A little tid-bit

The bumper rail is stripped and cleaned. I coated the underside with a rust paint product called POR-15, great stuff...but man you don't want to get it where you don't need it. It's tough as nails and gets tougher with time.
The top I coated with a simple primer rust paint. just so she doesn't get surface corrosion while we wait for final paint.


This is the underside POR-15. Black as night and tough as nails.

Never to proud to take advise.

So my good buddy Harold, one of the motivators for creating the blog, gently said to me...."I noticed you like wearing your dental masks while you work, you might want to consider getting a respirator from Rona there really quite efficient and pretty economical." This is city councillor talk, to translate..." You cheap bas#&%d, quit stealing masks from work and spend a few bucks on a proper mask so you don't die from lead poisoning or emphysema!"
This is for you Safety Harold.

Ahhh yes, another day another layer....or five. This is the bumper rail from the side of the bus. I had to remove it in it's entirety to get the panel I wanted to pull off. So (of course) I stripped it down to the bare metal and gave her a coat of rust inhibitor paint. I was amazed at how many different colors this girl has....5 as far as I can see, although I think the very first layer is a base/primer coat.

Moose Mountain General Store in Bragg Creek is a wonderfull little small town hardware store. You always assume they do not have what you want and then are surprised when it's there! Even aftrer all these years I still surprise myself. Sometimes you even find little treasures in there too!!

It now hangs proudly in the ice fishing/body work shed

l'oignon

Ahh yes monsieur, it always has so many surprises!
This is my artsy fartsy shot of the day, can you guess what it is?

So the latest project is panel removal. Passenger side 1/2 way back has through and through rust, so off the panel comes...

I tried grinding the rivet head off and punch the rivet tail out, I tried grinding the tail off and popping the rivet head off. In the end the tried and true was the best. Drilling out the rivets with a 3/16" bit.

Being the true "l'oignon" yet another surprise...what I thought was body panel, was in fact an aesthetic patch over top of some body damage. Nothing serious or structural, it actually looks like it side swiped a fence post or something and dented in the panel. But rather than pulling the dent, bondo and paint. They simply layed a second panel on top, rivets along the original rivet line and 'voila' presto chango!

So 400 rivets ,one 13/32"bit, three 3/16" drill bits, and a few swear words later the panel is off.
So far so good...... to be continued

Getting Ready for Winter

So far this winter we have been very fortunate really. Aside from a one or two week stretch of frostbite cold, it's been a mild one. Even when it was cold, I have been working out in the bus. Aside from no insulation to retain the heat, I was able to place a heater on and "have at 'er". Now, I have decided to take on some exterior work. On the passenger side, where the kitchen was....they had some moisture issues... As a result years of leakage caused rust through the body panel. I am going to remove said panel and replace it with brand new skin.(Lofty ambitions, I know).
BUT....the forecast calls for decreasing temps and snow. Great for skiing, not great for body work.
so....I borrowed insulated tarps from my good friend Alvise.

Anyone who has been ice fishing would recognise the look...at least in the old days...

Kind pretty really........in a manly way.

A day worth waiting for

It's mid week, by the time I get home not allot of outside work to be done. So after the kids x-country ski club, dinner ( a masterpiece of Italian chicken burgers...thank you, thank you,..)put the kids to bed then off to the workshop. Tonight....WINDOWS!
Yes, although I don't have ALL the rubber seals yet I do have the "U" channel. So after clean,polish, and top coating the aluminum frame. I thought, lets put it all together and see how she looks!


Glass was sourced from Bowness Crystal Glass

The U channel fits very well I think!


Wrapping the glass with the 'U' channel and then sliding it into the frame is far from an exact science, friction and elasticity of the seal are both a friend and enemy. So you can imagine how happy I was to get a seam like this!!

These are the vents from the front of the bus, stripped and waiting for some primer.

Ahh yes and finally the drivers floor panels in and around the pedals...they cleaned up REEEAL good!!

Fathering is not mothering

Another great weekend. Saturday the kids and I were on our own while Michelle took care of our little(ha) nephew Nathan. So that meant Subway for lunch, skiing at C.O.P., break mid day for fries and coffee. Then on to BP's for supper, popcorn and a movie!
Today, a little more bus. I got an hour in in the morning, then managed to finagle my way to staying home to do more bus while Michelle and the kids went to see her mother. Lets face it, I'm low man on the totem pole anyway. #1= Grand kids, #2= daughters that bore her grand kids, #3= Time with the grand kids, and a distant #4= me and the dogs. But I'm OK with that, I understand!

