Better than Hide and Tide

It's nice to get to a point where your goal helps to create a less chaotic environment rather than continuing to have to say to yourself..."It's OK in the end this will be better". Every now and again the jobs that need to get done, have a added spin off that it makes things look better...and by better I mean cleaner...they make more sense.

I would like to say that my workshop is a very neat and ordered environment. It was at one point, there was a time when I could tell you where to find something without having to physically be there to do the search myself....but alas no more. So I take my 'little hit from the bong' of order when and where I can. Today it was the brass fittings collection that I seem to have amassed. Breakfast with Anna and numerous assorted bags of metal.....ahhhh bliss

In the end we get a very tight,compact and structured little piece of heaven........As I read this I see how OCD I sound.

While I was busy making order, Michelle and the kids were pulling the numerous small plastic containers of pocket change from all over the house to roll coins....I affectionately call it the Fillmore Fund.

Keeping with the theme of creating order it was time to make sense of the spider web of air hoses I have created. Best way was to create a bulkhead plate, a designated place where the air hoses would transcend through the floor.

Ahhh nirvana

And last but not least.... the mystery pic of last time....yes the black dots were crap in my eye!!

Playin' around

 So some times you are super productive and other times you decide to start a job that isn't perhaps high on the list of top priorities, but can be kind of fun. If you think problem solving is fun.
I know that perhaps I'm a little out there in terms of what I find to be entertaining, you know cleaning up a rusted hunk of steel to me is a real kick! Others may not agree.So it's a good thing that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, in that I have a built in buddy when it comes to trying new things.
  So Jeff and I decided that we will need to fabricate a chair stand for the 'Captains chair'... Yes I did capitalize that on purpose and yes I did put it in italics.....and just FYI in my mind the theme from Star Trek is playing.....green chicks look out!

 Seriously (for the record I was serious)   Jeff and I were talking about the accelerator and brake pedals , which lead the conversation to the floor near the front, which lead to the chair needing some modifications before we can lay the floor. Just wanted to keep you up to speed in terms of the stream of consciousness....I know, I know, it's a scary place to be. None the less, we started our exploration, we began with determining the pneumatic chair lift that we got last spring. First was to test the chair lift control.

Then to examine the bolt pattern on both the base and the chair it's self. Which by the way didn't match despite the reassurances of the guy who sold it to me. We'll have to fabricate a mounting plate, but before we do, we determined that in all likelihood, we would need to have a pedestal of some sort. The base didn't seem as high as the old one we removed.
I know it looks like I am giving the minor, my child laborer the dangerous job, but lets face it this kid last Wednesday was taking 12 ft high jumps at seemingly mock 6....I think he can handle the inherent danger of this...

As we suspected we will need a lift, only about 4 inches but it should do the trick. So we planned it out, and cut the metal.

And that's where we called it quits for the night. For two reasons...
1. Jeff was yawning and having a hard time keeping his eyes open.











And #2...........any guesses what this is??

Ready for round two

My friend Matt and his wife Fabiola were here the other day for a visit, we had a great chat and shared some memories and laughs. He recently sent me a pic of an artists piece which I loved. It often sums up how I feel about some of the things I do.

 Often my wife Michelle looks at some of the things our son does, like taking huge jumps on the ski hill, and she says with a pained puzzled look..."Why??"

Why?....who in their right mind jumps out of an airplane, or bungee jumps, or rides a Harley, who wants to dump a ton of time and money into something that will be worth a fraction of the monetary value? None of it makes sense....unless it's on your list. Carrying regrets is a heavy burden, acting on your passion is freeing!

OK, a little less psychoanalytical and a little more practical....gauge. It's all about the gauge. I was down to close to the last item on the to do list from Chris(as he returns in a day or two). And that is replacing the battery cable wires. All was well, I placed the neg ground to frame cable...a 2/0 Gauge. And then moved on to the positive....but it was a pure 2 gauge...slightly smaller.....I tried to talk myself into the belief that it was OK to use. But the little voice in my head was clearing it's throat in that annoying " Don't even waste your time trying to make due "kind of way. So I did what every self respecting dentist doing electrical work would do..... I called the mechanic. Yes Chris confirmed what I already knew but hoped differently. The 2/0 is the way to go, especially because we have a longer run of the wire. Luckily I had lots of the 2/0 gauge wire...but Houston we have a problem....it's the wrong color. All I have left in 2/0 is black. So we compromised, I used red shrink wrap on both ends.

Randy in the meantime was busy working on securing the floor in the engine room.

