I'll be home for Christmas

It's funny,.this is where I live... this is my home.
 At the same time home is where ever your heart is, and for me my heart is with my family. This year my wife,daughter and son-my family, will be going to be with my parents, my brothers and their families.....in Winnipeg. Could be Regina,London or Bangkok it doesn't really matter. I'm going to be with my family, so I'll be home for Christmas.
Fillmore, due to his slow nature(or progress), will not be making the trip. I have tucked him in for the holidays, but watch out in January, things are going to start moving!
Goodbye 2011...hello 2012!

Time, money and perspective

There is no doubt, in our society the under radar personal currency is time.
How many times have we heard "Time is Money!"
Or "Time is of the essence." Each and every one of us has  just wanted a little more time!

This past week I have managed to squeak out a little time here and there to work on Fillmore. At night after dinner, after the kids are in bed....I sneak out to the garage to do a little work. In a previous post I told you about getting the isolation mounts for the rad fan. Well I finally had time to try them on for size.

I knew when ordering them they weren't a perfect fit they would be too tall. I also knew I had an inkling about how I could fabricate a collar that would remedy that problem, all I needed was a little time.

So before it would get to late so the noise would disturb the neighbours or our sleeping kids, I managed to cut some 1.5" pipe and 1/2" washer. A simple centering and weld...

Then the dry fit!....and it all looks good.

Once again, because now is an easy time to do it. I took everything apart and used my favorite rust paint....do I even need to say the product name anymore?....I'm holding off for endorsement royalties from the company I've been touting them so much!

Sunday actually brought some time to myself for a few hours, unfortunately most of it was spent trying to find tools that had got hidden when I leaned a sheet of plywood up to "clean up" the shelter. Only after a huge tear down did I find what I needed....I frustrate myself sometimes...
Anyway as the afternoon progressed, I was mid way through a weld when my parents called. As many of you know my Dad is battling cancer, and he is never far from my mind. After I got off the phone with him, I was lamenting to myself about wishing I had more time, not for Fillmore, not for me, but for him. I can't change the path that I chose to strike out on our own, moving so far from family, nor do I regret the decision, but...
At this point my son, my Jeff walked up to me dressed in all his winter garb with cheeks rosy red, and said
 " Dad would you help me build a snow fort?"

What I heard was "Dad, will you spend time with me?"

That's all any of us really want, time.

Best way to spend your time.

Best Birthday Present!

Through the different ages and stages we all find that there are different things that make us smile. When I was 21, the best birthday gift likely would have been a night out of drinking beer and smoking cigars with the boys. In my thirties that would have been a good bottle of scotch and an even better cigar while I sit in a hot tub after a real awesome day of double black skiing.
 Now that I'm in my 40's there are just different things that get my pulse going. The most valuable asset now is time.

Today we celebrated my birthday a few days early, and we had a great lunch at a local restaurant. The kids gave me a card and some chocolates, great gift as I have a big chocolate soft spot.....or is that a soft spot because of the chocolate?......ehhh never mind. Anyway, my loving wife gave me probably the best gift in years. Of course I knew I was in for some kind of twist when I opened the card.

A more rookie husband might actually get excited by the card, but when you've been married for a while....you know better.
OK you know you've been married a long time when..." you each own two or more sets of car keys, use the same credit cards, will readily eat off the same plate or drink from the same glass, often raid each other’s wallets, and aren’t all that careful about closing the bathroom door."
A quote I found which I thought hit close to home. To be honest except for the bathroom door part(because no one needs to see that) I enjoy the partnership and sharing between my wife and I. Anyway, coming back to the point....I knew she was up to something, I just didn't know what. To my delight and surprise I got a double present!
 The card says I get to be right...on everything... for the next 24 hours. So to start, I am making sure I get all the unresolved arguments out on the table now!.....I also figure now would be a good time to see if she thinks I'm right when I think that we should build a permanent shelter for Fillmore. The second, is that she is going to give me 10 hours of sweat equity on the bus.....I might even get her hands dirty!!

I love Christmas...

I know I know Christmas is about giving, it's not about the presents...but I was a bit excited today when I got an early Christmas gift....all be it from myself...The mounts that I ordered for the hydraulic fan are in!
John,my trusty UPS delivery guy, came bouncing into the office shaking the parcel. Knowing full well it was bus parts he was teasing me saying that he figured that he should teach these parts what it feels like to have some movement, because as far as he can figure it's going to be a long while before they will be mobile in my bus.....ha ha funny guy.....!

Bent out of shape.

 I used to play a sport called Ultimate....a Frisbee football. Back in the day, when I started (man I sound old) there was as much emphasis on the notion of brotherly love, acceptance and bettering yourself as there was in the creation and execution of plays. In those days there was as much effort put into the "cheer" at the end as there was in wining the tournament. My first team was called 'Grateful Fred', and yes we were a cross between Flinstone and Jerry Garcia. Our ongoing mantra was "baby steps, baby steps" I often think of that when I am working on Fillmore, who oddly enough has a Grateful Dead connection with his namesake...all be it 20 years after he was born.(Forgive me I have had a few glasses of wine and I am rambling)

While I spent the majority of the day at the kids school volunteering, Randy made his way out to Bragg to tinker. When I got home, we both were working away, until we almost simultaneously hit road blocks. Materials....Randy needed more nuts and bolts and I have ordered some vibration isolators for the hydraulic fan set up. With the waiting for the parts it put a kibosh the progress of those jobs.

