Progress Update 081015

It took some time to finally get back going on Fred.

The thing that was holding up progress was inside the fuel tank. The fuel pump decided to bite the dust. Not a surprise. It was acting hinky when we bought it so it was on the list of items to deal with anyway before becoming too adventurous with Fred.

The “normal” way to address an in-tank fuel pump issue is to drop the tank. That’s not an easy project unless you are set up with the equipment to do it that way.

So we’re thinking … What if we need to do this out on the road somewhere … out there … way out there … one of those out there situations where you are doing good to bum a lift into town to an auto parts house then back out there somewhere to the van?

Brian brought his little battery powered reciprocal saw over and we cut a hole in the floor. The spots where the floor was spot welded were drilled through, the floor plate now converted to an inspection plate removed, the fuel pump replaced, and the inspection plate set back in place and secured with metal duct repair tape. Done deal. And if ever we need to get at that fuel pump again … doing so will be as simple as opening the inspection plate.

Oh. If you do this yourself … be careful not to cut through the fuel and electrical lines that run to the in-tank pump. Cut those and you’ll create unneeded work. Cut through the fuel line and you’ll likely have a lot gas fumes looking for a spark to set them off.

Ripping the old carpet from the floor didn’t take long. I didn’t go all the way to the front of the cab but stopped behind the front seats. The floor was full of holes where seats, the chair lift that was in the van when we bought it, and seat belts were bolted in. Little squares of the metal duct repair tape covered the holes.

So what do we do for flooring in Fred?

First is an underlayment of insulation. It’s the closed cell foam type that comes in 4 x 8 sheets. It has an R-Value of 3. My main concern with the insulation isn’t temperature oriented. It has more to do with quietening the tin can rolling down the road sound that vans are noted for. Once the old carpet was removed it got a little noisy inside Fred.

Thin plywood goes on top of the insulation. I’ve got a little cutting and fitting to do to have the plywood finished. Maybe an hour of playing around with it before installing linoleum on top of the plywood.

Once the lino is down I can start building the bed and other furnishings.

Speaking of bed …

The mattress for Fred is on the way to this address. They call it a short-queen size. It is the same width as a regular queen sized mattress but it is a couple inches shorter. 60” x 74” x 9”. That’s going to be a really good sleeper and it’s just long enough that my feet won’t hang over the end.

Also on its way to this address is a 100 Watt solar kit for Fred.

I thought about doing a roof mount system but decided against it. I’d rather the panel be portable so we can move it around. The van can be sitting in the shade and the panel can be set out in the sun where it does its thing converting sunlight into somewhat FREE electricity. I say somewhat FREE because there is an investment up front for the solar system.

What kind of investment for the solar? Around $350 for the solar panel, charge controller, and wiring from Renogy, a sealed no-maintenance deep cycle battery, and a 400 Watt inverter. That’s enough solar to keep our phones and laptops charged and to run a few LED lights at night.

We are getting closer by the day as we slowly set aside old life-consuming modes and replace them with new life-liberating ones.

Things are about to really start popping.

Removing The Lift

Where’s Fred Now?

Still here in the yard but a little closer to where we need it to be.

I stopped by the court house Friday to take care of the registration and get the tag. Fred is road legal now.

After a couple of really good rains that have come down, since redoing the screws and weather seal on the top, it appears the awful leak has been remedied. Finishing that part of the project now simply involves getting out to the RV place for the rubber molding trim and attaching it.

I started working on getting the wheelchair lift out a couple weeks ago. I removed the stabilizers that attached over the door, removed the cover where the power cable attached, and unhooked it. The bolts that attached it to the floor needed an extra set of hands … somebody up top holding one wrench and somebody underneath to get the self-locking nuts off the LONG bolts. Shirli and I tackled that part of the project over the weekend and removed the lift from the van.

Removing the lift exposed a project that has to be addressed … some holes in the floor that will have to be repaired. I am still pondering the simplest yet best way to address that issue. One route would involve bending some plate, attaching it with self-tapping screws, and employing some spray-in foam to plug the holes. A simpler route that I can think of would be to use a little fiberglass material and resin. I am leaning toward the fiberglass route.

