I put an ad out on Craigslist offering my bucket chairs free and, to my surprise, I got a few responses, with one being serious. Okay, now I need to get the bucket chairs out of the lounge, and fast!
I thought the chair nearest to the cab would be easy to pull out since I was pretty sure the bolts were accessible from the battery compartment. Ha ha ha ha ha.
As you can see in this picture, two of the bolts are hidden behind the compartment wall. I pulled as much of the wall as I could and was able to remove the nut on the bolt closest to the door. The fourth though, is a nightmare. I’m not a small gal and I simply cannot get both arms in there, one to hold the wall down and one to loosen the nut.
And let’s not get into the other chair. The bolts are hidden behind the fresh water tank.
Croft’s suggestion was to remove the bolts from above by grinding them. Nice in theory, but I tried that today and am certain that it will result in my burning my house down. I really don’t know if I should be doing anything that shoots hot metal sparks in all directions in such a small space.
The only good that came of this part of today is that I discovered that the top portion of my narrow pass-through is practically empty. I have space to put patio furniture!
It could still work – cutting the bolts, just put very damp cloths in spark range.
That thing makes sparks, doesn’t it! Donna is right – use lots of very wet rags around the work to catch the sparks. It is not as dangerous as it looks as the sparks loose heat quickly and are cool enough to harmlessly bounce off your hand a foot or so sway from the cutting.
For access to the nuts, cut a wedge out of wood and jam it in hold the wall down to give you room to work. You could also tape the wrench to a stick to reach the nut ant then use another wrench from the top to loosen the bolt..
Have fun! 😉 I am actually quite impressed with that you have done. Don’t let a few sparks scare you off!
Okay, you two, I’m going to try this. *shakes*
Croft, if you saw what my home looks like right now, you wouldn’t be impressed. 😀
As for wedging the wall, forget about it; there’s not even remotely enough room to do that and still manoeuvre!
For the other chair: if the bolts look like they will drop on top of the water tank when they are cut, be careful to cool them with either time or water before they drop. Maybe cut one 99,5% and then move on to the next and so on, allowing them to cool before making the final grind and letting them drop. Super hot bolts sitting on top of a plastic tank is not good as they could burn a hole.
Holding a wet rag on them will cool them rapidly. If you cut them almost all the way, a tap with a hammer might finish the job as well. The bolts may not drop out anyway and you may have to pry the chair off them after you cut off the head or nut, whichever is on top.
You will have a lot better idea after you get the first one out.
There is no way in hell those bolts are gonna drop on their own. If you look at the pics above, there is one bolt almost flush with the ceiling of the battery compartment. You have no idea how many swearwords it took to tap that bolt to that level!
I’m off to do this. *scared*