The Unseating (8/1/20)

I’ve posted some of these photos on social media already, but in case anyone wants more details about this stuff, I’m going to do a few posts about what I’ve been doing to the van. First order of business was to remove almost all of the seats, which, in the van’s time as a hotel shuttle, cradled thousands of asses over hundreds of thousands of miles. RIP seats. You served well.

The Great Unseating would not have been possible without help from my brother, whose driveway I’m using as a work space. The seats were bolted through the van floor with washers and nuts underneath the van, so removing them required one person in the van and one person underneath. This was actually weirdly fun because I got to lie on one of those little boards with wheels and scoot around underneath the van, playing face limbo with the gas tank.

Another thing I did not expect was how hot the bolts, washers, and nuts were immediately after we removed them. And there were so many — I think about 30 bolts altogether, with their associated nuts and washers. By the time we finished and I moved the van to a different spot, it looked like it had rained little metal bits all over the driveway.

I posted the seats for cheap on craigslist and Facebook, but there were no takers. So after a few days I loaded them up and took them to the dumpster behind my condo. The neighborhood’s dumpsters are thoroughly dived, so they probably didn’t sit there long.

I kept the rear bench seat, both for possible use as a bed and because I do want to have the option of carrying more than one passenger.