You all are great. Thanks for the good words and boost. It helps.
A little "backstory" as they like to say now ...
We all get tired, and sometimes exhausted. And often we have many reasons. What we don't usually get to know is how many reasons.
I have 116 reasons. Exactly.
Why exactly 116 reasons you ask? Excellent question.
116 is the exact number of bolts in the four corners of the truck's box that I replaced. Well, there and one other place.
Big deal you say?
1. First, the old rusty bolt had to be removed before a new one could be inserted.
In some cases, when a good amount of torque was applied from a cordless drill, the nut broke off when I tried to remove it. Those were easiest.
In other cases, the nut unscrewed as you would expect. However, those were harder. Why? Because the nut is on the inside of the box and the bolt head is on the outside of the box. Without a 50-ft arm span, that's a lot of climbing in and out of the box and running back and forth for one person.
Also, the original bolts were carriage bolts, meaning that the head is rounded with nothing to grab onto. I settled on using a pair of vice grips on the bolt head side and a cordless drill on the nut side.
Great, you say. No, because normal vice grips won't grab a round carriage bolt head. So, I found a pair of vice grips with rounded jaws. Didn't even previously know they existed.
Now great, you say. No, because there was typically no one to hold the vice grips while I was on the other side of the box using the cordless drill. Now what? I finally devised a way to put the vice grips on the bolt head horizontally, and then using a rope, I tied the vice grips to the frame under the truck to act as my second pair of hands. This worked. But for every bolt, I had to lock the vice grips, and tie the rope to the vice grips, and then go inside the box and unscrew the nut. And then come back outside, and do it all over again for the next bolt. There was still one type worse.
For some reason there were some very stubborn bolts that simply would not come off. Often because there was no way to get a grip on the bolt head. Those had to be cut off with a Dremel tool. How? Probably different ways, but I used the Dremel to cut the bolt head into quarters. That often didn't work completely. Then I had to cut behind the bolt head until it fell off. Thankfully, there were not many of this type.
Finally, there was removing the bolt from the hole. For reasons too complicated to explain, the bolt was often wedged in the hole even with no nut and no head. I had to use a punch and a big hammer to knock the bolt out of its hole. This was true for most of the bolts.
2. And then the new bolts had to be put back in. I'll spare you most most of the gory details which took about 10 different steps, but imagine that kind of process above somewhat in reverse, for each of 116 bolts, with lots of Sikaflex sealant, disposable gloves, and enough paper towels to wrap around the Moon.
By the time I got to 50 or 60 bolts, I had finally devised a good method and the process speeded up some. And in the interest of full disclosure, I had a helper a time or two for a few minutes to take off some of the worst bolts.
You're tired from reading that. Imagine doing it. It stunned me that it took me several days to get this done, in and around other things.
Okay, I'll close with the little box truck humor.
Yesterday I was up sitting in the box of the truck, taking a break. I started visualizing where everything was going to go, to include the walls that need to be built for the front and the back of the box. Once I started deducting space for all of that stuff, and the furniture, and the kitchen counter, and the bed, and the shower, a thought crossed my mind -- I might not have enough space. Where on Earth was everything going to go?!?
That was a genuine moment. Now I know that all of you van guys and girls can shed a tear for me now. The poor 14-foot box truck guy who doesn't have enough room. ;-)
Tom
