Putting it to Bed

By now, most of the hard parts had been completed. Today's post covers the final bits and pieces, putting the project to bed, so to speak.

Rock 'n' Roll

bed, before

With the bare floor painted grey, the first of the last phase was getting the rock 'n' roll bed in. I'd pulled the contents out prior to its removal, but the bed is still pretty hard to move around by yourself. Still, with a mixture of dragging and heaving, I got the bed up and into place... without making the floor look too shabby in the process. Since the floor no longer had wood sheeting on top of it, getting the bed to align with the holes on the top of the engine bay wasn't quite as easy. It found it's home, though, and I was even able to get the little 2-bolt bit from the passenger tire well to slide home.

In the Light
Under the bed fits the auxiliary fuse box and battery. While in previous incarnations of this set up the battery powered a few different things, all it powers now are lights and 12V adapters. I already touched on some of this effort in an earlier post (see bump bump bump under "Cabin Lights"). Once locked in, I could move on to the refer cabinet.

bed, after

The Crunge
The fridge cabinet had previously just floated around, but I hadn't known that until removal day. Between removing the rear closet and the stove/sink, it held in place through simple inertia. There is supposed to be a bolt that threads into the fridge from the bed. That's now back in place and the cabinet is locked in tight. Between the fusebox and getting this cabinet in place, there were some wire-management issues too, but they're all well routed now, so no furniture is sitting on top of a wire. I still need to get the shore-power capable of charging the battery or simply feeding the lights and such, but that's something for another day.

Kashmir

middle seat in

We're getting near the end. I put in the rails for the middle row seat, following the holes and some blurry photos I took from the prior install. Without the wood floor in place, it seemed like the rails synch down tighter, but really, they were just lower, making the placement of the seat in the rails a little harder. After first just setting the rails in and finding that they were too close together for an easy fit, I took another tack. With the bolts in finger-tight, I tapped the rails as far apart as I could make them. Then, tightened them down for a fit. The seat slides in as easily as it used to (which isn't all that easy). I may need to Lithium grease the rails so the seat goes on easier.

In the middle picture, you can see that I've covered the rear driver-side window. I posted in "Whatcha Hiding?" about the screens I made a few screens to cover that window. As a final preparation, I painted the side that faces the inside of the bus with the same grey paint.

Well, that's really it for getting the bus back together. I was able to get it all done before the Memorial Day weekend so I'll post on that next time.

More sound killing

Sorry I didn't get back to the final bit about Memorial Day weekend. I covered most of it in the last 2 posts. Today, I'll focus on additional sound dampening, but this time without the batting. There are 2 different kinds of noise we need to deal with, and I'm looking at reducing both of them but without killing my budget in the process.

Vibration Noise

I think the stuff I bought all those years ago was called Dynamat. I blew about $200 on vibration deadener, betwen this stuff and the McMaster-Carr rubber sheets. The "Dynamat" is basically a sticky asphalty black tar with a shiny foil side. The sticky side comes protected with a wax paper which peels off as you stick it. The general concept of Dynamat (or Brown Bread or any of these contact noise dampeners) is to convert the vibration into heat, reducing the noise. For it to be effective, it needs to seal with the metal as completely as possible, so really work it in when you lay it down. On the websites that I visited at the time, the manufacturers and the sound installer experts all said you only really needed to cover about 50% of the exposed steel to notice a meaningful reduction. More often than not, no sooner was this said than the poster/manufacturer shows their install, and they used 2 layers of the stuff on every square inch of metal. What gives?

I guess it all comes down to what you're trying to do. Personally, I want to be able to drive down the freeway without feeling like I'm sitting inside a jet engine. Or a diesel engine. Or any engine.

Others (like those posters I mentioned) are trying to get to an acoustic nirvana where all you can hear is the slight whistle of the road.... until your 2000watt stereo kicks in. Okay, I'll admit, I want to hear some music when I drive. One of the reasons I'm doing the TDI conversion is because driving with one ear listening for an engine failure is tiring. And its boring for your passengers who plainly don't understand the tonal changes of an air cooled engine. Pooh on them, but I guess I'm one of them now. I kinda want to hear some Jerry when I'm driving around sometimes. Anyway, on to what I did with the Dynamat I found.

First, I double-checked the exposed wall where I removed the old insulation. This was before I shot it with the rubberized under-coating. This "check" was basically light rapping on the metal with my knuckles to hear for a rattley clang. I had put Dynamat over about 2/3 of the exposed sheet metal before I'd insulated before. The knocking produced an acceptable thunk-thunk, so I left it and moved on to the rear end.

