Belafonte Reboot....Ambulance to 4x4 Camper Conversion

[tgreening]

Windshield done! Boy it's pretty, and $205 bones out the door and done on-site. I worked on my bike mount while they did the windshield.

Bike mounted! Still a few final bolts to go in but to mounted. Right now I'm using a ratchet strap to keep the load off the bike rack itself, and I'm going to mount a couple security points to attach an anti-theft/safety cable to the bike itself. That way if the mount would fail in some fashion the bike doesn't go bouncing down the road.

Pics after shower, dinner, coffee (maybe some ice cream). Gotta have priorities man.

 

[tgreening]

Windshield guru hard at work. It was actually kind of a pain in the butt for them. Something about it being ancient, 10' tall, and someone in the past trying to seal it with butyl instead of..urethane? Anyway..

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This is a new one for me. Guy stuck this thing to the windshield inside and fished some of that string to the outside. Then he hooked up a little handcrank to it and started winding it in. It sliced through the gasket like one of those wire cheese slicers.





Ok, enough of the incredibly exciting windshield replacement and on to the verty bike rack. If I recall the actual bike rack is from Rocky Mounts. The bike rack mount is by Booty-Fab Bob, sponsored by Lowes.

Last episode we started with these.

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A bit of time with a cutoff wheel and the bench grinder modified a pair of these into something resembling and oval shape (Half oval shown. Imagine the rest).
The long mount had to fit between the edges of the window and the limits of the door frame.

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<Intermediate pictures between above and below not taken by the lame-******** photog>


And all mounted up.

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Superfluous 2nd shot.

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I'm going to finish up a 3rd mount between the current two just for added support. I was going to fab up some sort of mechanical mount to attach to the bike frame and tie it to the bike rack, but I'm thinking it might be unnecessary. I think the ratchet strap will work fine to take load of the bike off the rack and transfer it to the upper mount I made, reason being the rack wasnt made to support the weight of the bike in a vertical plane. That along with the separate attachment points I'll make for a safety/anti-theft cable and I should be good to go.


I think my next thing is a temporary poor mans set of roof crossbars made out of some unistrut and some gutter mounts I have. I want to use my awnings, I have and idea for a ************** roof rack, but I dont have time to get it made before Expo so.....

Coming soon.....

 

[Bikersmurf]

Windshield done! Boy it's pretty, and $205 bones out the door and done on-site. I worked on my bike mount while they did the windshield.

Bike mounted! Still a few final bolts to go in but to mounted. Right now I'm using a ratchet strap to keep the load off the bike rack itself, and I'm going to mount a couple security points to attach an anti-theft/safety cable to the bike itself. That way if the mount would fail in some fashion the bike doesn't go bouncing down the road.

Pics after shower, dinner, coffee (maybe some ice cream). Gotta have priorities man.

$205... that's near half of what they want for a windshield here. I'm looking at $65+ just to fix some chips.

Who did it for $205? I may have to get mine done if I go on vacation.

 

[tgreening]

Safelite

 

[Bikersmurf]

Thanks... I'll keep them in mind if I'm south of the border.

 

[patoz]

When I got my Vehicle Extrication Instructor's Certification, one of the things we were teaching to remove a windshield intact was to use a thin flat blade and poke it through the sealant, and then thread a piece of piano wire through the space created. Next, attach a piece of wooden dowel to each end to create a tool that looks similar to this...

With one person inside and one outside, you see-saw it back and forth all the way around the perimeter of the windshield and it will pop loose. It looks like they have a much more sophisticated version of that tool.

I need to get me some fat tires like that for my bike. I'm too lazy to ride it, but it would look cool to ride around town with it on the rack like that!

 

[tgreening]

When I got my Vehicle Extrication Instructor's Certification, one of the things we were teaching to remove a windshield intact was to use a thin flat blade and poke it through the sealant, and then thread a piece of piano wire through the space created. Next, attach a piece of wooden dowel to each end to create a tool that looks similar to this...

With one person inside and one outside, you see-saw it back and forth all the way around the perimeter of the windshield and it will pop loose. It looks like they have a much more sophisticated version of that tool.

I need to get me some fat tires like that for my bike. I'm too lazy to ride it, but it would look cool to ride around town with it on the rack like that!

Rad rover E-bike dude! Odds are fattie tires wouldn't fit whatever current bike you have anyway.

I'm putting another set of my Booty-Fab Bob mounts on the drivers side door. Need to have someplace to hang my Expedition rated trasharoo thingy.

 

[patoz]

Rad rover E-bike dude! Odds are fattie tires wouldn't fit whatever current bike you have anyway.

Heck Yeah, I would ride one of those! Now I know what I'm getting myself for Christmas...!

 

[tgreening]

Think I'm having tranny issues again. Everything thing was fine, I parked for about an hour, and then when leaving I noticed. It's "mostly" ok but it seems like it's hanging on to gears way too long before it shifts, running the rpm up hirer than it needs to. Had a pretty big rain last night while I was driving so don't know if it could be a water intrusion issue somewhere in the wiring, of if that's all just coincidence.

Seems like I had this issue before but I'll be danged if I can find it in my own stupid thread. My Search-foo is apparently weak and yesterday I lacked the patience to flip through page by page.

Grrrr n such.

 

[FDM2012]

Hey Tom,

I believe you are referring to your post #271.

E

 

[tgreening]

Hey Tom,

I believe you are referring to your post #271.

E

Thanks. I had finally just bit the bullet and starting flipping through and found that post, but that was a fix (wrong) for different set of issues. That was general all around weird shifting patterns. Current issue was just hanging on to gears too long before shifting to the next, and not liking to get into/stay in OD. Issue in post 271 turned out to not be the TPS/FIPL but rather the tach/rpm sensor.

In any case, still had my issue this morning. Drove to my shop, stayed about an hour, and headed to my tranny guy, but issue was gone. He hooked up his scanner anyway and got a code related to the transmission position sensor bolted to the side of the tranny, and some other torque converter related code but he said that one wouldn't be from something that would just heal itself. Figures it's a result of the potentially bad position sensor.

I'll probably order and replace just for giggles, but I'm wondering if I got water intrusion ( raining like Noah's party the last few) or maybe just a bad connection down there. I'll crawl under this weekend and take a look, but as of now it's golden again.

But dang I hate intermittent electrical problems. Just fail already, or go away and stay gone.

 

[tgreening]

Hey Pat. Good news and bad news. I found that Wheeled Coach emblem you were after. That's the good news. That bad news is it's in 3 pieces. I tried to take a picture for you but somehow Photobucket ate the dang thing.

Other than being in pieces it seems to be in decent shape. I think if you were motivated and had a steady hand you could probably bond it to a new backing material and be in pretty decent shape. The breaks seem pretty clean so if you did it right probably not too noticeable.

Let me know what you think and we can go from there.

 

[patoz]

Tom, is that thing metal or plastic and how does it mount to the body?

 

[tgreening]

Tom, is that thing metal or plastic and how does it mount to the body?

Pretty sure it's some kind of hard plastic. It was stuck on with some kind of sticky gooey foamy kind of stuff.

 

[tgreening]

Tom, is that thing metal or plastic and how does it mount to the body?

Fixed my photobucket.

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