Building a Shop - Doors

Ia accept that putting a garage door on your shop is barely car-content, but it is the big deal around here, and it is at least tangentially related to cars. Recall, the shop was designed with 4 openings: on the North, the big door and a person door; facing West, a barn door and facing South a to-be-determined door. I lightly described the barn door in the Ghost of GoRo. Today's post is about getting a big door for the front of the shop and all the stuff around that.

 

Before I begin, for my US readers, happy tax day. I recognize there are very curious ways this administration and his congress are choosing to allocate money, and today of all days, that "curious" feels more acute. You may not be able to influence their choices, but you can choose to vote with your wallet every day. Please direct your purchasing choices into small businesses. Those mom and pop operators are your neighbors. When you invest in them you are investing directly into your community, and not into some corporation which takes from it.

 

Measure Twice

This is so obvious and yet, this was almost my biggest mistake. When I first was designing the shop, I had the front of the shop (facing north) almost completely open for a massive door: 6 meters / 18 feet wide by 3.3 meters /10 feet tall. My thought at the time was that 6 meters would easily allow me to move 2 cars side-by-side without having to get either too deep into the shop. Like, I could have one sticking halfway out and still get a car in. This was great thinking until I decided I wanted a way to get in/out through a "man" (I say "person", but I'm not pronoun-hostile either) door. I also wanted this facing North, next to the big garage-style roll-up door. This way I could leave the big door closed and still come and go through a door with a lock on it. Consider the barn door is locked from the inside, and that was always the plan. I have no idea what the southern door will be like, but it may not have an externally-facing lock on it.

 

no wind inside

Anyway, fast-forward to after it is built and I am looking for a tracked roll-up door. After spending weeks looking for a 18' x 10' door, I have a site visit by a local door company (Overhead Door of Portland) who has a used door that big. We run the tape and sure-enough the opening is 10' high, the clearance above is adequate. Then we check the door width and it's only 16' (5 2/3m). Duh. When I added the person door, I reduced the size of the roll-up door and completely forgot. Ultimately, this saved me a bunch of money, though, because a standard residential tracked roll-up door is 5 2/3m (16 feet). When I say a bunch of money, the used door he had would have to cost me $14k US including install and an opener. The larger opening also would have pushed me into a commercial-grade door, so it would have weighed nearly double the residential door.

 

Patience Pays

open, windy inside

With the more accurate measurement, the fine folks over at Overhead Door of Portland dug into their stock of used doors. After a few weeks, they had a suitable door. Boo and I want a glass door, to maximize the light coming on for cold daytime work (think: winter weekends) and to not block overhead lights when it's open. We both also thought that a clear door would more closely approximate an old filling station look that we both had romanticals about. These glass doors, though, are less common and more expensive. The door they have is undamaged, but whoever had installed it chose to mask off the glass and then rattle-can paint the doors and rails with black Rustoleum paint. That decision would have been totally fine, had they prepared the surface for paint. At bare minimum the doors needed to be scuffed with 300-grit to 400-grit sand paper (or a red ScotchBrite pad) so the paint would have something to bite into and then wiped down. They did not and the paint did not. Instead, the paint is flaking off and is not presentable to most. For our purpose: make opening clear, yet lockable while looking old-Skool... it is perfect. We may change our minds and fix the paint, but for today, we are happy with it.

 

Car Mad Dash

Hapy's spot

As is so often the case, this was a full-on hurry up and wait. Well, really, it was more of a wait and then hurry-up. I have been looking for a door since the shop was built and now that we found one, the install was planned for less than a week later. From my prior post, you know that Oliver is against the east wall, right up against the big door opening. And, he was not running. Next to him is Hapy, barely jutting out the big opening and barely running. I needed to get both cars out the way and the lane way clear so they could get in there with the doors and equipment to get the door installed.

 

Getting Hapy out was easy: re-prime the Injection Pump with the MityVac, crack the injectors, pop the starter to a count of 5, re-tighten the injectors, start and back him out. This took less than an hour and I parked him in his longer-term designated spot where we can more easily visit and drive him. Yeah, I said visit; he's family.

 

Oliver drove!