Once he accomplished that, he moved on to reinstalling the ram air chute cover with seam sealer.

All the while I was down under placing loom on the air lines and bundling them together to make it clean and pretty.

Ahh put a lid on it!

So there I was, sitting at home with the Family. We had just had a great Family day, with friends, cousins, and toboggans at suicide hill. Although there were a few bruised body parts we were all happy and tired. Finished a late dinner and then a family movie. At this point the rest of the masses went to bed, but I was still awake and thought..."Hmm I could do some quiet work so as to not disturb the neighbors at 10pm.

So I decided to fit the curved portion of the ram air chute in place. First I had to do a little clean up and trimming of the sides.

Then I wrestled the piece into place. Harder than I thought but very do-able. I'm glad I invested in the clecos  (thanks Bill)

Things looked great, a nice tight fit. Now I'll tear it all apart again and place the seam sealer!

A Typical Sunday

Awesome, a long weekend, which means Sunday is really Saturday! Saturday is not Saturday but rather a Friday part Deux! A bonus day, like getting a free hall pass, or the coveted 'get out of jail free' card.
 We spent our second Friday skiing.....well snowboarding. Anna decided that she wants to figure out the snow boarding thing. So for the first time ever the Sinclair Clan was on the chair lift all with boards strapped to our feet. It was a pretty cool moment...until just about the top when we realized we'd all have to get off the chair lift without making it look life UFC13.
Not to worry we all made it home safe and sound, Anna being the rookie was a little sore on Sunday, so we decided not to ski again and had a simple home day on Sunday.....which yes means bus time...

I started the morning thinking that I would quickly mount the air filter in position and then move on...(famous last words)

I just got started when I heard ..."Daaaaaad?!".......Can you help me with something?
As it turns out Jeff and Anna had a small GT Racer mishap. It had something to do with the quad a tow rope and going backwards....fast. I had heard enough and said "wait!...Don't tell me any more I don't want to be an accessory."  So the bus was put on the back burner,and we were into full on GT Racer repair.

Jeff and I fashioned a new bracket....

Found a ski replacement...RIP good ol' 1990's skis of mine!

Next thing we were back on the road to trouble....

In the end I got my first, and last job of the day completed......it was a good day.

So, what did you do all day?

 Believe it or not I have a friend, (who may actually be reading this) who came home to his wife who had a new born and his two year old at home and he said this to her.
Now I know that he really meant to say " Tell me about your day, what happened?", but perhaps he didn't take an extra second to think about his word choices. Lets just say if looks had a physical affect, then he would have been in ICU.
Having said that, today really was a " what the hell did you do all day?" kind of thing for me.

Randy worked away on the engine room floor. A task that at first blush, seemed like one of those, 'oh I can pop that out in a couple of hours' kind of jobs. But when you are in tight quarters...

 ...and the floor plan requires some custom cuts, things take a while!

 As for me.....(envision a look of shame) I did work all day...really, I did! But I virtually have nothing to show (pictorially). I spent the day running air lines. I assumed that it would be a quick job. But one thing after another slowed me down. A weld here a new hole there. A search for a couple of bolts....special bolts... which in hindsight I do not have. In the end I ran the primary and secondary lines, the 1/4" line from one of the tanks(then I ran out of tube). Picked most of the fixtures for the primary distribution block, and fabricated a bracket for it. But could I take a picture of that?...Nooooooo! The only picture I could muster was a paper template for the holes I need to drill in a cross member..........So I look and feel like a slacker

Randy on the other hand did a bang up job on the floor. Just have to re install the AD9 dryer, put the 2ndary tank back in place and we are set!

LOA, or is that MIA?

Man, 2012 has not had a great start. As many of you know I lost my Dad to cancer on Jan 3. We just got through that and his memorial and then BOOM my uncle Paul passes away two weeks later. It can only get better from here. So my usual blog post after a few days of work went MIA, or did I get a LOA?
As such, last weekend had truncated bus progress. I got up early on Friday got the kids fed and watered and on the bus. Then I high tailed it into Calgary to do a few things.

The one which shows the most results was the sandblasting......man that sh*# is fun!. Just some odds and ends. The air cleaner and its mounting brackets, a couple of pieces of the dash and then the air scoop mounting frame.

When I finally returned I found Randy whistling away getting the floor in the engine room started.

I had to catch a flight in the afternoon so we called it quits earlier than when we wanted to, as it always is. I was working on the routing of the heater core lines through the front walls and floor. Due to the input and output lines from the lower heater I had to get creative with my grommets.

