Sunshade to Shelf

All bus content today, covering a little experiment I've been working on over the last few months, around my various travels.

How it started
Last Spring/Summer, I stripped the interior of the bus, pulled the glass, etc for painting. The result was pretty fantastic, with a mellow gray interior and bright white upper 1/3 exterior. The main 2/3 lower body is still primer, but that's another story. Part of the tear-down for paint included removing the sun-shades from the front ceiling of the cab. As it was, they weren't stock bus visors; they were from a beetle. One of them was broken, half of the fasteners weren't stock... they simply looked junky. But they worked, mostly. With an intention to buy replacements, I junked them. I never bought the replacements, and then lost the few fasteners which were stock. So, I've been driving around without sun shade/visors. In the winter, when the sun hangs low, that's kind of a problem, but mostly, it created a much brighter view.

Basic Idea

view of top before shelf liner

I started shopping for visors. They are not inexpensive. While I was trolling the various sites (BusDepot, Cip1, etc), I would see these "parcel shelves" that were designed to fit under the dashboard around knee level. I've never traveled with a set of those, but it prompted thinking. First, I wondered if your legs ever bumped into them, and whether things would fall off them onto your feet. Neither thought was very appealing. They weren't inexpensive either. But, the idea of more storage in the cab was appealing. Looking at my cab, I had installed a double accessory plug near the right edge of the passenger (right) front ceiling. This was to power a Garmin and allow my passenger to charge her phone. I thought: could I put a shelf above the rear-view mirror?

Starting Simple

finished. view from bottom

The short answer is "yes, you can put a shelf above the rear-view mirror".
When I stripped out the interior, I decided to junk the old wood floor, and leaned it against my shop bench. I decided to use it to try to fabricate a shelf. It is 3/8" thick plywood. Working in an Agile manner, I tested the idea first with newspaper, cutting and taping a mock shelf until I had a rough shape for the front (nearest the windscreen). I transferred the line onto cardboard for a more firm example which I taped into place so I could observe it from lots of angles. This model included a cut-out for the rear view mirror mount so it could slide into place as a single piece. Last, I transferred the cardboard line to plywood and started cutting. With each iteration, from paper to cardboard to wood the front line shifted a little bit. i shaped the rear edge of the shelf to taper at the ends, running straight lines from the tapered end to about 3/8 of the way towards the middle. This left a section in the center that was straight across, parallel to the dashboard.

Mounts

cutting and shaping

Once I had the shelf cut, I started thinking about how I could best mount this shelf to the bus, and concluded that re-using existing holes is better than drilling new ones, if possible. Similar to the evolution of the shelf, the mounts evolved as well. I started with 1x3" wood scrap. This proved to be too hard to work with, since the angles needed to be precise (where the bus angels aren't), and wood isn't flexible in such a small size, so the body roll during driving could cause problems. I resolved to using sheet metal cut with tin snips and then shaped to fit the lines of the bus. The result was a more forgiving mount that could leverage the original holes and fasteners.

Get Stiff
I wanted the front edge of the shelf to have a finished look, and for there to be a lip to prevent things from flopping off the shelf into either my or my passenger's face. I went looking for simple 1/4-round at the home supply store, but their offerings of millwork has really dropped off. I found 90* angle aluminum in 4' sections, though. After a quick cleaning of sticker residue with peanut butter, I cut the angle aluminum to length, drilled holes every 3 inches and bottom-mounted the lip to the shelf. This stiffened the shelf considerably, making the concept seem much more plausible.

Front or Back

installed.
Ignore the mess in the background :)

After I had the front lip, I test fit and confirmed my thinking that I needed something on the "back" of the shelf to stop things from falling out the back/front and either into the windshield or onto the dashboard. Staying with the make-it-cheap mantra, I pulled some roofing paper out of a supply heap, and cut 2 curved sections, one for each side of the rear view mirror. Using a staple gun, I attached these two sections. I added a third much shorter piece to go into the rear-view mirror cut-out. I test fit again. This time, no daylight appeared over or around the shelf. Sweet.

Testing
Before I mounted the finished work, I shot the topside with spray epoxy and applied a rubber shelf liner. Just one more level of protection against parcel shelf contents going flying. The install now was more involved. First, the mounts are installed to the bus body. Then, the shelf is lifted into place, leading with the front (windscreen) edge. I press the roofing paper against the bus body while rotating the shelf flat and aligning the mounts to the holes in the shelf. The mounts are bolted to the mounts from below, using washers both above and below the shelf. Just as I finished this initial install, I got a call that one of the kids needed to be picked up from a couple miles away. "Perfect test," I thought. "That run has lots of turns and speed bumps". So, I placed my cell phone on the shelf and did a 4 mile loop of kid collection, hitting turns and speed bumps with abandon. The phone didn't move.

Reflections

installed

The shelf is a complete success. Out of curiosity, I put an old car stereo on there, and it didn't waver. I still need to really stress test it, but for now, I'm going to drive around with my prototype. OVer time, I could improve the design with thicker mounts or something, but I think for now, in this form, I could install a small car stereo, like the one I put in Flash (See: Flash Gets Sounds) or some down-lighting for reading a map. As it is, Boo and I can put our phones up there when we're travelling and have them on the charger without wires hanging everywhere. Very nice.

Thanks for following along. Lots of personal stuff happening over the next couple of weeks, so you know what that means: few to no new posts, but lots of content getting created in the form of adventures.