the akitabus

[Stuff]

like a pro!

[dirtygoat]

Kinda wishing I would of welded mine shut... Looking good...

[dogfinn]

Dirty Goat, love your bus build, cool cabinets made out of steel and armor plate, (who woulda ever thunk)
We also have auto chains but I am missing the last leg of the system, the arm and spinner head with the chains on it, so if you dont want yours perhaps we can make a deal if they will fit mine.

and now that you are a pro at painting can I bring my bus to you for a paint job? we dread having to sand and paint the sucker.

dogfinn

[TygerCub]

I have to say I absolutely love your countertop! The colors are awesome. It kinda glows in that light. Well done!

[dirtygoat]

Originally Posted by dogfinn

Dirty Goat, love your bus build, cool cabinets made out of steel and armor plate, (who woulda ever thunk)
We also have auto chains but I am missing the last leg of the system, the arm and spinner head with the chains on it, so if you dont want yours perhaps we can make a deal if they will fit mine.

and now that you are a pro at painting can I bring my bus to you for a paint job? we dread having to sand and paint the sucker.

dogfinn

Where I'll be towing my 4x4 to has snow about 4-5 months out of the year, so I'm probably gonna be using them a lot...

If I had to do the paint over again, I think I'd probably go with a simpler system... That was the first time I used a pro type paint system...

[dogfinn]

We have decided to take the front metal cap and turn it into the rear cap for just a little more storage in the back of the bus. Problem is the front cap was not uniform as the front door created a cap that didn't fit the back...... so a liitle welding and fabrication and whoa laaaa it is done.


Had to add about 6" onto the the right hand side of the cap so that it fit all the in the back of the bus.

[chev49]

no suprise there...

[dogfinn]

We then cut extra holes at either end and made doors for the contraption, paint it with hammered Broze to match the other metal parts in our bus and now If I do say so myself it fits rather nice and works great. you can see the open door on the left of the rear cap, this created an area about 10" by 7 1/2' by and average of 12" in height for storage..... cloths or who knows what. we do know this, there is not much storage space in our bus so every nook and cranny has to be utilized.

[Tango]

You can never have too many "nooks & crannies". Nice re-cycle!

[dogfinn]

finished the back closet for electrical (upper area) and storage (middle 2 areas) and hot water acess hatch (lowest slide panel) all sitting on top of driver wheel bump.

[dogfinn]

[browncrown]

Beautiful work! Really like the cabinets

[dogfinn]

Thanks browncrown
OK one more of the finished cabinet in back bedroom and the on to the floor.... we are going to do the floors now even though we are not entirely down with const. but this way after the benches and eating area are done the flooring will be all ready there to make it nice in the bottom of the storage areas.


we are using strip flooring that we found at lowes on sale for less than .50 a foot, so about 150.00 to do entire bus with pieces left over for replacement when one goes haywire. ( burn, stain, nick, tear)

[dogfinn]

would have loved to figure out how to get this panel to slide into postion with a push of a botton ..... but we are just not that good.

floor is done and then covered with ram board to protect it while we finish the last parts of the bus... even though the bus will never really be finished completely.

[ol trunt]

You are without a doubt "that good". Your floor is beautiful as are your cabinets!

[dogfinn]

Ol Trunt, Thanks for that boost of confidence, but for the life of us, we were not ready to tackle a floor section that slides into place with a push of a buttom..... sounds pretty cool though. I really thought hard about a slide out in the back of the bus but i just didn't feel that i could make a satisfactory go at it.

dogfinn

[dogfinn]

We decided to take the left over wire chase that we had ( did not use behind the cabinets in the galley) and wanted to make a better mouse trap where the horizontal meets above the drivers window and drops down to the instrument panel. The orginal vertical piece was plastic and not the same configuration as the rest. So with our little 110V wire feed we are reconstructing that confluence of wire chase......
you can see the plastic part in the first photo ... it just didnt look right




unfortunately we ran out of wire chase so we are haveing some made up by a local sheet metal company, should only run about 20.00 bucks. Once we get the extrra piece we will have a 90 degree turn to right at the bottom to meet up with the new instrument pane that we are building
we will post pics when it is all said and done.

[bansil]

Looking forward to that

[browncrown]

I admire your construction skills...Quality workmanship for sure

[dogfinn]

Thanks, Brown Crown.... we get excited whenever someone coments of our progress .... both good and bad.