Styx

 Is it any wonder I've got too much time on my hands? 

Ticking away with my sanity 

Before I get to many "guffaws" on that pop culture reference from a great 80's band, allow me to clarify. It's not that I am bored and have absolutely nothing to do (as a matter of fact it is quite the opposite) but rather it's more that I have the time to slow down and make choices that I will be happy with down the road. The fact that I have no hard deadline for Fillmore works both in my favor and against me.

For example, the other day I was re installing the wiper motors-yet again. The plates, when I got Fillmore, were held on by flat head(slot) metal screws. I didn't really like that, but I figured I would continue on with the same. The more I thought about it the more got to musing how great it would be to have nuts welded to the back side of the skin so I could use machine screws. But access to the backside would be impossible to tack weld nets to.
What if I created a backing plate and welded the nuts to it. Then I could still use the machine screws, get a better and more reliable attachment!

 So I traced some 16 G sheet metal

And started cutting!!........unfortunately this is all I can show you right now. This was not a very productive Fillmore weekend. I had a singing competition on Friday/Saturday, and Sunday?....well I was wiped! This is as far as I got. But keep posted there will be more progress soon!!

Spring Cleaning

People have these funny "things" that we do. Somehow all winter long we are able to deal with houses and garages being cluttered and dirty. Yet as soon as the weather turns nice we have this burning desire to clean house. Fillmore has been sitting in his house for the better part of 2 years I figure (Pulling the engine ), and quite frankly I felt that we kept his house in order fairly well.

 And yet when we backed Fillmore out for the first time, all I could see was the crud that was all over the place.

 So while Fillmore got some vitamin D

 I put the kids to work picking and cleaning, raking and smoothing.

It's amazing how that can make you feel great!!

Hit rewind...

 Mothers day, I know I know your thinking "what?... that was a week or two ago!" I have posted out of sequence. I was excited and needed to share the news of Fillmore on the move. But lets back up a bit and see the events that slightly preceded the monumental moment of Fillmore's reveal. (OK reveal is a little strong.....his appearance?)

Every now and again you have to stop and smell the flowers.

On Mothers day we had a family bike ride along the river in a place called Paddy's flats. We started at river level and slowly climbed until we reached this look out. Love it! It was good to get me out from under the dash  of the bus, even for a few hours.

But my obsession calls. Truth be known I thought that I might be ready to give Fillmore a nudge that mothers day weekend. After I put the dash in and Randy finished the floor and the seat. I installed the foot pedals. Then I started things up and waited to reach pressure. All was good but just when I thought I might release the parking brake and back up....."POP!!....HIsssssssssssssssss" and there goes all my air pressure. I took the floor panels apart and found the supply hose had come off the foot treadle. Better now than later!! So I made the optimistic assumption that I just hadn't installed it correctly and put it back together.
Start it up again...reach pressure and........"POP!!....HIsssssssssssssssss"
Same thing! (#@**$)

So I removed and replaced the fitting and tried again!

Bingo, all was well. It's holding pressure....to much pressure really. The AD9 is dumping excess pressure quite regularly.... I have to check the regulator in the compressor.

Born Again

OK so if we did the ten fingers ten toes thing, we would be coming up short right now but, patience padawan.

WTF???

Easy....easy!...This is still a family show. Although I have used the common texting shortcut, in this case WTF means......Where's That Fillmore?

Details,details...

 There is always something, never(as of yet) have I been stumped looking for something to do on Fillmore. Although there have been times where I have bee so overwhelmed or consumed that I have trouble thinking of a job for someone else, in the end there are always little details that need attention.

Friday marked a day that I was hoping would be a significant day in Fillmore's journey. I was hoping he might take a little trip. Randy started the day by finishing the drivers seat area. He installed the floor, which then meant we could install the brake treadle and accelerator.

 While he worked inside I was taking care of some details that have been on my mind for a year or two. On the panels that surround a wheel well, the sheeting edge needs to be finished, a fold really.

 Next was the side engine bay door.The door didn't quite latch, the striker plate on the bottom was not allowing the vertical latch to engage. So I fabed a new plate. Easy Peasy.

Now she shuts and latches properly!