The back seat, along with the middle and rear seat belts, and the side consoles are the next “removal” project. Once those are out I’ll shoot a little silicone into the bolt holes to weather and critter seal them. Then we’ll be ready to begin turning the interior into what we need for it to become … a micro-home on wheels.

Shirli has been wanting to take Fred for a spin ever since it gained a spot in our yard. That happened as soon as the lift was out. Of course she can handle it. Never doubted it for a second. The gal used to drive a jacked up Suburban and could put it into tight parking spots in a way that would make a country boy jealous. The Jersey Girl certainly impressed the heck out of this Alabama country boy and did it with regularity.

She still does.

We were not back at the house but a few minutes before Shirli was online ordering a color coordinated vanity plate for the front bumper. What does it have on it?

Couldn’t be but one thing … FRED.


Yeah.

I’ve been anxious to get behind the wheel myself and took Fred for a little spin Monday down to the corner gas stop and then to check on one of my lawn care customers.

It was on that little jaunt that I noticed a mechanical problem that has to be fixed before we take Fred out again. It is a pretty serious steering fluid leak. I am not certain, at this early point in the discovery, if the problem can be remedied by tightening the lines or if something will need to be replaced.

Secure and Sealed

It was a little scary what I found when I started addressing the roof leak on Fred.

Honestly. I do not know how the roof stayed on as long as it did. It was also leaking badly enough that I did not want to do any more washing on it until the leak was taken care of and I dang sure didn't want it to go through another one of these Alabama rains.

Most of the screws were the original self tapping ones, a lot shorter than I would have thought they would be. They were not too bad rusty but where they made contact with the van the body had rusted enough that the screws turned loose and were just sitting there holding nothing. Most of them you could grab and pull out without using a screw driver. A few had a little bite to them but not much.

The screw here in the picture looks like a drywall screw. There were several of these around the top loose in the holes in the body. I had to pry them back with a flat tip screwdriver while unscrewing with a Phillips.

The original self tappers had a square hole. Fortunately I had the right sized driver in the shed. I had to buy it to change some lights on an '89 Aerostar van back in the early 90's. Most of the screws on the passenger side had been replaced at some point with slotted hex-head screws. That 5/16 socket on a nut driver worked best since the slots on the screws had gone screwy.

All new stainless screws now. Just short of 100 of them. They are a bit larger in diameter to compensate for any size increase in the original holes caused by rusting. All the new screws snugged up good and tight.

I used a siliconized acrylic caulk to seal the aluminum trim to the fiberglass top and it is labeled to adhere to both. It came in a few choices of colors. Brown suited the color of the van. I was going to use Lexel but one of the things I noticed on the tube was that it was not paintable. White or clear were the color choices. And clean-up had to be done with mineral spirits. The siliconized acrylic is paintable and cleans up with water until it has cured. The tube said it has a 40 year durability. We'll see about that.

Silicone products, and a lot of other things, are hard to get off your hands once it dries.

A little trick I learned way back there was to use WD-40 on the belligerent stuff once it sets up on your hands. Spray your hands good. Work it a little. Wipe it off with a cloth. No need to carry go-jo on the road. Not when there's a can of WD in the tool box.

I think I'm going to fill the little rain gutter with the same siliconized acrylic. I do not want to take a chance on water backing up and seeping in from the bottom side. Sealed from the top. Sealed from the bottom. There will simply be no way for the top to leak.

Fixing Fred's Leaky Roof

We knew from jump that there was a water problem ... water getting into the van from somewhere.

It did not appear to be getting in around the windows. So I got up a little  higher. Figured I would go ahead and clean out the old caulk and do it up fresh with some good stuff before sanding the fiberglass top and repainting it.

On the drivers side I found where the top was loose. It appeared that some screws had rusted away as a result of water getting in past the molding and caulk.

I started to just reattach the cap on the drivers side and give things a good caulking.

The more I thought about it the more it made sense to pull the rubber trim piece and check all the screws. It was a good thing I did. No. It wouldn't be a good day if we were off in the boondocks and the roof blew off our house.

