Head For The Hills!

We left Hondo on March 29 and headed for the hills. Hill Country that is! We only went about 80 miles before stopping for the night, because we wanted to have a bit of a shakedown before we got out of familiar territory. Darn good thing we did too!

First though, I need to cover a little unfinished business. 

If you remember back a bit, I did some suspension modifications on the HOW. I still had to finish that job by installing a rear track-bar. That didn't go well on the first attempt because things weren't lining up the way they should, and I couldn't get the two most important nuts to seat properly. I followed the instructions to the letter, (probably where I went wrong) and when everything didn't fit or tighten correctly, I had to get it all apart again. Not an easy task as the directions said to use the red flavor of lock-tight, (which is pretty much permanent), on everything. Also the nuts that wouldn't tighten right were self-locking and had locked themselves nicely about a 1/4-inch short of where they were supposed to stop. After too many hours of "persuasion", I got everything apart. I called the manufacturer and spoke to support gal who pretty much said that as long as I use the red lock-tight,  I could use as many washers as it took to get the whole assembly to align correctly, and I could swap their nuts and bolts with appropriate replacements of my choosing. So off to the hardware store I went for a 1/2 dozen washers and some nice new Grade-5 nuts and bolts, (and yes... I did get ones with deep enough shoulders that no threads were covered except with the end lock-washers...). I had to wait out a couple rainy days before I could continue, but happily, it all reassembled the way it should. 

While I was workin' on the track-bar, I noticed that the U-joints on the rear of the driveshaft looked dry, so I did a lube job on the whole chassis, suspension and steering. 



I had raised the HOW as high as it would go, on its jacks, so I could get to all the grease zerks, and while it was up there, I noticed that the rear anti-sway bar was making contact with the differential. I was aware that might happen so I had to reverse the Cheap Handling Fix, and restore the anti-sway linkage to their stock locations.





And as long as I was down there, and already all dirty and greasy, I did an oil change...

(I went with synthetic)


We couldn't be happier with our new dining/ work area. 

As you can see, we got some chairs.

We used the former seatbelt anchor points to fasten the table down so it won't go airborne if we get in an accident .

Sorry about the crummy picture quality. I just can't get the hang of those hold-it-out-in-front-of-you-point-and-shoot dealies. 

And Still More Woykin 'n Practicin'

Well...

We been talking about it; we been planning for it; we been driving around with the materials for it; and since we were due to be leaving, we when for it...

Remember this from last time? 

The dining booth

I mentioned we had big plans for it. Actually, we had smaller big plans for it, which consisted of recovering the cushions and putting new fabric on the trim. We could have done that.... BUT NOOOOOOO! NOT US! That would be too easy! 

Living in our HOW means doing a lot of sideways walking and or scooting, and all that sidewaysness is really hard on our knees. Since we had replaced the sofa in the lounge with Lay-Z-Boys, the room had gotten kind of narrow when the recliners were, ... well, reclined, and walking past the recliner's footrests required walking sideways. Getting in and out of the dining booth - sideways; getting from the foot to the head of the bed - you guessed it - sideways. Then there is the biggie - climbing in and out of the passenger seat workspace. That required moving sideways AND getting around the doghouse (big hump that covers the engine).

So we tore the dining booth out!

We figured five days tops. One to tear it out, two to frame it out, and two to finish the space. Did I mention the booth is built in?  And it has electric and ductwork running through it? 

It turned to be more like a week for the demolition and framing before we could start the finish work. We had a few false starts, and a few more do-overs, but after 10 days we had the structure completed and ready for the trim work.

The new space with the paneling in place and the electrical fixtures and heat vents in place

Up until this point in the project, we had been able to reuse the materials and hardware from the original booth and stuff we had laying around, so we didn't have to get too many supplies. But now we were down to the sub-flooring and we really didn't know what we wanted to do about that. At some point down the road we need to replace some worn out carpet, so we didn't want to sink much into a temporary flooring solution.

We spent an entire day looking at possible solutions when we ran across a carpet remnant that would do the job and only cost twenty bucks. After some cutting and molding we had our new space all ready. Just a little spackling and repainting on the walls and it'll be peachy.

Last thing we did was assemble and install the table we'd been driving around with all year.

So, now we have a large table that we can both sit at, side by side, just like 2 P's in a pod, lookin' out the widow while we eat, work or whatever.

Oh yeah, we still need chairs....