You're tearing me apart!

"Every act of creation begins with an act of destruction." - Pablo Picasso

Last Look

This is the last look at the van before I start taking things apart.

People of Interest

Brain- Hometown friend

Cost

Local dump - $5

Sold the seat - $ -150

Total: $ -145 (meaning that I made $145 taking apart the van)

Materials

Screwdriver

Drill

Crowbar

Wrench

Plyers

Dremel

Wheel well covers and walls

Let's start with the easy. First thing I removed were the wheel well covers. They were just attached by screws. The walls were a bit trickier. First off, there was a bolt that held the wheelchair seatbelt attachment. I needed by dad's help to yank 2 out of the 3 of those off. Also, the window opener things (not sure what to call them) were screwed on over the plastic wall and I was not able to undo those screws, so I ended up just cutting the plastic. Eventually I yanked out the giant wall pieces out and threw them in my truck.

You can see in the picture that there were some lights attached to the ceiling which I also ended up removing. That's what the dangling thing on the right side of the van is.

Surprise!

I knew that the ceiling was a drop ceiling by looking at it from the outside of the van. What I did not know was that there was going to be a metal cage that would prevent me from using all that extra room (~4 in). That was a tad annoying, and proved to continue to be in the way (but also helpful sometimes) when building anything in the top foot and a half of the van. I was considering taking the bars out, but they were welded to the side of the van. I later realized that it is most likely a roll over cage, and I should probably keep it in.

What also surprised me was that the ceiling was not as secured ad I thought it would be. There were four screws going into a furring strip that was ziptied to one of the metal bars.

Floor

The floor was surprisingly hard to remove. I considered keeping the floor so that I would not have to deal with it, but it wasn't insulated and it had the lipped strips that I worried would be a tripping hazard. I could have insulated over the floor and Start anew there, but that would take shrink the space by another inch plus, and seeing that I could barely stand in the van as it was, I didn't want to make it any shorter. I asked some friends (shout out to the Tufts Nolop slack, a slack channel with a bunch of mechanical engineers from Tufts) who encouraged tearing out and starting new.

You can see in the right photo that there was a metal border covering the edge of the grate and the plywood floor was under that. I had to bend the metal back and forth until it just snapped (Brian's idea). The screws holding down the plywood had also rusted and were almost impossible to take out with my "toy" drill. I ended up prying it off with a crowbar.

Seat

To get out the floor, I had to remove the back seat that was bolted to the underside of the carriage. It's an old car, so it was rusted on. Brian came over with his fancy tools (he called my drill a toy drill) to help. The main problem was that I could not remove the seat, because they were rusted in place. The one bolt that I was able to get to turn, spun with nut.

"I thought you were being overdramatic over the phone, but you're right, these bolts are stuck" -Brian

After a long time of trying to undo the bolts, we gave up. Maybe I could just leave the seat in there. It folds up anyways.

Eventually I took it to a car shop and within 20 minutes, they had it out. They had to use heat to loosen the the rust. I tried to pay them, but they refused.

"No, no, just if you get into an accident, bring your car to us." - Mechanic

Well, low and behold, I got into an accident (with our family car) and took it to them. I always keep my promises.

After the seat was out, removing the floor was pretty easy.

Electrical

The power to the wheel chair lift that used to be in the van was still connected. They had uncovered ends, so I thought the best option was to disconnect the wires from the battery. The wiring from ran under the chassis in a tubing that was pinned to the metal. My dad had to help me pull it out.

There was also a separate fuse box for the wheel chair lift. So that needed to be disconnected from the wiring and battery as well.

Lastly all the wiring from the missing ceiling lights has to be taken down too. I was able to reuse those wires for my fan connection later on.

Dump Run

I threw everything into the pick up and dropped it off at my local dump. Brian helped me with that too.

Outcome