Saturday, February 7, 2015

Bathroom about to commence

Today started with a somewhat exciting and nerve-wracking drive to Habitat for Humanity to see whether they had any shower units. As it turned out, they did have a shower unit but it was built into a bath so the footprint would have been no improvement. That was a disappointment. Across the road however as Lowes and they had the 2x4 I desperately needed for construction of my bed. I also picked up another plastic plank for use underneath the bath.

The drive to the store was pretty much OK though an idiot in a big black pickup truck decided to play chicken, darting across the road in front of me. I had to jam on the brakes and pray that going downhill at 45mph, the brakes would at least slow me enough that I'd only hit the back of his truck. He managed to get out of the way but incurred the ire of the driver in the lane to my left who must have had to jam his brakes on also. Arriving at the store I noticed my idling oil pressure had dropped from 40PSI to 20PSI. Popping the hood, I could see oil covering pretty much everything and a tiny drip of oil. In a panic, I texted the mechanic I know and received a reassuring message back that it was OK as long as there was enough oil in the system. Watching the oil pressure gauge like a hawk, after visiting Lowes, I made it back to Pelion.

Parked, I set to working on the inside of the bus. The first thing was to try the hole stopper caps that I'd bought in Lowes the day before. Those were too big, sadly so I went on with crewing down the toilet floor white planks. Those were screwed down with hexagon head self-drilling screws. While doing that and applying silicone caulk between the boards, I considered making my own cover for the holes in the side of the bus from steel sheet though as yet I had no steel sheet.

Looking around for spare steel I saw the aluminum strips that had been used to hold in the old plexiglass windows. One of the strips looked wide enough and so it was cut to form a plate over the outside of the hole. Simply put, it was glued in place with silicone caulk, drilled and riveted. Life wasn't that simple though! The 1/8" rivets were bigger than the 1/8" drill bit by about 1/32 That did not make life very easy as a bigger drill had to be borrowed in order to complete the operation. That done, an aluminum plate was riveted over the biggest hole cut into the side of the bus by the hillbillies.

That done, I pulled out the DAPTex again and tried again to seal the window I moved. Even though it was warm, the DAPTex was still useless. This time it foamed and kinda-sorta squirted into place but wouldn't stick to horizontals. Thus the DAPTex was dumped back into the pile of cans waiting to be used at the rifle range. The window was sealed with silicone caulk as it should have been weeks ago.

Having sealed the outside of the bus, there was a corresponding hole on the inside. Between the two there was insulation but as I had no insulation to put in, I taped over the inside hole and squirted DAPTex inside. Maybe it will have some use since it is now foaming. If not, no matter. I will buy foam to insert then put a metal plate on the inside.

Tomorrow? Well, the bus mechanic might be arriving. As I marked out the floor to cut the plywood ready to replace it with plastic planks the light went out so that might be a job for tomorrow. That, and replace the burned out light bulbs that I bought replacements for the other day. I suspect the mechanic will be busy checking brakes, ABS and fixing the oil leak.

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