Today was rip up the drivers floor day. Removing the gas and brake pedals proved easy enough, but man they were filthy. So I thought....got to get 'em clean. We had a break for lunch, and while I was loading the lunch dishes I thought....hmmm why not? I mean they all get clean anyway right?...better use of water, the load isn't full!!


Apparently this ranks right up there with Junk food and movies for the kids...

What???????...I didn't know!?!!...sorry honey

Just for the record, kids wearing there "GOOD" jackets in the bus is frowned upon as well....fathering is not mothering, fathering is not mothering...


A good days work...and no one died....yet!

Dirty Dirty!!

Today was a good day, slow to start but it was a great day. Last night I was a volunteer working at a casino...so in bed by 3:30am.....so it was a late start. Once I got going though it was rewarding. Today I was concentrating on cleaning the cross members of the frame under the floor, it's a dirty job but someone has to do it!


40 year old rubber seals that were placed under the plywood floor have turned hard...hard like rock.

But a little elbow grease and an angle grinder with a steel wire wheel...

There were layers,being the onion that it is, a strip of rubber seal, then a yelllow...adhesive?...under that a layer of tar/wax/sand sealant(likely from '49)

Again another surprise...in behind the "baseboard" (what I am grinding in the first picture) a blade screwdriver, likely not from the 40's, it does have a plastic handle.

Sunshine, above zero...not bad for January

Dad...what is a metaphor?

As a parent, you are faced with challenges all along the way. How do I function on 3 hours of sleep? How do I comfort my child because a friend turned on them?, How do I answer "Dad what is a metaphor?"....what the ..?(I swear there should be a quick reference guide somewhere)
The Webster's definition- "a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them."
My answer was no quite so eloquent....
BUT an example?... THE BUS of course(thought I'd have trouble tying this one together huh?)

“Jeff, understand, the bus is an onion. We peel back each layer to find the next. Sometimes when we cut it, we cry. But in the end, you fry it in butter and it’s perfect”.**

For those of you who are followers of "The blog" (hi Dad!) you'll know I had a bad end to a great day yesterday when I accidentally cut the brake line. Well the good news was it wasn't the brake line (as you mused Dad), it was however the oil pressure indicator line....still important.

So today started with me tracing the line I cut to evaluate exactly what it is...well what this is, is a mess. LIKE AN ONION (Ha!) it has layers and layers of junk and gunk that had to be sorted through.

And with each layer I uncovered a new surprise!

This is the pipe for the heater core at the front of the bus. Some things are blessings in disguise. Should I have not cut the oil pressure indicator line, I may not have torn apart this section of the bus (not likely but possible) and then I wouldn't have found this. So the first time I would fire up the engine after connecting the lines in the back...I would have been leaking antifreeze but the bucket up front!

When the day was done, it was clean of all the junk...wires not used anymore, pipes with cracked rubber seals, useless parking brake and clutch connector rods.

Man...I wonder how long before my interior looks this slick!

** Special thanks to Harold Cecil Smith supervising Internet editor

"My eyes are dim I cannot see..."

There was a song I sang as a kid, it went like this..."My eyes are dim I cannot see I have not brought my specs with me, I have not brought my specs with me! The was ANNA, ANNA eating a banana at the store at the sore....etc etc" Point being a guy can't see anymore so he thinks he sees crazy stuff. The point?....I don't know but today I felt....old...stupid....impatient. I was working away on the bus, having a great afternoon.


The sun was shining, it was warm...


Inside the bus was comin' along...


There's nothing like the afternoon sun, CBC radio and an angle grinder.

But in the winter the afternoon sun doesn't last long. Soon I was working in the dusk, lighting was worse than usual because Randy and I took a bunch of windows out so Randy could take them home to work on them. I was taking out old wires and "stuff" that wasn't in use anymore. I reached down to cut an old fabric coated wire bundle......which in hindsight looks exactly like the fabric coated brake line......

Ahhhhhhhh SHIT!!!

Pick away

The weather has been quite nice actually, so today was spent poking around the bus figuring out why some things work and some don't. The fresh air vent on the drivers side for example. It won't close....so I took it off....and then I took the passenger side one off too. I'll strip them down, rust coat them and store them for re install after the paint and body work.


On the inside, I was figuring out where some things run today. Kind of like a scavenger hunt. For example....the heater core piping...where does it run, what condition is it in?....do I need to replace it?......quite possibly.




Tomorrow is a day of family skiing and then I get to take Anna to the Flames game against the leafs......she's more worried about where we'll eat than who is playing!