When I drove this beast to and from the muffler shop (and to/from the tow-trailer), it was loud. I mean real loud. Like "I think there's an airplane landing behind me" loud. I looked at the rear engine hatch. Dynamatted. Rear cargo access? Dynamatted (but only on the large sections of sheet metal). Top-side engine hatch? Nada. Ah ha! I covered it almost completely with Dynamat. Each time I test-closed the hatch the "chunk" became more certain and the "clatter" disappeared. Now, I can drop the lid from about 6" up and it slams shut. Then, I attacked the last 4" of rear deck from inside the engine compartment. And then the short stretch between the spare wheel well and the left side of the top-hatch opening, test knocking along the way. This should meaningfully reduce vibration noise.

Ambient Noise

So, with a well adjusted clutch, a new engine mount and a warmed up engine, how much vibration noise is getting produced compared to the racket of a 100+ HP diesel engine? My guess? Not much. So, how do we reduce the ambient noise? Well, think about your house. In the rooms with the hardwood floors or tile, everything's loud. In your carpeted rooms, its a lot quieter. This simple case explains how we can address ambient noise in a bus: carpet the bugger. We can reduce noise with a vehicular version of a carpet pad first - closed cell insulation. You can buy 1/4" reflective insulation at Home Depot or Lowes that works great for this. I can't remember how much I paid for a roll, but I don't think it was more than $20. It covers a large area. I put some of this same roll under the floor of my bus years ago (between the 2 layers of thin plywood), and it definitely helped noise-wise. I still have a bunch left. I put some in the wall where the old batting insulation was. I'll be putting more behind every spot where I put carpet: walls, ceiling, doors.

This simple step should reduce more noise than the dynamat does. Why? The dynamat enthusiasts mostly are driving cars which have little ambient noise. They have nice foam headliners and plastic interior parts which absorb sound. The 1972 VW Bus has a wood ceiling and steel walls. No wonder it sounds like I'm launching a Mars probe when I'm driving! Once the dynamat is in, followed by closed cell insulation, topped with carpet, it could be a conversational volume in there. We'll see...

More next time,

pictures:

top: top-side engine hatch with dynamat applied.

middle: behind the stove/sink unit closed-cell reflector insulation installed

bottom: behind refer/storage unit closed-cell reflector insulation installed

From Fridge to Storage

the saga continues.... so, last post, I talked about Saturday, and the interior tear-out. It was fun. Sunday, I laid low and Monday I got back to it. I'll get into some of it, but I'll probably split into 2 posts anyway.

Using that Fridge?

In the 5+ years I've had the '79 interior in my bus, I've used the fridge exactly 0 times. It's heavy, takes up a bunch of useful space, and can't really fit much. At least that's my opinion. So, I decided I'd yank the fridge unit out of the cabinet, and do something else with it.

Pull the Dometic

First, a quick review. Looking at the cabinet with the icebox looking part to the right, there are 2 top-load covers; the left (rear) one is vented, the right (front) one has a thermal thing on the inside. The hinges on the back are attached to the metal trim, which is attached to the cabinet with Phillips head screws. Some of these screws double as a means of attaching the cabinet to the neighboring cabinets.

The ice-boxy thing is also held in with another screw from the side. Within the left-side cabinet, is the compressor, under a weird wood shelf thing. That shelf thing is attached with a metal bracket that also is attached to the metal trim with Phillips head screws. Underneath, the compressor is only held in with 2 more small Phillips head screws. Then, the whole unit slides out through the large opening behind the ice-boxy thing. There are a couple of electrical plugs in the circuit, but only the 3-prong should need to be unplugged to separate the fridge completely from the bus.

More Storage

It occurred to me while camping one time that the big cabinet holding the fridge is wasted space. The fridge unit was so small with the cooling bit in the middle of it that you couldn't even put cereal boxes in there. Once I pulled the ice-boxy thing and compressor out, there was all kinds of space. However, without the ice-boxy thing, there was nothing separating the two seemingly separate sections. So, I bought a single glue-board shelf (11.8" x 36") at Home Depot for $7. Cutting a 16" section off, I created 2 spaces by screwing the section into the wood base for the ice-boxy thing and then a single screw from the top.