At some point in its 22 years of life someone had already replaced a few screws on the passenger side. The slotted screws are the replacements. The Phillips are the original. Some of the replacements had already begun to loosen. Most of the original self-tapping screws were either loose or falling out as I pulled the rubber trim piece out of the molding. Maybe I got the all ones that hit the ground and averted flat tires on something in the future.

I will try one of the replacement screws in holes where the originals are so loose they'll not tighten. Size things up so I know what I'm after when I go to the hardware store. I will probably go up a size on the screws just to make double sure they bite and hold good.

Once all the screws are replaced I'll go ahead and give things a good caulking. Then we'll check out the RV store for the rubber trim that fits inside the aluminum molding.

This is a project to get done before the next round of rain comes through.

Looking For Fred

Years.

We have been looking into this mobile idea for a lot of years.

A decade? I’m not sure exactly but it wasn’t long after we signed these mortgage papers shackling us to house notes until we are almost 80 years old. I still remember the words of the attorney after we signed the papers. “If you pay, you stay. If you don’t you won’t.” He was a bit of a gruff old cuss.

That was about 6 months after my 48th birthday. I will be 62 in 14 months. Social Security age if I get on it early. Early has been the plan all along. Shirli is about 19 months later on drawing her pennies.

Talk about a couple realities that flat suck. Pay until you are old and dried up. If you get behind, for whatever reason, the bank is going to bounce that old ass of yours out on the street.

I’ll not say that we’ve studied every angle of it. But we’ve covered an awful lot of it. There are a number of ways to go about it. Some are more complicated than others. Some require a lot more finance than others. We considered hauling our 25’ Dutchmen and workcamping as a way. What with Shirli’s bookkeeping skills and my maintenance skills we would be a good fit for a workcamping lifestyle. Or so some of the research suggests. We may very well do some workcamping if we feel so inclined and the opportunity suits us. The idea of pulling a rig has a good many limitations that we wanted to get around though. It may work for a lot of folks but it just isn’t our cup of tea.

Van dwelling?

We stumbled onto the idea a couple or three years ago. The idea became something like a little smoldering ember. A little breeze came along now and then that fanned it. Our interest increased. The more our interest increased, the more we studied the idea. A small glowing ember grew into a passion that evolved into a passionate plan … a plan that we have been working, adjusting, and continuing to work.

We settled on a name for the van long before we found and bought it.

Sure. Why not? Folk give names to their boats. Folks give names to their guns. Folks give names to a lot of things to personalize them. So why not personalize this van with a name?

Fred. We named it, well in advance, Fred. Sort of jokingly but definitely honorably, fittingly, and respectfully after Shirli’s dad ... The Real Fred.

We started looking online for Fred. Everywhere we went we started noticing vans on the road, vans sitting in yards, vans in parking lots. Old vans. Newer vans. New vans. We got to the point where we could spot van dwellers at Walmart. How many times did the word … Fred … find itself spoken between the two of us?

The problems with the vans we were seeing? Some were too expensive. Some were too worn out. Some were being used. Another problem was that we simply did not have the cash to just go out and buy a van. Even one for a couple grand and the last thing we wanted to do was go take out another note on something. No way. Fred would be bought outright. No payments owed. Clear title. No liens.

Fred had a name. Fred had a purpose. We just hadn’t found Fred.

We were looking for Fred in all the wrong places.

We found Fred about a year ago through a friend. Not only did our friend know about the van. He knew the van. He had a personal mechanical relationship with the van and knew it bumper to bumper. He had done an awful lot of work on the van doing all the normal maintenance stuff for the previous owner making sure it was road worthy. The asking price was better than right.

The matter was a simple one. Get some cash together and buy the van.

Yard sale day … last spring. (2014)

I hate doing yard sales. All the work involved. It was a good one though. A lot of folks left here with stuff and they traded cash for stuff. The real kicker was the two old guys from outside of town that stopped by. They eyed our little vintage camper in the back yard, looked at it, and pulled away from here with it in tow behind their old rattling Chevy S-10 pickup. Both of them happy as pigs in mud on a summer day … and the two of us sitting here with the cash proceeds generated by the sale of something that was not part of the yard sale.

