Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2007 14:47:09 -0700
Reply-To: Stephen Grisanti <bike2vcu@YAHOO.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Stephen Grisanti <bike2vcu@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Re: Table leg modification (Loren Bush) and cupholder coup
In-Reply-To: <001c01c7b76e$3b04e2d0$0201a8c0@dellumudu3qsdq>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
>Some cup holders mounted upfront
Here you go!
As Vanagon owners approaching the tenth month of life
with our Westy, we’ve finally done something about the
lack of workable cuppage. Instead of using the
folding types mounted to the front or side of the seat
pedestals (which seem like they might get in the way
when walking fore-aft), we tried to figure out a way
to use some old ones we had left over from about three
cars ago. These are the universal
plastic-basket-looking kind which hook onto the side
window slot on the front door on either the driver or
passenger side. These work fine if your door is thick
enough that the cupholder hangs straight, but on a
thin door like the Vanagon has the holder kind of
droops and is loose. It also tends to interfere with
the inside door handle, the armrest or the window
crank.
What I did was to devise a way to use the same
cupholder and hang it from the horizontal slot in the
plastic lower dash cover for the heater that resides
in front of the shift lever. You can work the hook
into the slot, but the holder droops there also. I
simply cut a shaped wood block (see below) to fit the
space between the back of the cupholder and the
plastic panel and screwed it to the cupholder after
the holder is hooked into place. The wood must be
unscrewed if you want to unhook the cupholder from the
plastic panel, but the setup is very secure and the
hook slides left and right in the slot to help prevent
interference with the shifter when trying to, say,
shift into reverse.
I can email pix if you like. Cut from 1"X 3"X 5" wood
block, notched side fits against dash panel, long flat
side nestles inside "hook" of cupholder. Screws go in
long side and top.
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Stephen
--- Troy <colorworks@GCI.NET> wrote:
> Ace hardware also has a selection of grommets.
> Generally they are stored in boxes in the hardware
> section. May be worth a shot. It really wouldn't
> take huge amounts of tools to shave off the 1/16"
> required for the dowel to fit into the opening of
> the leg. Just a piece of coarse sandpaper at a block
> would do it in a pinch. The table saw was very
> convenient for me, and fast! Guess I'm lazy;)
>
> Yes I do agree there are many things that do not
> require huge amounts of tools or expertise, but do
> make life in the Westy a whole lot nicer. Some cup
> holders mounted upfront, a grab bar for the driver's
> door are two that immediately come to mind.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Troy
>
> RE: Grommets for rear table leg
> I just looked at the Rockler website. I'm going
> to have to measure again but it looks like the sizes
> they have are the same as what I found locally. I
> have seen on Westy with a grommet in that location,
> a '91 and the owner said it came to her that way so
> no help (and I never got a chance to steal it :) )
>
> And I agree that a bigger diameter dowl would be
> just a little more solid. But I have no shop to
> work in so turning an ovesize dowel down to fit
> isn't in the script for me.
>
> One of these days I'm going to continue with my
> idea of a BLOG or Web page that shows some of the
> easy convenience upgrades and changes that can be
> made by anyone with basic tools. We have a lot of
> people on the various lists that either don't have
> the skills (so they think) or the facilities to do
> major work on their vans but there are a lot of
> little things that can be done that make life better
> in the Westy and don't require an engineering degree
> or a machine shop.
>
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