Ode to Fillmore

 Jeff was in Bed,
Michelle was away: getting our Anna from dance. 

I decided to have some sweet Fillmore time, 

really whenever there's a chance. 

I tidied and puttered and moved with no rush, with no big goal in mind and no care.

When I looked down at the ground and saw what I thought
 was snow melting in the warm Chinook air

 Ha! I said with a smirk on my face, these winters are easy to take!

Cold for a day ,with snow I must say, but for winter it really is fake.

"Now when I was a boy we had snow so darn high, you had to walk with snow shoes to school

And anyone who thought that -30C was cold was ridiculed and left as uncool "

 But then there was tingling on the back of my neck and I slowly turned back to the bus.

The moisture I saw on the gravel was odd, and I instinctively started to cuss.

How could I let it happen like this?
I know better!
I knew I should look!
But my attitude morphed to arrogance I see, and now I'm exposed as a rook.

"I have heat!" I exclaimed in my last blogity blog, all smug from my trip down the road.

 Alas I neglected to test and to look and to see if it  held the under load

With trepidation I gathered the tools I would need, unsure of the troubles ahead.

A leak can be messy ,I know, and at times you may really wish you were dead.

"Hmm!" I said with sweet bated breath, the inside looks rather clean

I was hopeful and prayed to the bus gods above that the damage would be rather lean.

 Deep in the bowels (of the dash I must say) I peered with flashlight in hand 

and marveled at what little messy damage there was

Fix this? I well I surely can!

All of the mess,
all of the leak came from one tiny joint in the floor
I reached in with a socket and tightened it down, that's all that's required, no more!

The lesson I learned or the moral some say,

from my brush with the leak I must share,

Is the  same moral I learned as a child in the story of the race between turtle and hare.

 "overconfidence in one's abilities may lead, to failure or loss of  event!"

So take time,
                       check it twice,
                                                 go slow,
                                                                 think it through.

Speed will just get you all bent.

When you're finished a job,and you think you're all done

Don't assume you that you're right- " it's a pass!"

The moment you do Fillmore will laugh

and kick you right in your donkey.

Turning up the heat

  Come on now it is the end of October. As much as I would love to think that fall will go on for ever, both my years of experience and the local weather man tell me that snow is on the way. Which means I need some heat. That starts with heat from my heater core. Again one of those projects that we started a long time ago,Good friends, good times , and finally it's time to finish it.....sort of.

 Here's the box I pulled of the magical storage shelf, a circulation pump that I bought years ago, the fittings, the hose, the brackets, hose clamps....the whole kit and caboodle.

 This is the motor mounting bracket after I drilled out the mounting holes to 3/8", which was the size of the vibration dampening mounts that I bought previously in preparation, you can see them installed here.

Next was fabricating a secondary mounting bracket so the vibration dampeners could do their job, with luck you wont be able to hear the coolant pump at all.

 Now this pic makes it look like Michelle is happy as a clam to have the fittings in place on the pump...in fact she was expertly timing the mocking actions and looks, when I would try to catch her on "film" she would put on the stage face and look all happy and excited.....cheeky monkey!

 In the end things worked out perfectly, because of the off set of the intake pipe, I adjusted the orientation of the final mounting placement of the pump to minimize the angle/stress on the coolant pipe. I just came back from a test drive, I had heat!!

Oh Happy Happy Joy Joy!!!

Ohhhhhh its been a good week. 

Fillmore is home, aaannnnnnnnnd.....

He passed his OoPSI and we quickly insured him and got him Registered! So Fillmore is officially street legal!!

Something worth a celebratory drink! 

Nothing says Congrats like bubbly alcohol!  

All the while Jeff and his buddy Pete, with the motivation from a birthday present from Randy

start themselves on a journey of discovery of their boyhood.

Meanwhile I thought it might be time for a little one on one celebrating with my sweetheart...

She looks so hot with a power tool in the bus!

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What? How did you think we'd celebrate?