Watching the old relic rolling out the lane was a happy-sad thing for me. Happy because the proceeds it generated insured that we had the cash needed to buy Fred. Sad because I was more than a little attached to the old thing. Attachments, smart people say, make people sick. They keep people chained to whipping posts.

It is kind of odd. We had the cash to get Fred back in the spring. Circumstances and definitively working out the deal took some time. Longer than we had hoped but time honestly worked in our favor.

We brought Fred home last week.

P.S.- The vintage camper we called Arvey came back into the family. The two men who bought it turned around and sold it almost immediately to my son-in-law's sister. She loves it!

The Real Fred

Now just because I named my bantam rooster after my dad doesn't mean Fred was small and cocky…. On the contrary, he was a big man, with a huge presence… I always found his big, calloused hands a bit frightening, and his gruff nature put me off. We had a fractious relationship in my teen years and beyond, but I have been assured he loved me with all his heart. I believe that now…. There were times when I didn’t.

Fred was a lot like me, although I didn’t readily admit it. He was a tinkerer, a wanderer, and an inveterate scrounger. He cared not one whit about the latest fashion, and wore his grubby jeans low and baggy. His flannel shirts and striped railroad cap were a signature… pushed back on his head, a two day growth of beard stubble that he loved to rub on my cheek to hear me holler, and a pair of sturdy black leather laceup boots were his usual garb. He cleaned up nicely, and I have memories of him, clean shaven and smelling of Aqua Velva, heading out the door in the evenings. The most I could ever get from him when I relentlessly questioned him about where he was going was “Out”.

He had a growl to his voice that would scare a mean pirate, and could get volume from it that must have had something to do with all the years of voice lessons. I still have never heard anyone who could yell as loud as Dad… A favorite thrill was to request him to “Roar” at the dinner table. While my grandmother flinched in ladylike mortification, he would open his mouth and with a deep breath, let out the word with such projection and force that the rafters nearly shook. We shivered in delight, mouths agape,and when it was over and he was just Dad again, we giggled and tried to Roar ourselves, and of course requested it again and again. One roar could create a lot of chaos at the table!

Fred built things. He restored and painted and drove us around town in a 1922 Model T Ford with a crank start, tootling the “ooga” horn whenever he saw someone he knew or even when a stranger waved. He restored a Fokker biplane on the dining room table, sewing sleeves of airplane fabric over wooden strut wings and then painting and shrinking the finished wings in the backyard. He painted it bright yellow, got a pilot’s license, and flew it out of Hanover Airport, until one day, working with a welding torch, he burned it to ashes.

His garage was a mess… a greasy sort of piled -up place that always had some kind of project going on, and a big Collie mix yellow dog tied in front to guard the door. The dogs name was Tallywowser, and although he seemed to love me, I stayed my distance from him, since I was told he was a guard dog and mean. I don’t think he was mean, because I remember him getting loose, going to hang out with the kids at the bus stop, and then diving under the nearest car when the dog catcher came for him. He snarled and growled until Dad could come and snap his fingers and get him out and take him home. One man dog who loved kids, I suppose.

Shirli

The Next Leg

Where to begin … oh where to begin?

It would be hard to start at the beginning.

The truth of the matter is that everything that has gone on before in our lives, before we met and after Shirli and I met, is related to and an integral part of this thing … this “Where’s Fred Now?” thing. So I have a difficult time saying that this is a beginning when, in fact, it is more of a culmination of a lot of things. It is more of a point in time where a lot of things have melded together to create something that appears to be a beginning.

It is more along the lines of the next leg of the journey than it is a beginning. Very definitely an adventurous leg. We’ll admit that about it.

This thing is something that we have both longed for and worked toward. It has not been an overnight knee-jerk decision. It is not a whim or a wild hair.

No. Not hardly.

Not considering the many hours invested in talking about it. Not considering the many hours spent researching and studying the ins and outs of it. Not considering the many hours involved in exploring options and alternatives to living life as we know it in its present state.

