Removing Seats and a Hoopty Christmas

Seats Be-gone!
Well, I had an afternoon during the Christmas holiday season to see what it would take to get those goofy green seats out of the Hoopty. Turns out, it was quite easy. Nineteen bolts/screws held each seat down. A few minutes with a ratchet and the handy Dewalt drill/driver and all of the screws were removed and the seat yanked out of the bus.

Here's a view from the back door with all of the seats removed.


A shot of the right side.....

and a shot of the left side. That's a lot of empty space to work with.

Sophie had fun playing in the seat graveyard.

Just for kicks, I decided to stick some of the seats back in along the walls to get a feel for how the future seating will be spaced. A dark shot from the back door with two sets of seats on each wall.
This actually brought the seating down to almost where I anticipate the new seats will end. The new seats will come all the way back to the pillar between the third and fourth windows. The area under the fourth window to the back door will hold all of the tailgating gear.
Merry Christmahanukwanzika!
As for the Hoopty Christmas..... I requested a few items to be used as part of the Hoopty. The first item requested and received is a car jack for my portable sirius satellite radio unit. I'll hard-wire this bad boy in (the Hoopty has no cigarette lighter) and we'll be able to cruise with extraterrestrial audio choices.
Obviously Hokie chairs were on my list to Santa. These all come from Sam's club online and are very reasonably priced. The goal is to get a total of 12 identical chairs that will be dedicated to Hoopty tailgating. Five down, seven to go and I have a birthday coming up in March!

That's it for now. The next update will probably involve the removal of the rubber flooring. There is much is to do and we're just getting started.