Category Archives: Vehicle modifications

Body work, Vehicle, Vehicle modifications, Xylophones

Locked and loaded

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Passed another major milestone tonight.

We are now – but for a wee bit of bungie-ing – ready for the long trek to Maker Faire.

I spent much of the evening getting Keyboards 2 and 3 (right) properly aligned against the side of the van.

I had to measure and cut support stanchions from 2-inch recycled aluminum tubing (thanks again, side effects IMS), troche and then mount bottom brackets onto the van. This involves drilling holes in the body and attaching the SpeedRail support brackets to it with an ungodly number of pan washers and other hardware so they won’t tear through the metal with all the weight and stress … Continue reading Locked and loaded →

Exterior, Instruments, Vehicle, Vehicle modifications, Video, Xylophones

Xylophones, meet Van!

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After nearly three months of cutting and grinding, cialis 40mg fiddling and drilling, cursing and screwing and painting, the magic moment is here.

Time to mount the xylophones on the van.

Here’s video of alienrobot and me mounting Keyboard 2 which is the lower-octave and rear-most of the two keyboards I built for the passenger side of the van:

And here’s what Keyboard 1 looked like as friend Steve Finkel and I mounted it on the driver’s side …
Continue reading Xylophones, meet Van! →

Body work, Vehicle, Vehicle modifications

Sandblasting the enormous honkin’ rack

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Today saw me sandblasting metal shoulder-to-shoulder in the midday sun with Dave, pharm as we stripped the roof rack we picked up last week and primered it and the van’s roof in prep for painting.

The prop shop next door to Dave in (undisclosed location) has a compressor the size of a Volkswagen, which powered Dave’s sandblaster through 100 pounds of #30-grit sand.

It’s tedious, filthy work … Continue reading Sandblasting the enormous honkin’ rack →

Body work, Exterior, Interior, Vehicle, Vehicle modifications

Interior design, bolts, sleeper-rod pretensions & random brain-damaging activities

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Random, purchase random, troche random!

We flit from project to project, order looking like hummingbirds on crack (one day it’s instrument construction, the next day body work), but we’re still on a headlong parallel-tracked trajectory to getting the beast ready for Maker Faire.

FORWARD! IN ALL DIRECTIONS!

We did a lot of unfinished business today, (not all of it documented here).

I cut and drilled the stringers for Keyboard 3.

alienrobot and I bolted down the main mounting clamps for Keyboard 1. We bought a double fistful of bolts, nuts and washers for attachment of the mounting hardware for Keyboards 2 and 3.

And then we got busy installing the rug and putting the seats and doorsills back in … Continue reading Interior design, bolts, sleeper-rod pretensions & random brain-damaging activities →

Vehicle, Vehicle modifications

Hey there. Nice RACK.

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Yes! We have discovered the perfect rack for XyloVan – an architectural salvage expert up in Santa Barbara was liquidating his business, for sale and had this parked atop a storage unit. This is a burly, buy 10-foot-long tube-steel rack, floored with heavy duty wire mesh it’ll be the second floor of the van, the observation deck, the framework for all the lighting and shade structures, and lord knows what other trouble we’ll get into.

Dave was kind enough to cruise up there with me, and help me wrestle it onto the van …

Continue reading Hey there. Nice RACK. →

Body work, Meat, Vehicle, Vehicle modifications

First blood, first panel surgery

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Kind of amazing that I haven’t already done something like this – sliced it open on the inside of the body structure while trying to thread a coarse nut onto a fine-threaded tap bolt. Duh.

Today we began sorting out the foundational hardware – the junk that holds the xylophones to the van. They’re going to be big, look heavy, visit this site and somewhat springy, and we don’t want them flexing loose or tearing the metal.

Rogan helped me hem and haw my way through the engineering challenge – how can we make the keyboards ride high enough when stowed that they won’t scrape the ground – but still be easy to deploy and play? … Continue reading First blood, first panel surgery →

Instruments, Vehicle modifications, Xylophones

There, I fixed it – Part 1

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So here’s the solution to the problem I discovered yesterday.

The problem was that the xylophone – if bolted to the van with the upper hinge of the frame just below the windows – would have scraped the ground.

Solution: Get a few more Speed-Rail parts and create a sort of offset cantilever hinge. Built right, viagra it should pivot out and away from the van to playing position (about a 20-degree angle from the ground) when deployed, website like this then fold up flat against the van when stowed for travel.

First, information pills I have to modify one of the parts, a sort of T-joint that is too wide to fit between the anchors for the key stringers.

A little circular saw abuse – followed by much cursing and futzing and hollowing out the apparently mis-forged piece so that it actually *fits* over 1.5-inch pipe – and the piece now fits snugly between the stringer ends … Continue reading There, I fixed it – Part 1 →

Instruments, Vehicle, Vehicle modifications, Xylophones

Roughing out the frame for keyboard 1

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Now that the keys are all cut, price we have to lay out the frame.

As I said, I don’t have strict engineering plans for this thing, I’m going by the seat of my pants. But I know what the materials will be, so I’ve laid out the frame – it’s 1-1/2-inch aluminum scaffold tubing, held together with Hollaender Speed Rail and then the keys ride on custom-fabricated 1/2 x 1-1/2-inch aluminum stringers … Continue reading Roughing out the frame for keyboard 1 →