And Even More Storage

The left-side (where the compressor used to be) was a little more tricky. First, that's the part of the cabinet that contours to the rear driver-side wheel well. Additionally, I decided to move the battery control panel from the wall into that cabinet. I thought it would look better anyway, and I have other ideas for how the wall will be redone. I'll get to that later. Anyway, the control panel mounting took a little time to get right, but I made the wall-side mount with some leftover flashing. I pop-riveted it to the side (with some more flashing on the opposite side for strength, and screwed the panel to the flashing.

For the other side, I sacrificed some of the wood bits from that weird wood shelf thing. I took some of the remaining shelf and cut another section about 12" long for a shelf for the "rear" section. This was screwed in with 2 Phillips head screws from the "front" cabinet and one from the side (near the back). Underneath the rear shelf, I stapled some closed cell insulation in hopes of stopping some radiant noise.

The end result is a nice solid storage spot for travel items reachable by the passenger riding in the seat behind the driver. I expect stuffed animals this Summer, but I'm sure it'll evolve into iPods and other electronica. The rear of the storage area is still open, but I need to be able to access wires and stuff, so it'll stay that way. I suspect a day will come when I hear my son exclaim that his something-or-other fell into "the hole".

That's it for today. After I finished the assembly, I deep-cleaned the whole thing. Its nice a purdy now. Next time I'll go into the rest of my weekend working on the bus. See, I told ya I totally tore it up this Memorial Day weekend.

Pictures:

top: yes, that's my boot and yes I do need a newer pair. In front of that is the battery control panel as I'm working thru attachment ideas.

middle: sizing the separation panel between the 2 new storage cabinets

bottom: finished cabinet.

tear it up

As I hoped, I was able to hit it hard this weekend. I mean hit... it... hard. Some 3-day weekends can be a mis-spent Saturday and then 2 Sundays - nothing gets done, and you laze around. This wasn't one of them. This was more like a Saturday sandwich with a mini-Sunday in the middle. I did too much to cover in one post, so I'll spread it out over a couple.

So I said how the battery was dead on Friday. After slow-cha

rging (2A setting) all night, it was still half-dead, so I let it be and switched to

othe

r things.

Now, first on the list was adjusting the clutch. Of course, that slid right off the list for the weekend. hahaha... so much for priorities. Well, hear me out now... I figured I couldn't really get the electrical done until I straightened up the wires I ran from back to front. That meant pulling the driver-side cabinets out, but first, I had to empty it of all the parts I jammed in there for the move. Yeah, when I said I didn't unpack the garage, that included the bus. So, anyway, I yanked all the crap out and then set to pulling the stove/sink unit and the refer out.

Interior Removal

The late-70's units are not held in by much. I kinda forgot from when I installed it. There are 2 Phillip's head screws behind the driver's seat passing through the partition into the stove/sink cabinet.

One of the screws that holds the top on the refer feeds through into the side of the stove/sink cabinet. The only other thing holding it down (other than weight and gravity) is a bolt through the floor inside the left cabinet door near the hinge. Now, out the backside there's the gray water vent and down through the floor there's the waste-water outlet. Of course, if the propane and city water are hooked up, they're in the way too. The only way to remove the cabinet and not break or scratch things is to slightly tilt it forward so the vent clears and then lift it straight up. Its heavy, so get a friend to help you or you'll feel it the next day - like I did :)

The refer is held down by even less. Like the stove/sink, nothing is holding it to the side.

There's at least one (may be 2) screws again from the refer going into the rear closet. Like the sink/stove, if you're gonna remove it (and not the bed first) without scratching it, you need to lift it straight up. It's heavier than it looks with the fridge stuff in there. Then, the fun started.

Insulation Rip-Out

Behind the cabinets I had put in some cellulose-based insulation. Not a good plan. That stuff absorbs water and can foster mold. Surprisingly, after 4 years of nearly constant rain, and very little fresh air to dry the bus out, the insulation was not in any way compromised. I don't think it even got damp, much less wet. Still, I plan of keeping this thing, and I don't want to take chances.

So, I pulled it all out, scraped the fuzz off the interior and shop-vac'd. The little bits I couldn't get off had to be dealt with. I still had a can of rubberized undercoating, so I shot the walls with that.

That was Saturday. I'll post the rest of the weekend at some point this week. It's a short week, though. I've got the boys tomorrow night (yes!), and I'll be watching the Bruin/Canucks Stanley Cup Final game 1 on Wednesday (stop by if you're local. should be a great game). Before we know it, the weekend will be here again.

pictures:

top - after refer removed, insulation taken out

upper middle - after sink/stove tipped onto its front, insulation taken out

lower middle - after interior shot with rubberized undercoating

bottom - after interior shot with rubberized undercoating