The bus is at home and in the carport and just waiting to be converted. Today was the first day of work on the bus and before I can do anything else the seat have to come out to give me a blank canvas to work on. From all accounts the seats should have been easy, just undo the bolts on the inside right. No. All of the seats were held in place with bolts and the nuts under the bus weren't locked.I contemplated climbing under the bus and using vice grips to hold the nuts, but that was just too hard. Instead I made a trip to the hardware store and bought some new cut-off discs for the angle grinder and ground the heads off the bolts. Lots of sparks and metal filings everywhere, but much easier. If you wanted to re-install the seats again, I wouldn't use this method as it weakens the mounts which could cause them to break.
This is the before photo with the seats in place. The bus was licensed to seat 20 adults, but I reckon they would have been jammed in like sardines. The seats are so low. The bus was used to ferry primary school kids around so not much leg room was needed. I had some trouble fitting the vehicle into the carport but luckily it has an earth floor and I was able to dig out a couple of wheel 'trenches' to allow the bus to fit under the trusses in the carport.
Well thats the end of the first days work. Seats are all out and just needs a clean up. It didn't turn out to be as hard as I thought. Best thing is that there have been no nasty surprises. The bus looks to be in good order. There are only a few very tiny bits of rust that will be easy to fix. But that will be the last thing. Whats next? I am going to mark out the location of fittings next, but that will have to wait until next time.