Moving Oliver was a bigger deal, but only because I made it so. I wanted him to leave the shop under his own power. So that meant getting him running. In my last post, I described solving his fuel system. I don't know if it was insufficient patience or if I flooded the carb, but he would not start that day. A week later, and I have Hapy out of the way, I was ready to push Oliver out if I had to. First, I checked his spark plugs. They smelled like gas and were fairly black (fuel mixture probably too rich). I hit them with a wire brush and then re-set the gaps (0.033", internets recommend between 0.025" and 0.038") depending on lots of factors. I turned the key, got the fuel pump to prime and then quiet way down. At the carb with my hand, I "pumped" the accelerator a couple of times. At the wheel, I pulled the choke and tried to start him. After a few seconds, he started to act like he wanted to and after a few more tries, he fired up and held idle. This was the first time he ran since I rebuilt the carb, so an historic moment. Attempts to vary the engine speed with the accelerator pedal were fruitless, so I idled out of the shop, down the inclined gravel drive, and parked him in front of the person door. I was able to confirm that the throttle cable was junked. It would not stay on the pedal arm and then I was unable to move it consistently by hand. I'll be replacing that soon.

 

Final Prep

installers getting started

With the cars out of the way, I could get the last bits done for the door installers. I had strung outdoor patio lights around the inside of the shop, extending across the large door opening. So, half of that strand needed to come down. Last, I swept the floor which had not been really looked at since I moved the cars in last fall. With Oliver and Hapy out of the shop, I was able to really appreciate the size of my new workspace. It's really nice, and I will need to make a focused effort to leave myself room to work by not housing all of the cars inside all the time.

 

Door Install

The 2 installers from Overhead Door of Portland arrived as-scheduled around 10AM. They backed most of the way down the lane-way so the distance to carry the panels and runners was shorter. In half an hour, the doors were off the truck and positioned for installing (picture on the right). By 1130AM, 4 of the 5 door panels were installed on the runners and they were a-fixing the runners to the building. By 1PM, the door was in, the runners set, and the spring installed. Within the next hour, the install was complete, and Chris and Chase were showing us how the various controllers worked. With the door open, obviously, its almost like being outside. Well, its exactly like it was before the door was there: Full wind and misty rain on my face. Overhead, once lights are installed, the door will not block the light from reaching us beneath. That's huge. When the door is shut, the sound, wind and rain all stop. I did not expect the degree to which the air movement and sound would change. It is significant.

 

Wrap

Well, that's it for today. Next, I will be replacing the rear brakes on K'Lack (2004 Jetta TDI driven by my niece), replacing the throttle cable on Oliver and bringing Hapy over to Justin's to have the Injection Pump resealed. I don't know if any of those are really blog-post-worthy. Summer is coming, and having a safe vehicle (or a few safe vehicles) for Summer adventures starts now. As always, thanks for following along-

Car-go-round

As we hit Summer, I find my attention going in 100 directions at once. When you have many cars, each with small problems, and a house in mid-rehab, that scatter is probably that much worse. With the rehab work going on, I will have limited time to work on cars, but Boo has asked me to think about setting aside one day a week to it since I take such pleasure from it, and life can't always be about to-do lists, home construction and your job. So, today's post tries to bring some order to the car-chaos, with a hope that I will have some time to clown on one or more of these open items this summer.

Oliver

Oliver is the 1978 MGB. Some may look at Oliver like he was my mid-life crisis car. In truth, he was a car that could fit in the super-small garage I had and needed work. He was something I could work on that wasn't Hapy, the 1972 VW bus, and I could be out of the rain when I did it. Oliver definitely met that goal and I really needed something other than Hapy to wrench on for a while. The goal Oliver has not yet met is passing DEQ. So, he is not legally drive-able. Oliver's list of incomplete items is fairly short, though. I believe, he could pass DEQ today if the carb is adjusted right. He just needs another run through DEQ to see how close I am. He got a new battery for the move to the NewOldHouse, and since then he has sat under one of those 5L car covers with the battery disconnected.

Beyond DEQ, the heated seat circuit did not get completed, and there remains a leak under the windscreen on the passenger side. Perhaps most importantly the brakes are still spongey and I think it is because the brake master cylinder was not bled prior to install. I asked the guys at Les Schwab to do it when I bought a set of tires from them. They sold me the tires, failed to bleed the brakes, and that's why I now buy tires at Firestone. Anyway, I bought a brake bleeder kit, (and will document my process) and hope to get him to DEQ before this top-down season has really started.