Randy had made great progress on the floor...

A little order to the chaos

 There is some things that are a calming influence.Some things just make you slow down and relax a bit, maybe for once just enjoy the journey as opposed to trying hard to get to your destination. For me it's working with my kids. Sure it slows things down a bit but the joy I get from seeing them take on a task and accomplish it brings a lump to my throat. This weekend I had that opportunity.

Anna who had been working away on homework was more than eager to get out of the house and do something else. Even if it meant getting dirty working on Fillmore. Here she is helping me do the final touches on the new fuse box.

You can see for ease of access I designed the fuse panel to be hinged and swing right outside so you can easily get at the back. The same goes with the lower control panel.

 The nest job was prepping the area for running the air lines. When Randy was out on Friday the 5/8" bit he had ran it's course and lived no more. I figured another was to use the pre-existing holes from the copper pipe,AND create 5/8" holes for the air line grommets. So Anna was charged with the job of cleaning the cross beam in and around these holes, getting them ready for a 'weld'.

 Jeff, being a boy with the need to hit something was charged with a slightly different job. My 220 line which runs the space heater and the line for the welder, was frozen into 2" of ice. With all the unseasonable weather, the snow had melted and froze, melted and froze. So when it came time to move the cable.....no dice. I started to devise a system using a construction heater to melt the ice above the cable, then we could mop up the water and melt the next layer. While I was busy getting the armatarium for the project, Jeff grabbed a rock and started chipping the ice away. Within 30 seconds he had more chipped away than we would have achieved in 10 min with the heater. KISS....Keep It Simple Stup-dad

Tick-Toc-Tick-Toc

 It's amazing how time can pass, and yet it often feels like somethings take forever. Friday was another day of bus time. Randy came over and after a nice hot cup-a joe,we both started working away on projects that frankly we didn't think would take that long. I was working away on the new fuse box, a whole bunch bigger but with a whole lot more future capabilities.

(As a footnote, this step may have been all for not. A text from Chris said to hold off on design until he does some final figuring. Too bad, b/c at the time of this post the new fuse box is in, panel is secured on newly welded hinges and the rear control panel was fabricated and is just waiting for paint to dry before final install)

Randy?......he got thrown under the bus again. Removing more old brake line and drilling new holes for new brake line and grommets.

As I said previously I took the fuse box to a point of paint and then moved on. I decided to aid in the ease of install and take down of the front heater cores, I wanted to weld the nuts to the frame so the bolts can be easily removed if need be. BTW, don't be a dumb ass and think it's a good idea to weld Nyloc nuts........(rookie)

This pic is to show the hydraulic and tranny lines all nice and neat and secured. Also the turbo air intake is all in place......well sort of. I got it all in place and then decided that I wanted to move the air cleaner assembly 3/8" to the passenger side direction.. also sand and paint it while I'm at it. So it currently sits in my work shop awaiting some attention.

What light through yonder window breaks?

Ah my good buddy Bill. William Shakespeare, born in in 1564! Who knew that in the famous scene of Romeo and Juliet he was referring to the window of my bus!

However he got the words mixed up, or they got mixed up in the centuries after, for today the quote would not have read " Soft, what light through yonder window breaks?"

But rather " Ahhh Crap! that light window a yonder is broken!!!"

Yes, I was happily working away on refurbishing the passenger side entry door window. The window is split vertically with the ability to open the front and back halves for ventilation. I worked the front half....it worked out great.

Moving on to the larger back half, I realized there was something odd. Bolted onto the outside surface was a piece of steel angle iron. At first blush I assumed it had something to do with the mounting mechanism. But thinking back I remembered taking them off and the angle iron had no part in the window mounting. So I deduced that there was no functional purpose for it and decided to remove it.
Now in hindsight you would think that I would then ask myself the simple question...
" Why did someone do this?"

Ahhhh Ha! Elementary my dear Watson! It was scabbed on to fix what they broke.

It Appears that someone perhaps was either a little to rough with the window or tried to put in an over sized screw and busted the metal. Who knows. All I know now is I have to find an aluminum welder.

Well that put a stop to that project, so I moved on to installing the new tranny temp sensor. The previous sensor was in a 90 degree ORB to JIC fitting, but the new sensor is about the same size as the old fitting, so I couldn't just swap sensors, or even re-drill and tap a new thread. No, I had to play with different fittings and make one up.

With special help from Greggs Distributors I was able to put together a little gem.