{"id":1628,"date":"2010-07-31T08:14:07","date_gmt":"2010-07-31T15:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/plug-bug-luggage-panel-replaced\/"},"modified":"2010-07-31T08:14:07","modified_gmt":"2010-07-31T15:14:07","slug":"plug-bug-luggage-panel-replaced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/plug-bug-luggage-panel-replaced\/","title":{"rendered":"Plug Bug: Luggage panel replaced"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Note: this post is out of order; I did this quite a while ago, but our internet (Surfnet Wifi) has been down at home.<\/i><\/p>\n

The rear luggage floor, behind the rear seat, was rotten with rust. I didn’t want to replace the entire panel ($200) as I figured it would be a pain to spot weld it in. I thought it would be easier to just weld in a new piece of sheet steel, and save some money. I also had plans of widening the rear area about 2″ to fit in more batteries. It turns out I couldn’t do that, and we’ll see why below.<\/p>\n

At lunch during work Shane came with me to Sims Metals in downtown San Jose and we picked up some stock. I found some outdoor 16 gauge steel, which is much cheaper than new sheets. Unfortunately the piece wouldn’t fit in my car, and I wanted it kept larger than 4′, and their clean cutter cuts a max of 4′. I had the guy torch cut it, and it didn’t warp it too much. I always prefer to drive the Prius over my truck. The truck gets 10 mpg and the Prius gets 47 mpg. I drive 40 miles each day (to work and back), so driving the prius is less than one gallon of gas (~$3) while driving the truck if 4 ($12). That makes a trip to sims cost even more if I have to drive the truck, so I avoid it if I can. Anyways, the piece fit:<\/p>\n

\"IMG_8956.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I tried to cut out the old junk with the jig saw, but that wasn’t getting me close enough to the edge:<\/p>\n

\"IMG_8959.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So, I ended up using the grinder to cut it out:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Now, I wanted to widen the area to fit more batteries, but taking a close look at the wheel wells meant I would have to cut into the metal that appears to be partially structural, so I opted to not do it and deal with the battery location problem when I get them.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_8961.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I cut the new piece with the jig saw and then tweaked it slightly with the grinder until it fit just right. I tacked it in with the MIG welder and then welded it all around to keep the water out.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_8967.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Note: this post is out of order; I did this quite a while ago, but our internet (Surfnet Wifi) has been down at home. The rear luggage floor, behind the rear seat, was rotten with… [read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-electric-bug"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.corbinstreehouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}