Date:         Tue, 17 Oct 2006 15:11:01 -0700
Reply-To:     John Bange <jbange@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         John Bange <jbange@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Re: Weekender interior questions
In-Reply-To:  <7c91f2270610171403q6e758211l890bdecafbc8ebb2@mail.gmail.com>
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> grey w/ blue or brownish tones? Do you play chess? maybe you want a
> more rubbery and grippy table top?  laptop work area? how much weight
> do you want to hold up there at table height? a bottle of wine, or 4
> buckets of fresh caught frogs?

Yeah, I'm thinkin' "bucket of frogs x4" capacity, myself. For a while
I was playing with a table w/mounting bracket I picked up for cheap,
ruminating over how one might mount such a thing in a plain-vanilla
van like mine while retaining full use of the giganto width rear seat
bed. I considered alternate tables, but that stock bracket is really
stout, just the thing to support buckets and buckets of frogs. The
"easy" solution is to just flip the table up when you want to use the
bed, but that's a serious pain. I did some fiddling and figured that
you could saw the two "legs" of the mounting bracket down so they only
reach to about midway up the side panel. This gives the tabletop a
little more room to "push in" (so it hangs angled in from the normal
vertical position), just enough for the bed to pass by. Of course this
effectively doubled the amount of force on the ends of the legs,
requiring a fairly heavy horizontal brace (some unistrut?) to retain
the table's strength. A bit of work, and not at all compatible with
any of the stock side panels, but workable.
 I gave up on the project once I figured out that I like to leave the
bed folded out and take out the rear-facing seats to make room for the
cooler when I'm camping. No point in having a table you won't use
anyway. Given that I'm a bit of a "fair weather" camper, I find I much
prefer sorting my buckets of frogs out on the picnic table anyway.

--
John Bange
'90 Vanagon - "Geldsauger"