Zed

Ah Zed, the 1978 Datsun 280ZX. After a spring and summer of bodywork, Zed still needs a lot. I won't rerun that history, but there was a lot of sanding and shaping. Then, I had that heroic drive from oldHouse to NewOldHouse, sitting on a toolbox for a front seat (See Zed Moves). Once parked, he got a 10x20 to sit under while we worked on the house. Well, the weather had other plans, lifting and tossing the canopy multiple times, putting multiple rubs and deep scratches into the paint (See Hello Windstorm, My Old Friend). So, Zed will need another round of sanding and painting. Now that I have seen the Eastwood 9mm in the sun, I am not as enamored with it. I see a slight olive green in that dark grey and the pitted finish is not to my liking at all. So, I will probably sand down below the paint to some degree, re-shoot the black primer and shoot a different color. Of course, the body kit is installed and it's not coming off. So, I will need to get creative to get good coverage down low. Now parked next to Oliver with a matching 5L car cover, they are twins. I do not expect to do much of anything on Zed this Summer.

 

Hapy

In the Phil and Friends post (See Phil and Phrends Road Report), I mentioned a few things that needed attention before the next drive in Hapy, the 1972 VW camperbus. The most glaring was the loss of the brake booster. I removed the hose from the booster and tested the vacuum on the booster unit. I applied 15 pounds of vacuum and over the course of a few minutes, it decayed a couple of pounds. To me, that is satisfactory. Then, I tested the vacuum on the hose I had just removed. It held no vacuum. So, I acquired and installed Gates vacuum hose. One quick test drive later, the brakes are good. I installed the cage for the stereo so it is well locked into the glove box install location. I also affixed a mount for the UltraGauge on the steering wheel support so the UltraGauge is directly below the speedometer now. I do not expect Hapy will have meaningful work done to him for the rest of the Summer. Instead, he will be set up for DrivewayFest between trips so we can enjoy our clubhouse-on-wheels. Hapy has been used a few times since we moved as my daily-driver when Boo needs to take Toyotruck somewhere. Every time, since we moved to the NewOldHouse, he has started right up. I mentioned the saga about towing him here. The starter swap-out was easy and the right fix (See Hapy Lives Again).

Nemo

Nemo (1997 Audi A4 Quattro) has left the fleet, enjoying a new lease on life in Idaho. See Fare Well, Nemo.

GoRo

GoRo (2009 Audi A4 Quattro) had a series of issues appear over last winter. First, the outer driver handle stopped working. So, to get in, you needed to reach through either from the passenger side or from the rear seat to get the door open. What a pain. Then, the battery started to misbehave, not holding charge. While looking for the charger studs, the hood latch broke. So, GoRo sat for most of the winter, until Boo got the hood latch repaired (she hired our friend Courtney at MobilePDX). Even Courtney doesn't want to touch the outer door latch, so we're not sure what we are going to do about that. I need to get the battery replaced, and then maybe I'll take it on. Either way, we are going to sell GoRo. We figure it hasn't been driven since last December, and we have been just fine without it.

ToyoTruck

Recall that Boo and I bought ToyoTruck (2005 Toyota pickup) from her sister. We had agreed to the price before the ice-storm sent the truck into a pole, damaging the passenger front corner. I replaced a bunch of things, but did not shoot the paint. The top of the truck has suffered sun, wind or seaside damage to the paint as well, so when I paint the replaced bodyparts, the top half of the truck (at least) needs paint as well. This truck has minor dents on a few panels as well, so before I shoot anything, I'll work those dents out first. ToyoTruck is our true daily-driver. I hope, once GoRo is gone, and Oliver is legal, perhaps we will drive Oliver and Hapy around, leaving the truck home more.

When I can get away from house construction projects, I will be getting after this stuff, starting with Oliver. He is such a fun ride, and it would be a shame to lose another Summer to something like DEQ. I know I have not been posting much, basically since we bought this house. That day, car work mostly came to a halt, and house construction is much slower and frankly less interesting to post on. I will make me next post a catch-up on what's happened here since my April post.

Thanks, as always, for following along-

Hapy Seating

Over the years, Hapy has had 3 sets of front seats. Today, I start down a path of a fourth, and hopefully final, set. For the curious, I continue to Bondo-cycle on the replacement front fender for Zed, as well as sort through the garage. Boo and I have been taking advantage of the waning days of "decent" weather (read: light rain, around 8*C / 45*F) to get some hikes in before late Fall weather really kicks in. So, large steps forward on any car project is not happening right now. Sometimes, you just need to spend some time on a project that you actually want to do. These days, neither the Zed nor my garage are that project, but they are each getting some of my attention. So, as a distraction from that, I'm looking at Hapy's seats.

