welding things

Today when I went to visit, SBF was making brackets to weld into the van to bolt the backseat captain chairs into. The bolts on the chairs don't quite line up with where the benches sat, but of course this man knows what to do. 

It starts with drilling into metal.

Filing the metal.

And then you have this set up. (I think he had to make at least 4 of these.)

And then there is welding. 

Welding progress.

And into the van!!

musical cup holders

Did you know you can just pull out the entire cup holder section of your vehicle? I did not. Not that I ever attempted such a thing. But it's perfectly doable if you have a handy, strong guy with tattoos nearby. SBF just yanked it out and then yanked out Sister Van's. We did side by side comparisons  and the conclusion was that both kind of suck, as far as cupholders go, but Sister Van's was a little bit better. Both are a sticky gross mess and I'll have to post pictures of the new cupholder in place when we get it all washed up.

CWV's guts behind the cupholder.

CWV's cupholder unit, complete with ashtray and Hall's cough drop.

Sister Van's cupholder unit. It almost holds SBF's big ol' coffee cup. But not really. Conclusion: He's gonna have to start drinking less coffee.

musical bumpers

One of the nicest things we took from The Sister Van was her bumper. Apparently it is pretty simple to take off bumpers. You just need a couple tools and a strong man (preferably covered in tattoos). This is the part where we discovered that THE FLOOR IS LAVA, aka covered in STICKERS. I didn't have to get in them, but it hurt when I tried to brush them of SBF's shirt. Anyhow, CWV's new number looks FABULOUS on her!!

The original bumper. 

The bumper we were snagging from Sister Van.

Rolling around in the stickers to remove the old bumper while the new bumper waited patiently nearby.

Putting the new bumper in place. (I helped with this part!!)

And ta-dah! CWV has a brand new-to-her shiny bumper that you can STEP ON so you can see the rusty roof better. It's pretty dang cool, actually. Thank you, Sister Van!  We didn't install the old bumper onto Sister Van. It's right next to her in the dirt if you want your own rusty old Club Wagon bumper.