savannals

The Cavalry's vinyl floor has been installed! Very exciting times. Here's where it started:

Well, really it started with me sweeping out the garage so this wouldn't be unmanageably full of little maple helicopter seed things. Then I rolled out the vinyl remnant that we bought a little while ago and put the floppy floor mat that the van came with on top to use as a template. I marked a little larger than the floppy floor mat, for a rough cut of the flooring.

Fun fact: we chose this one because it was the closest to the size we needed, not because of the design (well, except I didn't want something super light which would show dirt very easily), but it's pretty nice!

This weekend we got the interior subfloor accomplished!

(We also put insulation into the ceiling to kick the weekend off. Very busy!)

Before I bought her, Agent May sat for a while at the dealership I bought her from. Which means that her tires, while new in terms of miles driven, also had experienced some unusual stresses related to lack of use.

A few weeks ago, one of the tire pressure sensors was telling me that the pressure was low in that tire. It hadn't been that long since the last time air was added to the tires. That, combined with the fact that another one of the tires assumed a somewhat odd shape when parked in certain positions, was enough for me to just decide to replace the tires. The old ones were... probably fine, but I knew I wanted to replace them eventually anyway with ones that were a bit more capable on less-than-paved roads. (I have no plans to take her off-road, but definitely want to be able to drive on not-well-maintained roads.) And it was worth it to me to do that sooner and avoid worrying about the integrity of the tires.

I also (for purely aesthetic reasons) got her some new wheels to go with her new tires. Naturally—The Cavalry needs shoes that are both on point and practical. She's looking awesomely badass!

Sometimes, I make fun things that have nothing to do with the van. I'm thinking I'll add them here as "side projects" in case you find them fun as well. If you don't, then scroll on by. Your regularly scheduled van updates will resume shortly.

Last fall, I rode my ebike to lunch and then had to figure out how to transport my leftovers back afterward. On the way home, as my hummus was swaying around in a plastic bag dangling from my handlebars, I decided that I really need a simple place to easily store small-to-medium things on the bike. I did some poking around for ready-made solutions, but didn't really find anything that quite fit what I was picturing.

So I ordered a wire basket, and spray-painted it with plastidip (kind of a rubbery coating), first in purple and then with a glittery-metallicky topcoat. And then it sat over the winter as I thought about how I wanted to do the bottom of the basket.

On the same IKEA trip where we bought stools for working inside the van, I also grabbed a pack of two plastic cutting boards, thinking the larger of the two would be about the right size for a platform in the bottom of the basket. And I was right! I just needed to cut off the handle end for a good fit.

Spring has sprung. Which is awesome! And it also means that we've had to do a lot of yard-work-type-stuff of late. I did manage a small projectlet in the van this weekend, though!

Back when we installed the seat swivels, we learned (by way of breaking both of them) that the covers over the seat belt buckle assemblies on each seat did not clear the base frame as the seat was rotated. Here's what they were covering. I assume that it's probably a good thing to keep this stuff covered, and probably for reasons beyond the aesthetic.

It turned out to be fairly easy and affordable to get replacement pieces for these, so I ordered new ones. But they still needed to be modified to cleanly move through the rotation path.