GTRV Organ Donor Teardown, Day 1

Due to the long holiday weekend, I actually had some time to spend starting the teardown in order to prep my "Organ Donor" GTRV for the top-ectomy and transplant to my 2003 recipient van.  Mostly this was about getting things out of the way, and figuring out how the original conversion was constructed.  It was a very productive day!  My full photo log, complete with all the gory details is available here.  

From GTRV-Teardown

Please forgive the seemingly inane annotations on some of the photos, but they are there to remind myself what I was photographing, in case I have to refer back to these pictures a month or a year from now. 

After a full day of removing hundreds of screws and drilling hundreds of rivets, I'm now very close to being able to remove the steel reinforcing ring from the donor van's roof and separately lifting the top assembly off altogether.

From GTRV-Teardown

Most importantly, I have learned a lot about how the GTRV conversion are constructed, so I now feel very confident I can complete this transplant with minimal problems. The biggest casualty thus far is the headliner carpet from the donor. It was glued into place for the entire perimeter of the access portal, and removing it was destructive. It will need to be replaced when I'm done with the mechanical transplant, but I will be brainstorming for ways to avoid having to have the new headliner glued in the same way.