So we moved on, "baby steps,baby steps". There are always jobs to do, one which has been troubling me was the passengers side rear end. At some point in the past, someone backed up the rig into something. Put a dent in the flange on the frame rail and perforated the sheet metal....yes the compound curve sheet metal.....not so easily replaced!
At first we tried the ball-peen hammer and the auto body dolly, but the damage was to much,so we fist employed a technique with slightly less finesse.

The hydraulic jack technique!!

Once we had the major work done the two of us were able to wrestle the skirt back into place.

Not Perfect, but seeing as there are no OEM replacement parts, and I don't have a English wheel like some, I will have to do the best we can and accept the occasional area of ....(erghhh)...bondo.

Ahhhh December.....

There are many things that excite us, depending on what stage you are in your life will dictate what makes your heart rate quicken just a little. For my Dad, I'm sure it's standing 185 yards out from the green and hitting a sweet 5 iron with a little draw and watching it track in tight. For me, as of late, it's a sunny weekend morning with nothing on the agenda...except maybe a little Flx time.
For my kids, it's snow....the more the merrier, and this week their hearts were beating fast.

 When the temp drops and the snow falls, I'm always glad to have some indoor projects! It's time to continue to work on the cooling fan. A few pounds of hydraulic oil cleaned up

 Then time to do a little layout of my leggo pieces.

 I was on a role the other night cutting and welding in the garage until the boss poked her head into the garage and gave me the 'look'...come on you know which look this is...it's the bewildered amazement look. It's the one we both love and hate. Because in the male psyche it's what we strive to see in the face of our mate, the look of
"OMG, how did you do that?.....you are amazing!"
 Now take that same sentence, change one word and morph the tone from loving admiration to a tone of "I am one second away from snapping"....
"OMG, why did you do that?.....you are amazing!"
So when the boss poked her head in the garage and gave me 'the look', even though I had just gotten to the good part of tacking the pieces together, I knew it was time to shut her down....with efficiency. 

A day later, I was able to keep on truckin'. Although not 100% complete, it is ready for the in situ test fit.

The Three Amigos

 OK, I feel guilty. Sometimes you are caught between a rock and a hard place. The rock is artistic licence, being true to the muse. The other is censorship. For morality, for social appropriateness,  you really don't want to say/blog things that will tick off your best friends and hardest workers.
 After our day on Saturday I thought a more appropriate title for this post would have been:
 The Three stooges, but that would potentially rub the volunteer help the wrong way....so do I compromise and put the three Amigo's?....which we are... or title the post to reflect the occurrences of the day...or cop out and blog about both.....ahhh Blake ya big chicken!

 Saturday turned out to be a great day, for Jeff from the moment he woke up he was counting down the hours until he got to go to a birthday party sleepover at his buddies. Needless to say for him (and I) to stay sane I needed to keep him busy. Jeff is pretty handy with a drill gun and wood, so he was on prototype duty. Randy emailed Friday night saying "My wife is busy...can I come back and give those heater another run for their money?" After a full day of measure-measure cut-cut, Randy shook his head and said..."I'm still not done, I thought this was going to be an hour and a half tops!"
And for me?.....

I was on Hot Air part duex, time to fabricate the stand for the rad fan. After some detailed old school CAD design, it was time to implement. This is where I thought of myself as a stooge. In the photo layout...it appears that this all happened very quickly and efficiently. In reality there is a lot of humming and hawing, seemingly endless time periods of blank staring at something and running scenarios in my mind, the occational ribbing by my work mates about trying to use the "think method" of learning.....(another slightly older pop culture reference...see The Music Man). But after some time I did formulate a plan.

It was time to pull out the hydraulic fan motor. One of those....you have to take it apart to put it back together kind of things. Jeff was given the dimensions of the stand, and in the for mentioned photo he was busy making a prototype.

Once we had direction things started to move. Again another dry test fit, and all looks good!

Then it was time to create some sparks. Cutting and prepping the 2" square steel for the fan motor stand.

It was at the end of this stage that I realized it is time to change the metal cutting wheel. After a year of cutting this and that.....I couldn't fully cut through the 2" square tube!!

Fabrication is the word of the day.

Sometimes in my head I can hear a song or music playing when I look at a photo or when I am creating a blog.....today all I can hear is the poor nameless announcer from Bob Barker's 'The Price is Right'......" Well Bob, today is Fabrication Friday....RANDY PETERS! Cooooooome On Dooooooown!!"

