Fuck It! We'll move tomorrow!

Woke up and was pretty motivated to work on the bus. Weather forecast looked solid, so I figured I had the whole day to try and put on my rocker panel and make it not look too terrible. Anyone can do that if they have an entire day, right? Well it took most of the day. One sunburn, one just plain burn (on my shoulder ouch!) and a lot of welding wire....

Lots of time getting the hole on the bus to fit the panel nicely, still could've been a little better but I am pretty happy with where it ended up. I had a bit of a gap, maybe an 1/8th of an inch for about 8 inches on the top side, so I saved that for last thinking it would be the hardest part. Held the piece in place with some tack welds and then started going at it. It was difficult on the top side to not blow through the sheet metal, which I did several times. I have gotten much better at fixing my screw ups and also identifying when I might be pushing the limits of the metal.

Fit panel in place

Tacked in place and started on the right side

All welded in (1hr 12min after previous picture)

Ground down and primed

This was what it did look like without a rocker panel

It was a lot of work, took longer than anticipated for sure. Doing stuff "right" takes a long time. Also, I'm not that good at welding so I was learning as I went. As you can see, there is still a pretty obvious seem there still but the panel was welded so the original body metal kind of overlaps it slightly. This was done so it would shed water and also so I can use some body filler to smooth out this seem and maintain the pseudo-original body line of the car. Hopefully by the time it is all repainted the line will be more or less invisible to everyone except type A car geeks. If it is really good, even the type A car geeks won't notice!

Glad I did it, the whole process took probably about 4-5 hours. I won't have good access to a MIG welder for the next few months after I bring the bus home so I figured I ought to do it now. Oh, also I got burned in three places on my shoulder while I was trying to weld the bottom lip (not visible in the pictures). Basically some weld splatter flew back and burned through my shirt and it kind of sucked. I still need to more firmly attach the battery tray that is tacked in place. Maybe will get to this before I move out.

Tonight I went to Sebago lake where Dave (one of my roommates from last year) has a camp. Visited with him and saw his awesome boats but didn't get any pictures of them. They were mostly undercover though and none were in the water. They have a ski boat with a 427 in it which is pretty cool and basically all of their boats are immaculate. I think there were 5 boats and 2 empty boat trailers in their yard... they have a boating problem.

Anyways, heading back to Litchfield hopefully with a truck load of all my hollis crap tomorrow. Lots to cleanup here, especially the mess outside around the bus... eeeee....