By days end things were put back together, ready for a pressure test....(cue the suspenseful music)

Having a blast

 Sometimes all you need is an excuse. An excuse to make you step forward and do what your mind is screaming at you to do anyway. You know like when you're walking down the street and you see a piece of garbage. At first you don't even register it, then your brain says "Hey, that's a piece of litter.....we should pick that up!" Then the good ol' battle between good and evil takes on...you know the one where two little effigies of you show up in what looks like they are en route to a costume party...and all you can think of is "Mental note NEVER wear red tights".
Wait, that's not just me is it?.....awkward!...Anyway, my point is that I looked at a picture of the rear engine door and thought....ahhh Crippity....I need to take that all apart and clean that up. But Frankly every time I thought I should do it, there were a hundred other things that I rationalized took a higher priority.

 So when Jeff said that he wanted to strip the paint off his old "trick bike" and repaint....I grabbed at the opportunity to say yes and suggested the self serve sandblasting place in Calgary. I figured if I'm going to be doing this for Jeff then I might as well clean up the door as well. So....

 First order of business was taking the door off....not and easy feat when by yourself, and I was a wee bit nervous about removing the bolts....they were original and all I could think of was what the He77 I would do if I sheared a bolt in the door.

 But alas, it all worked out.

 We sand blasted the pieces, sadly I didn't get a pic of Jeff's bike sandblasted, when we got home he had that thing on the paint table before I could say.."Wear paint clothes or your Mom will kill me" (disclaimer in case Michelle is reading this)

I wasn't far be hind Jeff, things look pretty sharp!

And Jeff's bike looks like the rock group "Glass Tiger" from the 80's..

Perspective

I love my kids, they are as random and bizarre as their parents. We went on a family bike ride down by the river on the weekend...Mothers Day to be exact. While we were out, Jeff was taking all sorts of pictures with our waterproof camera. A simple little point and shoot digital. At the risk of sounding old, I love the freedom digital photography gives kids. Gone are the days where parents had to say " Don't waste film!" Now we can simply let them take the camera and let their imagination run wild, no filters! Now we can get a glimpse of the world though their eyes.

Perspective is something that I think about a lot. With respect to the Fillmore project often I get asked "when are you going to get done? what's your timeline?" My answer often sours the inquisitive face that posed the questions. The answer for the two queries is the same......"When it's done." For many that is an unpleasant response, for their perspective the goal is the destination. From my perspective the goal is the journey.
The picture above is what happens when you let a 10 year old experiment with perspective.....any guesses?

Perspective can change so quickly. The new dash panels came back and they look great. Took me an hour or two to mount everything and get things all lined up.





All of a sudden things are starting to come together!

But for every Yin there is a Yang. Randy finished the corner bracket for the drivers seat, that then will allow the floor to be installed. BUT...before I can install the floor I need to either reposition the shifter or modify it somewhat. The new seat is wider than the old one, so now the shifter sits tight against the side of the seat. I really should have taken a photo before I cut the shift stick off but...there is a bend in the stick that actually bends in towards the seat, so I cut the shifter and will rotate it 180 degrees so the bend move the stick away from the captains chair.....
(That's right you heard me Captain's chair!!)
The final complication is that I have installed a swivel riser under the drivers seat, so that at rest the drivers seat can rotate around to the action. I'll give you a second to visualize....
If you haven't guess there is another problem. When the seat rotates the stick is in the way. So I fabricated a detachable stick using 1/2" bolt and deep nut.

I pulled Jeff off the quad to help me re-install the shifter mountings, then gave it a try. Works like a damn!

Wired for sound...of the engine running.....

 There are times that I just can't type fast enough to keep up with the words spilling out of my head for the blog. Of course then a statement like that implies that there are other times as well. Times that there are things to say but when I put them on paper....well really not paper anymore these days, but rather when I put them on screen they seem uninspired. Or quiet.
So I do what any struggling author would do, I brew a pot of coffee look at the time and wonder why the hell I feel the burning desire to get up at 6am on my days off,I could be sleeping in!

But we're getting so close to a community road test I can taste it.

