bus build.
Up Next
Still taking the floorboards out but this time making progress!
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3M Ear Protectors, Hearing Protection,
These earmuffs have a noise reduction rating of 30dB and boy are we glad. After hitting metal on metal all day long you gotta have these so you don't go deaf!
Hello Mela and Don,
You’re doing good !
Floor removal is so important to assess the health of the stucture, particulary over the rear axles.
It also make it easy for repair/preventive repair of pneumatic valves, wiring and rear suspension (you may want to install new suspension airbag(bellow)).
An easy alternative for the pneumatic lock of the luggage bay would be to install electric linear actuator ( you could also look for used door lock cylinder actuator from cars or suv)( if your electrical system is 24v you would need a dc/dc converter to supply 12v).
Hi Dennis,
Thank you. I knew there had to be some way to change out the pneumatic locks. I will research the electric linear actuators now and I think we should be able to get 12v to those bays easily. Always more research to do on this bus work. Thanks for your input really appreciate it.
Don