Rear Shock Weld

Most of my repairs have been cosmetic, or easily functional:
-Fuel Pump
-Interior
-Seat Covers
-Steering Wheel
-Pop Top

All involved simple tools and an obvious process of remove-replace.

Not this time.

A couple of months ago I noticed a small rattle in the rear passenger area. I emptied the closet, tightened things down, checked the roof rack, checked the bolts on the CV joints. Nothing. Then I looked at the shock absorber and noticed that it moved far more than it should.



The shock is held in by a bolt that screws into a welded nut on the back side of the mount, the mount is welded onto one of the long support beams that make up the bus frame. There isn't much room to re-weld that little piece, so the best thing to do was to (eeep!) cut the shock mount off and place the nut back in.



After careful sandblasting and beefing up the weld points (like so)


we added some extra steel strips for strength:


and now have a stronger shock absorber mount.



Bus no longer has that rattle, and the shock absorber actually does what it is designed to do - absorb shocks (as opposed to rattle around in a broken weld).