September 18th
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September 18th 2003


We started out the day by stopping by the parts trailer to pick up a few more things.  We pulled all of the water tanks, the water heater, battery and most of the exterior panels.  The gas tanks are the older style that nobody can fill anymore, so we'll have to buy our own tank(s).

It took a few hours to get all of the tanks out.  With some helpful advise and the use of the "Binford 6100 toilet flange remover" (a piece of wood with 2 bolts through it) from one of the shop technicians, we finally got the last tank loose just in time to meet my oldest one as she got off the bus from school.


We took everything back to the bus and started work on blacking out the windows that were going to be covered over on the inside.

It took a full can of spray paint to get a good coat that blocked out all of the light from the outside.  We will be insulating over the inside of the window a bit later and want to make sure that nobody will see the insulation from the outside.

Our plan is to tint the remaining windows so that from the outside it will just look like all of the windows are tinted instead of covered over.

We mounted a box fan in the hole in the roof where the escape hatch used to be and opened a couple of windows and the front door.  That helped to keep the fumes to a minimum.


After blacking out the first window we moved on to insulating where the upper windows are.  We have made the decision that we are going to skin over these windows and put in various vents and some crank out windows in some places, but the majority of the area where the upper windows are currently will be skinned over.

Becky took over blacking out another window while I finished up the insulation where the upper windows are.  

I realize now that we could have just rolled on the paint and saved a ton of time.  Painting the huge windows with a spray can is a test of your patience...  It looks great from the outside regardless of how it is applied from the inside...

 

To see how the blacked out windows would look compared to the ones we planned to tint, I went ahead and applied tinting to the small square window between the two we painted solid black.

It looks great.  You have to be inside the bus to tell the difference, and once the blacked out windows are covered up from the inside nobody will be able to tell.

We ran into another issue with the black water tank.  Unlike the gray water tank, the opening for the tank is not on one edge, but right in the middle.  That makes it impossible for me to put the tank in the correct location for the toilet.  So, either the toilet has to move to another location or I will have to modify or buy a new tank.

At the moment, I think I can resolve the problem by switching the toilet and sink locations, but I will have to test fit the tank and see where the toilet can be located...  If it wasn't necessary to have the dump on the drivers side, things would be a lot easier.  I'll figure out a way to make it work, but I can see how using the tanks from an existing RV add to the complexity of our installation.  I am not sure how difficult it is to modify the tank(s).  I'll start looking into it tomorrow.


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