Category Archives: Vehicle

Body work, Exterior, Vehicle

It *is* easy being green

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We had all sorts of crazy notions for decorating the van.

As vibrant as its post-70s-paint job and sober-living-facility-logo’d style were, approved we wanted to transform it – to give it a new visual life to match its new incarnation as a rolling instrument.

We thought about going hotrod-lowrider with a lime-green metalflake triple-clearcoat paint job and lots of chrome. But that seemed too garish and expensive. One local shop was asking $800 to $1,000 just for straight paint even if we did all the bodywork … Continue reading It *is* easy being green →

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 →

Body work, Vehicle

Makeover, step 1

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So I spent Saturday morning in the junkyard with Dave (thanks, abortion Dave!), who helped me pull a rear door, a ladder and an extra panel of headliner.

Then I picked up a chunk of carpet remnant (right) which should mesh nicely with the body color and look pretty clean once I get it glued and screw all the floor moldings down again.

I spent a couple of hours cutting it to the shape of the vomitrocious (as my wife says) poo-brown carpet that had served as the van floor for a sober living facility taxi-bus and and for numerous band tours including one (or so John told me whilst selling it to me) involving the Germs.

I then promptly forgot to take a photo of the new interior until all the furniture was back in the van, none of it bolted down.

On Sunday, we yanked off the trim all the way around …

Continue reading Makeover, step 1 →