Rusty 87 build thread

[kidharris]

Originally Posted by musigenesis

I wish that I had some young relatives that I could Tom Sawyer into doing it for me. My niece and nephew are too smart for that, though.

Why does it have to be a relative?..or young? Just gotta convince them it's fun or kool

[musigenesis]

Juvenile spotted lanternfly. These things are destructive as hell but weirdly beautiful. I've only seen them before camped out underneath my generator (?) but it looks like they're moving inside. I think this guy is stuck to the paint since he hasn't moved all morning.



Finished painting everything in the front, so I'll be able to reassemble the cab tomorrow.

[Jocelyn]

Looking good!!

[Native]

The poor fella thought he found a swimming pool!


You sure have made it look real nice in there. Tomorrow wil be an interesting set of photos to view.

[musigenesis]

Underside in the back where the reinforcing angle steel is going to go. That little irregular sliver is all that's left of the cross member.

It's one of the cross members formed from the bent edges of two panels. I understand forming the edges into c-channels for this, but on my International (and I guess all Internationals) the edges are actually what I guess you'd call g-channels since there's an extra vertical lip. This basically turns it into two gutters that fill up with dirt and mud and then rust away. These gutters have drainage holes on the outside, so I assume the idea is that any spray coming up from the road will drain out on the edges instead of over the chassis. If so it's just a terrible design since they fill up with dirt so easily and defeat the whole purpose of them.



Actual galvanized steel under the goo! I was worried the rusto rusty metal primer wouldn't stick to this but after oshpo it seems to be adhering fine.





Primed. I got about half the paint on the bus and half on myself.

[musigenesis]

Originally Posted by Native

The poor fella thought he found a swimming pool!

He's blue daba dee daba dead.

Originally Posted by Native

You sure have made it look real nice in there. Tomorrow wil be an interesting set of photos to view.

I'm thinking it would have been easier to reverse the disassembly pics and color them in photoshop.

[Native]

I am glad you took the time to work the underside of the floor. It shows us that even with extensive rust, a lot of the structure still remains and that you have relatively solid floors left.


Yeah, photoshop my have been less physical work ...

[musigenesis]

My seat is held down by rivnuts, yay!



A method which doesn't work - I forgot you need something that you can prevent from turning, which isn't washers.





Fortunately I found my rivnut setter.



Spot-welded the new rivnut and the other one that I torqued out.



Rewelded a post that I torqued out as well. I am doing a lot of torquing out lately.



Decided I needed to spot-weld all the rivnuts just in case.

[Native]

Have you thought that if you can torque the rivetnuts out of the sheet metal that in a collision your weight may do the same?


I see the washers on the top, anything to sperad out the force underneath?



The primer on that field of blue looks way too much like rust!

[musigenesis]

Probably my best CL find yet: two sections from a brand-new sectional couch, completely free. Woman bought the whole kit and kiboodle, decided she liked it as just one long couch, and listed these two sections for free (she took the stuffing out of one of the pillows, but that will be easy to fix). It's 37" wide and I have 30" to put it in, so I think I am going to cut off all or part of the angled back and wrap the excess fabric around the edges; this will then sock up nicely against the wall and those loose cushions will still work as they are. I'll raise this up a bit also and put some storage underneath.

[musigenesis]

Originally Posted by Native

Have you thought that if you can torque the rivetnuts out of the sheet metal that in a collision your weight may do the same?

I sure have thought that and it's a scary thought indeed. This arrangement seems extremely high on the jankiness scale - not only is the seat base held to the pedestal via eight rivnuts only, the pedestal itself is only attached to the steel floor via nine hex-head sheet metal screws (either 5/16" or 3/8", not sure) and some welds (although the welds are probably enough to secure it pretty well, I keep forgetting there's a good bit of weld on it).

I just though of something I can do, and I may do it although not right now (since the current arrangement isn't any worse than what I've been driving around for a year and a half now). I can cut a strip of flat bar that will go underneath the pedestal (which is 1" off the floor where the bolts are), and drill and tap holes that match up with the rivnuts. The bolts project past the rivnuts by an inch or so, so I could then run them into this strip of flatbar into the matching threaded holes, and the bar would essentially serve as a big washer underneath.

[Native]

The angled back bolts into the base.

[musigenesis]

Originally Posted by Native

The angled back bolts into the base.

Heh, I couldn't figure out what the hell you were talking about until I realized you meant the couch.

Now that I look at this, I realize that all I really need off of this is the cushions and pillows, and the cushions are already the width I need. I basically just have to build a ledge.

[musigenesis]

I'm freehanding all the cuts in this section; once I work out the bevel angles and places to make the kerf cuts, I'm going to build some jigs so I can knock out all the pieces for my ceiling quickly.









