Well they definitely didn’t say this would be easy… and they ain’t lying! This post will document the last few days of work – by the end of this bus project, I will either have failed miserably, or will have so much confidence I won’t know how to handle it!
We decided to start with something “easy” – replacing the rotted out lower cargo door pieces.
Cut away the old.
I fit the new piece on, except it doesn’t really fit – it seems like the panel is too long and doesn’t match the contours of the original door supports at all… so I start to tweak it and hammer it and pretty much smack it around for a while.
This is after a day of messing around – it kind of looks like the original, but is way out of alignment.
After a lot more hammering and tweaking, and yanking with pliers here and there, I got it to kind of fit. I know they say you always have to do a little bit of work to the replacement panels, but this seemed excessive, and these pieces aren’t cheap – the repo parts are better than nothing, but it doesn’t do much to help my already way too cynical and generally ‘pessimistic towards anyone who sells anything because it is all crap’ type of attitude!
To cap it all off, right before I call it a day on fitting the part to the door, Noelle suggests I try to close the door… well of course the frickin door doesn’t close! It is getting wedged onto that weird platform thing that some previous owner slapped onto the edge of the floor… perfect. Looks like I’ve got some more work to do before welding this sucker back together!