Seats 1-3

the '74s

I suppose it makes sense to start with what Hapy has had for seating. First, he had his original manufactured-in-1971 seats. These were built before headrests, and while they looked the part, they were completely clapped out, sagging painfully across the entire seat base. The horsehair stuffing was mostly gone and the fabric was dry-rotting away. So, while I was still working in Old Town (an area of downtown Portland now called "the Pearl District") I bought a set of blue-green plaid 1974 seats off craigslist for $20.

The blue-green set were marginally better. Maybe. The seats had been rebuilt at some point with foam, but I discovered along the way that they were getting ditched for $20 for a reason: they were very uncomfortable. Still, they were the seats I had, and they had headrests for better neck protection in an accident. After a few months with them, though, I would have probably gone back to my originals if I had still had them.

A few years ago, GratefulEd swapped out his original 1973 seats with minivan seats (which look and seat great), so he loaned me his seats while I figured something out. The 1973 seats served GratefulEd just fine, but they, too, were worn out. The fabric is so destroyed that the simple aftermarket seat covers cling to the foam underneath, not the seat fabric. Again, these seats are not the most comfortable, but they are better than the '74 set. GratefulEd put many miles on these seats. For, like, 2k of those miles, I rode with him. Still, at some point he wants these back, and at some point I would like a seat that will improve the ride... like the seats he put in Belle.

New Seat, What a Treat

Yeah, I've used that line before. In my scouting around craigslist, I found a set of "comfort" front seats from a 2016 Sprinter for $250. The "comfort" seats are so labelled because they have things like angle control and lumbar support that the "standard" seats do not have. Coming from seats that were little more than an uneven pile of flattened foam wrapped in shredded cloth, these things are puh-lush. With an arm rest. I read reviews of these seats where authors described taking road trips of 8-12 hours and not suffering from leg or back aches or any additional fatigue they could assign to their seats. Sounds perfect, but are they 10x better than those old ratty '74 seats I bought 15 years ago? I think so.

I drove over to the seller in Hapy. Upon arrival, I pulled the front passenger seat out of Hapy and set the Sprinter seat in it's location. It fit well enough to know that it could probably work, and then I jumped in to test-sit it. Ultimately, figuring out how to mount it, deciding whether I go whole-hog and do a swivel-seat upgrade, etc, all only matters if the seat is comfortable for a long drive. Just because some random internet authors said so, doesn't mean it will work for Boo and me. Of course, sitting in a seat for a few seconds won't tell the story either. But, I liked the seats, so I paid the guy, put the seats in the back and headed home. Hapy ran great, by the way: no codes, no stammering; he just cruised and felt peppy.

So, Will It Fit?

extra surround
getting cut off

Before I go too deep into the install, there are some basics. The Sprinter seats are much taller and the bottom is much thicker than any of the stock bus seats. When I placed the seat in, the headrest sat about an inch or so below the ceiling. Because of the original mountpoints in the passenger seat pedestal, I could not position the seat on top of the inner flat very well. As a result, I could only sorta-kinda get a sense for how it would be before the inner seat rail slid down into the well in the middle of the pedestal. So, regardless of what I do, that old passenger-side mountpoint will need to get cut off.

A little concerned about how the driver-side would fit, I pulled the '73 driver seat out and set the Sprinter seat in its place when I got home. This made for a much better assessment because the stock driver seat is mounted with toothed sliders, not large C-hooks sticking up from the pedestal. Still, the height of the seat base wedged my legs under the steering wheel. I confirmed that the seat will be very comfortable, once I have figured out how to lower them. These are built for delivery drivers, service folks and RV's: designed to be sat in a lot for long periods, and Sprinter's are not cheap, so the seats are a reflection of that as well (read: these are good seats). I will not have to cut out the partition for the seats to fit, but removing the partition could make them more adjustable.

