The Two Tanks

Brian finished the tanks and Aaron brought them on his way over this morning!! They just barely squeaked down the hallway. I designed it to be close, but boy I'm glad Brian and I were both using good rulers!!

So it was time to finally rip out all of Gary's beautiful work in the back 15 foot where we are putting the tanks (see previous posts for the design of the space). Boy, he really did a fine job with the carpentry and electrical back there - everything was tight and together. It was his two daughter's room and as Gloria and I tore out the walls, we kept finding little stickers and bookmarks and hairbands for lost by the girls back there. But, in the end it is the right decision - it will give me a row of three natural-lit computing workstations at the back of the bus as well as a single large bed.

Gloria is my new friend who found me through a post on the GMC-bus-nuts yahoo group and lives very close by! She has her own bus and is planning a veggie oil conversion. She also has a great website!! She lives with her partner on the Bay to the East of me and is coming back tomorrow too to help build the bedroom / study area. She also took bunches of pictures today that I will post tomorrow.


Aaron got lots of work done on the veg oil system today. He installed his solenoid system for routing the fluids controlled by the dashboard switches showed in an earlier post. We're really getting close to the end of this thing - we are still waiting on a few pieces of hose and couple more things that should be here tomorrow, and then we will be ready to connect everything together, put some grease in the tanks, and start testing the system maybe by Friday!! Aaron has done a really great job and I am lucky to have had him working with me.




While Aaron was working on the veggie system, I power washed the engine compartment that we accessed from a bedroom panel. From here you can see the rear axle, the rear brakes, the rear air suspension bags, and a huge metal thing that turns the energy from the main transmission shaft into the energy of wheels going round-and-round. This reminded me of how huge a machine this bus is. There will soon be 150 gallons of veggie oil atop this access panel (as well as my bed), so I figured I'd better clean it before it was sealed for (HOPEFULLY) forever. But it won't be too hard to get back in there if I had to.

Daniel and I spent the rest of the night going over the plans for the microscope stations. We have a really solid design worked out that should be both strong and flexible. We will order the parts tomorrow or Thursday and they should arrive on Monday or Tuesday - the first or second, which is right on time. Eddy and I can assemble them while we are not driving.

I'll leave you with a great picture that Kevlar here at Flowershop took with my camera.