I built houses in Atlanta for a year back in the '80s. On one house we had built and put up the walls and braced them all around, but when we had worked all the way around the floor base, the end of the wall was overlapping the beginning by a couple of inches so they wouldn't join up. The guys were actually discussing hooking up a pickup truck to each side and pulling to get the wall ends to meet, while I just knocked out two braces, pulled both ends back until they met and pushed the whole wall into place. I didn't have the nickname "college boy" for nothing.









This thing naturally broke in two places, but I have a good idea of where to place the kerfs to achieve this curvature. My idea of doing alternating 1" and 0.5" deep cuts seems to be unnecessary (and leads to the breaking), so I'm going to try just 0.75" cuts on my next attempt.

[banman]

Originally Posted by musigenesis

I sure have thought that and it's a scary thought indeed. This arrangement seems extremely high on the jankiness scale - not only is the seat base held to the pedestal via eight rivnuts only, the pedestal itself is only attached to the steel floor via nine hex-head sheet metal screws (either 5/16" or 3/8", not sure) and some welds (although the welds are probably enough to secure it pretty well, I keep forgetting there's a good bit of weld on it).

I just though of something I can do, and I may do it although not right now (since the current arrangement isn't any worse than what I've been driving around for a year and a half now). I can cut a strip of flat bar that will go underneath the pedestal (which is 1" off the floor where the bolts are), and drill and tap holes that match up with the rivnuts. The bolts project past the rivnuts by an inch or so, so I could then run them into this strip of flatbar into the matching threaded holes, and the bar would essentially serve as a big washer underneath.

Glad you already see this -- as I was looking at the pix I was thinking of a nice way to get you there...
With the seat belt integrated into the seat this is even worse. The weight of you + the seat x deceleration are what will act on the rivnuts...

What's below the pedestal? My seat base has 4 bolts that go through the pedestal and through the floor and even subframe on my bus.

On the level where you have the rivnuts can you replace the 4 rivnuts on the corners with bolts that go through the floor? then under the floor spread the load with a piece of angle or fender washers.
And it doesn't have to be on the corners -- just at least one through bolt on each side.
I honestly trust my rotten plywood over your rivnuts...

[banman]

With the foam board is that 2" thick you're using?

How many layers of foam board total in the ceiling and walls are you planning?

[musigenesis]

Originally Posted by banman

What's below the pedestal? My seat base has 4 bolts that go through the pedestal and through the floor and even subframe on my bus.

On the level where you have the rivnuts can you replace the 4 rivnuts on the corners with bolts that go through the floor? then under the floor spread the load with a piece of angle or fender washers.
And it doesn't have to be on the corners -- just at least one through bolt on each side.
I honestly trust my rotten plywood over your rivnuts...

Underneath the pedestal is sheet metal spot-welded to the rectangular tube framing (both factory but I'm not 100% sure of that). The undercoating in this area is still in good shape and the sheet metal and tubes are unrusted. The pedestal is attached to the sheet metal with screws but also it's welded all around the edge (by a good welder, not me). So I'm not really worried about the pedestal itself coming up in an accident.

But those rivnuts, hoo boy. From the look of the pedestal, it seems that rivnuts are what are supposed to be used with it, but that seems nuts (pun intended). I think I'm going to have to go through to the underside with some of the bolts as you suggest, probably whichever ones I can actually access from underneath.

[musigenesis]

Originally Posted by banman

Glad you already see this -- as I was looking at the pix I was thinking of a nice way to get you there...

BTW, you don't have to be nice or gentle about things like this. I'm a reasonable enough person that I won't take "you're gonna die, dude" personally.

[musigenesis]

Originally Posted by banman

With the foam board is that 2" thick you're using?

How many layers of foam board total in the ceiling and walls are you planning?

The bit I'm putting in the cab ceiling is 1.5" (rib thickness in an International) and then I'm going to put the original ceiling panel back up, trimmed to my bulkhead wall. Behind the bulkhead it will also be 1.5" between the ribs, and then front-to-back 3/4" furring strips with 3/4" XPS in between - that's if Lowe's will stop giving me 1/2" fricking XPS every time I order 3/4".

Walls will just be 2" XPS. The space between the ribs on the walls will be empty or I'll fill it with cheap styrofoam or something. I don't really care about losing a little width since I'm doing a center-aisle layout.

[Native]

Man, you are so industrious! ... and you wonder why I do not have a build thread ... nothing would be posted to it!


What are those blue "clamps" you are using on the foamboard? I may need some when (if) I get to adding insulation to the ceiling.