Post 4 - Floor and Wheel Chair Lift Removal

We put daylight savings to good use this weekend. That extra hour was much needed after a night of partying for Halloween! This weekend was all about getting that massive wheel chair lift out of the bus and taking up the floors. We also thought it was about time to introduce my dog, Zeek, to the bus and get him used to it. He shockingly was very well behaved all weekend. I think he's going to like this bus! 

Rubber Floor Removal
Taking up the rubber was really easy. We got 2 crow bars and just started by tearing out the center aisle strip. From there it probably took 30 minutes to get up all the rubber and reveal the plywood underneath. We were expecting what we found - it was damp  and falling apart. Nothing too shocking there. 

Subfloor Removal
The bus was built to hold 3 wheel chairs and has a bunch of mounts in the floor to strap in wheel chair passengers. These mounts were holding down the plywood and the sockets were completely rusted out so we could not remove them. We decided to get a circular saw and do plunge cuts around the mounts so we could remove the plywood around them and then we would be able to access underneath the mounts and cut through the bolts. Once we got all the cuts done, getting the floor up was easy!

First looks at the metal underneath!

We're going to have to learn how to weld :(
While trying to remove the rubber from the stairs, they crumbled beneath us. Looks like we are going to need to learn to weld and build a new stair case. 

Removing the lift
The bus had a wheelchair lift. We were thinking of trying to sell it, but when it came time to remove it, it didn't quite work and getting it out of the bus proved to be difficult. We decided to dismantle it and will be scraping it. Lifts are extremely heavy and there is a real danger of crushing your fingers. I left this job to Craig and Pete. They grabbed some long metal bars to assist them in pushing the lift off the bus. We brought the bus over to our junk pile and lowered the lift out. Once the base of the lift was on the ground we disassembled it from the top. Once it was all loose Craig and his dad pushed it forward and out of the bus. 

"Geronimo!"

Next steps!
Next we will be cutting out all of the rusty nails that are still stuck in the bus and cutting through the bolts to remove the wheelchair mounts.

All cleaned out! Awesome progress this week.