It is, at the same time, also something where several contributing circumstances progressing over time and lately come together forces their bearing upon us. We are, like so many others, direly affected by the economics, politics, and legislations that characterize these modern times.

Victimized? Yeah. There is a certain sense of that involved in this thing though we refuse to allow ourselves to simply lay down and die in the stinking mess.

No. We are motivated by the aforementioned. We are stimulated by these circumstances to simply go ahead, take a giant but well thought out leap, and begin following what, for the two of us, has been a dream for quite a long time now.

The bottom line is that we can keep doing what we are doing … the doing of which is really getting us nowhere other than older fast and deeper into a hole that is growing increasingly more impossible to crawl out of … or we can drastically do something else. What we have chosen is the something else. For the sake of our sanity. For the sake of our physical health. For the sake of being able to simply live without the demands and dictates of a corporate society that expects more from us than we are willing or able to continue giving.

We are tired of and done with being a part of the mass of men that lead lives of quiet desperation in a constant grind of working all weekend doing everything that is necessary in order to go back to work Monday morning to grind out another week; only to keep doing it over and over and over again, snatching and grabbing for a few minutes here and a day there to simply be humans being instead of humans doing. The thing about the snatching and grabbing … after a while … living lives of quiet desperation … folks even give up on snatching and grabbing.

We are simply fed up with it. Done with it.

Thoreau was right-on about a lot of things. Not that we are basing our lives on Thoreau but we are going confidently in the direction of our dreams, living the life we have imagined fully expecting and anticipating that, as we simplify our lives, the laws of the universe will be simpler. Life will never be without problems and challenges. To think it possible to live without problems and challenges is a fool’s dream. But it can be a whole lot simpler.

Inherent in this thing is an issue of personal integrity ... one of those situations where personal integrity demands doing something else. Eating a little crow now and then is one thing. A total diet of crow is another matter altogether. Occasionally compromising is one thing. When compromise is an ongoing one sided matter it becomes something inordinate that is a soul-sucking unhealthy trap spawning dread and strangling precious life. Vitality evaporates. Creativity takes flight and vanishes. Wake with a mind full of dread. Go to sleep with a mind full of dread. It is a hell of a way to live.

This thing, despite any contributing circumstances, is what we want to do … it is what we choose to do … it is what we need to do to reclaim the vital and vibrant essence of ourselves. It is a must do thing. It is a now or it likely will not happen thing. Honestly. There is a lot more to it than loading up, taking off, and seeing the U.S.A. in a Chevrolet like a couple of old farts out for a drive. Plenty of old farts take off for a little trip. This is no little trip that we are talking about and preparing for.

Not hardly. This is a total lifestyle change in the works.

Is it scary?

Some. But what is more dreadfully frightening to think about is what we will continue to face if we keep just doing what we are doing as fellow participants in this party of quiet desperation.

When are we pulling out?

Sooner than later but not soon enough.

If we had the time to do the work and everything needed to do what’s needed … Fred could be ready to pull out in 2 weeks. But there are still a few loose ends to tie knots in. There are some things to move and get set up as a home base so we can … as our son-in-law calls it … post up when we are back this way. Stuff to sell. Stuff to give away. Stuff to load up and haul to the landfill. There is a lot of work involved in downsizing. There is even more work to it when you are talking about becoming full-time van dwellers with an RV in reserve as a place to post up.

2015 has been designated as our year to finish wrapping things up and putting things in place.

Where are we headed?

Who knows for sure? Not us. We have something of a plan but no itinerary or schedule in mind. West definitely figures into the picture. West is a big land. A lot, an awful lot, of BLM land and other federally managed land that offers free parking! The mountains are calling. The deserts are calling. There are sunrises and sunsets to experience.

And West is only one of the directions on the compass dial. There are 360 degrees on the dial.

So follow along.

Or, better yet, get yourself a motorized cottage and tag along with us. Then you’ll not have to wonder or ask …. Where’s Fred Now?

Sincerely,

David & Shirli