Seat Gets Trimmed

While I did not have to cut up the bus, I did have to cut a section of plastic off the seat base. These seats are adjustable in 3 ways: height, seat-back tilt, and seat-base tilt. The height is controlled with a lever on the outside along the base, and it raises / lowers the entire seat above the rails by as much as 3 inches. In the Sprinter, the seat is bolted to a pedestal that is smaller than the seat, so when it is lowered, the bottom plastic surround drops below/around that pedestal. This will not work in a bus installation, as the pedestal is larger than the seat.

new seat (with surround removed)
versus old seat

The plastic surround, however, seems almost designed for this modification. There is an indentation that runs along the lower edge of the cushion, maybe 3 inches above the bottom of the surround (see picture above). I scored this indentation repeatedly with a box-cutter until the lower section fell off, halving the plastic surround's height. The new now-the-bottom sets slightly above the seat rail at the seat adjuster's lowest setting. With this lower surround removed, the seat rests cleanly on the bus seat pedestal (see picture on the right). For a longer legged driver, there are now a few inches of headroom, if the seat needs to be raised.

Install Thinks

Boo and I would love to have at least the passenger seat swivel, if not both, to create more usable space while camped. But Hapy has steel partitions behind the front seats. Those partitions, I think, were critical for collision safety since the back of the passenger seat was literally mounted with a hook-and-ring connector thing to it, and the seat was unable to sit upright without leaning against it. Still, these partitions could also represent some stiffness in holding the sides  of the bus square against twisting or in case of an accident. So, we have a few options:

1. *Mount the seats in a forward-facing-only orientation, bolting the slider rails to the bus.
2. Remove the partition behind the passenger seat, install angle iron to take up the side-stiffness, install a swivel base and the seat. Driver side remains just like option 1.
3. Remove the partition, but don't install a swivel. Maybe, the seat is just removed, reversed and re-installed facing rear-ward when we camp? Maybe instead of using bolts, the seat is mounted with nuts on studs, making the reverse-swap that much easier.
4. Remove both partitions, install an angle iron for each side for side-stiffness, install a swivel on each side.
5. Blending options 3 and 4, remove both partitions, but don't install any swivels. One or both seats could be mounted rear-facing when camped.

both seats mocked

My biggest question for whether options 4 or 5 are possible circles back to the steering wheel. Unlike the passenger side, where there is a big open space for the seat back to go when you face it rearward, that wheel is big, and sticks pretty far back from the dashboard. Just looking at the picture on the right here tells the tale. It is hard to imagine that driver seat facing rearward. Frankly, I'm going to have to think carefully about how to just install the driver seat. Use of studs may be necessary simply for that. I asterisked option 1 since that's the most direct option that gets seats in. I can always grow from there. Knowing that any swivel is going to raise the seat more, all the others may not be real options.

Some Prep Is Universal

Regardless of what we choose to do, there are some universal steps I need to take. First, of course, is addressing any rust on top of the seat pedestals. I removed the pedestal carpet a few years ago, and need to re-install it or cut some fresh carpet to install there. I intend to add some noise reduction stuff while everything is open before the carpet goes back in. I would like to move the brake fluid reservoir down into that below-the-seat area to simplify things a little bit. This would also create more possibility for a driver-side swivel (though that is still very remote). I may need to cut off the old driver-side seat tracks, if I run into issues putting holes through for the Sprinter seat rails. On the passenger side, the pointing-up C-hooks need to be cut off. You can see how they interfere in the mock-up picture on the right, here: the seat is pushed further forward because of where the C-hooks are. All of these (except the carpet install) can be done while I mull-over whether I am going to cut off one or both partitions. 

Boo and I tried sitting the mocked up seats just like the picture above shows. Overall, they are very comfortable. They do sit high, though, for our shorter-than-average-for-a-US-person legs. I can fully activate the pedals all the way to the floor, though. For Boo, she may need something under her feet for longer drives so the leg-dangle doesn't negatively impact her lower back. I'm sure we have something that usually travels with us that could stow there which would meet that need. In the past, she has sat with her feet propped up on the dash, so a more permanent step isn't necessary. The partitions do impact the degree to which the seat-back can be tilted. For the driver, I'm not sure how much it matters. For a passenger who sometimes likes to sleep on the drive, this might lead us to removing that partition eventually. At this point, I am going to work on simply mounting the seats and leaving the partitions. We figure I can always circle-back around on removing a partition, but once it's gone, it's gone. Maybe there's a way to just lower the passenger-side partition a couple inches to enable a seat tilt.

That's it for today. I'll post more on this progress as there is some, leveraging the old "Part (x)" to keep them strung together. Thanks, as always, for following along-