Friday was a beautiful day, lots of sun shine, relatively mild weather. Randy came out and dawned on his Flxible coveralls. While I poked away at some more electrical Randy started to figure out the front heater  cores. The original heater was in disarray, all be it it could have been restored, that too would have been time and money. So I decided to go new. A defrost heater for the windshield and drivers feet. And then a space heater to pump warm air out to the main living space.

After some measure, measure cut-cut, Randy put in a few miles of walking up and down the hill to the workshop.

A dry fit on the work table looks good, now to test fit it in the space we have...

Fits like a glove, a future decorative flashing and we are all good.

Full of hot air

 Well the title is a little deceiving, although we are about to talk about air....it's not hot at this point, and a more appropriate title may have been full of S%$#. But I didn't think you should really start a post like that. Yet another thing on the check list was to re attach the compressed air.

 All pompous and proud of myself I got the appropriate fittings and air hose to match up with the existing braided steel air line coming off the compressor. I attached the end to the braided hose, and then went into the engine room to attach the other end to the compression fitting on the bulkhead. Notice how I didn't use the word swivel fitting.....

Unbeknownst to me as I was turning the compression fitting at the bulkhead, the air hose was turning, which then simply rotated all the way and kinked over the braided hose.....AWWWW SH*##!!!

I took everything apart and...well the braided hose was toast. So I had to remove it....easier said than done. Pretty tight working space.
The beauty of being handy is that you get to acquire the right tools for the right job. Sometimes you get to use those same said tools in applications you never thought you would,


who knew a plumbers basin wrench would end up being a compressed air hose removal tool!!





I went back to see my good friends at Greenline again with the old kinked hose (no comments please) and asked him if they had any of a similar length, he replied "I can make it whatever length you want."......[I love these guys]...... Anyway, to make a long story short I made a short hose long. Yes it meant the previous black tubing and fittings would no longer be needed but, if I could go from source to destination in one hose and minimize unions....well a guy has to do what a guy has to do.

 

Smart enough not to make the same mistake twice, I needed help. The hose has a swivel attachment on one end but not the other. So I needed help while I attached the bulkhead end, someone to hold the hose and let it spin while I tightened it down. (BTW you wouldn't believe how difficult it is to write this passage without sounding like a sleazy drugstore dime novel)

Having said that I did get a kick out of Michelle's response when I asked to come hold the hose.




In the end it all worked out, just like most things on Fillmore, it took longer than expected but the final result is a better option!

The Journey....it's the journey

 I get anxious, I know, I know if all you saw was the blog you'd think..." This guy is cool as a cucumber..."....no wait you'd say..." this dashing young man is as cool as a cucumber"....no, better yet..." This incredibly handsome and mechanically adventurous man is as patient as job"........OR you might just say..."Holey Crap Blake, lay off the coffee!!"......Yet again I digress.....my point is that the project that I naively embarked on has many pitfalls and road blocks. I try with every fiber in my being to remain open, accepting, and learn from these little pauses of progress. Some of them are mechanical(wrong engine) some of them are physical(body rust)  and some of them are lack of knowledge  (rookie move). All of these come with a fair bit of frustration because they could have been avoided. Yet there are others that you really just have no control over and in the grand scheme of things are non issues.....in fact some of them are welcome diversions.

Like Jeff, and his ladder to access his new climbing tree. For a nine year old he is pretty handy with tools and creative thinking in fabrication, but he still needs some help and guidance when it comes to using the chop saw and such. But happy as a clam doing a short term project on his own! And I will drop what I'm doing to facilitate him anytime!

Last Sunday was a horrendously windy day, we had winds in the area which are consistent with category 1 hurricane winds, gusting up to 140km/hr (that is about 85mph for my American friends) So I was once again glad to have my shelter, I could hear the winds....and feel the ground shake, but inside the shelter I was happy as a bug in a rug. I prepped the wiper mounting plate and vent areas, removing rust,gunk and dirt from decades old.

As I was walking to and fro, from front to back I had a feeling of "space". When I designed the bus shelter it was for form and function, so there is work space but you always are aware of the wall and roof....it's pretty tight....eh?(sorry couldn't help myself-a little northern pop culture reference). Anyway, as I was walking down the drivers side, I thought to myself.."Hmmm! It seems so open   here!"
Then I stopped and thought..."OK.....why does it seems more open in here?"Upon inspection you can see the wall on the left is bowed out about a foot or more. Being that I didn't have the entrance flaps tied down, the wind blew them open and then the shelter "bounced" like a kite trying to take off. She lifted up and the wall opened out before she fell back down. This would be another road block, speed bump....we'll chalk this one up as an act of god. All I knew is that it took me the next hour or so to right the wall and secure the entrance.

As I was moving the debris around to move the walls, I grabbed my tool box and the clasps snapped off, bend the metal clasp on one side and popped a rivet on the other. This then gave me yet another job to do before I could finish my original plan. We'll write this one up as being a lazy ass....to lazy to take some tools out of the box that I'm not using and instead keep rammin' them in until it overloads!

Finally, gaskets in place, motor mounts mounted...

Wiper arm installed. Yay!!!