Last post I told you the alternator and regulator were back. So today by partner in bus therapy(Randy) came out and after a cup of Joe we set out to work. I started on exactly that, I re-installed the alternator and regulator.

 The alternator slipped back into place, but getting the belt back on was a bit of a challenge by yourself. But that's why the big mechanic in the sky invented pipe wrenches and tie down straps!

 While I worked away on the back end of Fillmore...(I'll spare you from the proctology references) Randy was fashioning a mounting bracket for the drivers seat.

 I ended up mounting the regulator on the passengers side of the engine compartment just to the right of the oil dip stick. Not because we need access, hopefully it never needs attention, but rather that's as far as the wiring harness let it go!

 After I had those mounted and routed the harness into the existing loom to the battery isolator, I finished the rear door latch mechanism.

Michelle was laughing at me, in my hand here is a spring from a baby walker that originally was owned by my grandparents, and used for my mother as a toddler. So this spring is likely older than Fillmore. I used this to keep tension on the latch mechanism, keeping the cables taught.

Waiting for Godot

This week I've felt like Ian McKellen in Waiting for Godot. I sit, I think, I wait, sit, think, wait, 

sit-think-wait.

There are plenty of jobs to do on Fillmore but I'm waiting for the new regulator for the refurbished alternator. Don't worry, although this process has caused me a few new grey hairs, I don't totally look like Estragon. In my personal opinion Fillmore is keeping me young and engaged too! (that's a little creepy, sounds like I'm having an affair with a bus...)

But still I sit, think, and wait.

 I design and redesign the coolant loop for the coolant heaters.

...sit, think......but wait!

Lookie lookie!, the parts have come in. My old alternator looks like new. It's all cleaned up looking for action, like it has a date or something.

I didn't have time to really pull this apart but the new dash panels are back as well and things are looking great through the 7 layers of saran wrap!

Interconnectivity

Ya easy for me to say.

OK, I might be going out on a head trip here. But after working on Fillmore for a few years you can see how everything is affected by something.The concept can be summarized as that all parts of a system interact with and rely on one another simply by the fact that they occupy the same system, and that a system is difficult or sometimes impossible to analyze through its individual parts considered alone.

Huh?....well, I won't go to far back but...I wanted to change the engine, which affects the linkage to the drivers area, what used to be a direct physical linkage needed to be changed to air driven linkage for the set up. That then meant I needed a new accelerator pedal, which meant....well if I'm going to up date the accelerator I might as well do the brake treadle too..Before I can replace the kick plates(floor panels), I need to install the flooring under the drivers seat. If I'm doing all that then I'll refurbish the kick plates first.I'm in there anyway so now is the time to clean up under and around the kick plates!

So to summarize changing the engine made me paint the steering column.

Capisce?

So on to the floor, stealing a few boxes from work I set out to create a template.

Yes I am kneeling on my kitchen table......my wife is out of town.

Not bad......lets see how well I can transfer this to 3/4" tx plywood.

For better or worse

Attention to detail, the things that we are doing to/for Fillmore are far from perfect, but as we travel along the journey my attitude is let's do it once and do it right. Many times along the way I am faced with little decisions where I can say..."eh! good enough!...but knowing that little thing will always bug me. Some of them would be invisible, like the fuel sending unit. The machine screws that held the old one in place were still...."usable", but they were flat head screws and the blade slot was worn and torn. Put another 10 years on them then the next time I have to take the unit out I would be cursing a blue streak. So....I wait....and delay progress until I can get bolts that I can sleep at night with. Simple!

Other problems are not so simple. I had SS face plates made for the dash. The issue I had was a plasma cutter was used to make the cuts and holes. Leaving the edges 'burnt'. I then tried to smooth them off, creating another aesthetic issue. In the end it got worse and worse. As a last ditch attempt to cover the issue we tried the old textured look to the whole panel. Which as you can see looked like crap.

So, I decided to back track

I pulled the panels out and removed them entirely.

I am getting new ones fabricated in acrylic.....hmmmm, we'll see.

In the meantime I ran a grounding cable for the house system under the bus. Creating numerous grounding areas. I cut the insulator exposing the cable underneath, then using a retention clamp I bolted it into place.

You can see how handy my little friend has become!

Onward we go!