It's the little things that get 'cha

On a project this big sometimes you forget. You see something that needs attention and you say to yourself.."That's important...I will have to work on that!" But as I have said many times before....there are 1000's of little jobs to do, so you have to compartmentalize and prioritize. For years now I have said to myself "don't sweat the small stuff, you'll get to it when the time is right."
Well my friends the time is right, as Fillmore is facing the final (legal) hurdle of the OoPSI it is the little things that have the biggest influence. Something as small as a open rivet hole can fail the test. So it's time to get to the little things, crank up the ol' tunes and sweat the small stuff......wait that sounds a lot like.......

OK, OK relax just a bad  stream of consciousness, on to Fillmore progress.

One of the jobs was the completion of the engine room floor. A relatively simple job that I have said..."Oh ya that will take me just a half hour"- famous last words. I began with cutting my 1" angle iron and tack welding the pieces to create my floor frame.

Jeff was, as he often is, on hand to help the wheels stay in motion.

Simple enough, and the test fit looks good...

Before

After

I had to share, my window screens arrived from the US recently. I had them shipped to Chris, he in turn sent them up to me. I plan to take them to my chrome guy....just to see if it is a possibility. 

A family affair

Last weekend was thin on getting work done on Fillmore but rich on fun family time. My nephew Riley was in from Manitoba and we kept busy with paintball,dirt biking and sightseeing.

And yet we still found a little Fillmore time. Nothing says family like greasy knuckles and stinkin' like bus.

After Riley headed back home and the week began again I took the opportunity to do a little repair on the front entry door

There are a few spots of previous repair, that just don't cut the mustard now.

So out with the bad.......................................and in with the new.

One down and a few more to go.

The Spanish Inquisition

Probably the biggest challenge for a project like this is fear....Fear and surprise.....fear, surprise and a ruthless efficiency. Wait, no that is a Monty Python skit
Seriously, fear and surprise are significant and daily parts of working on Fillmore, but the biggest challenge in my eyes is organization. This has been and continues to be a long term project, as such there are times where you take something apart, bag and label the items, and then store them so when it comes time to put it back together, you have everything you need. Take for example two of the four round "donut " collars that are around the bumper supports on the front of Fillmore. There was damage to the lower 6" of the front nose panel and I made a decision to replace the lower portion of the panel only. This all took place when I gave Fillmore a Nose Job back in 2010. The two donuts in question went into a labeled baggy and were stored, and then moved, and then shuffled and then placed for safe keeping.
Then it was time to repair and reinstall......You guessed it I can't find then at all. DAG NABIT!!

I removed the remaining two collars, cleaned them up

And then used them as a template for fabricating new ones, above is an original (left) a new one in progress(center) and then one that is done(right)

Primed and waiting to install.

In the meantime my helper was johnny on the spot with the rivet gun...

...and some body work.In the pic on the left you can see the collar installed

But even the best help is hard to keep focused on task!

Conjucal visit

 Last week I was  "That guy". Fillmore was in the shop waiting for his day in court, his judgement day. Frankly it was supposed to be done last week but life gets in the way for more people in the world than just me. David from the shop, was supposed to be at work last week, but things happened and he was gone so Fillmore sat in lock up, solitary confinement really. I spent the week calling the shop every day and not getting the answers I was looking for.
 In the meantime I played. I did some experiments with insulation, bonding the insulation in, different types etc. etc.

I made, yes..., a template for some rigid foam for the window wells. Then I simply used some 2" scrap pieces I had lying around in my shop for the past 12 years just waiting for the right time to be used. Not bad! I like it!


I also have some special insulation I plan on using in the roof, an  insulation from Pacor/ Aspen Aerogel called Spaceloft. It's basically quite thin(1")with exceptional thermal and acoustic insulating properties.

But of course I am trying to figure out the best adhesive for holding it all in place, being that Fillmore is in lock up....I might as well have my own little 'consumers reports' test.

As the week came to a close I decided on Friday to stop by their shop [after I had a day of an extremely riveting and super interesting lecture on sleep prosthodontics.....(insert sarcastic harrumph)]. I found that Fillmore had been set aside but the promise was that he would be first on the docket monday morning. I negotiated a weekend pass, a conjucal visit per say. I was able to break Fillmore out with the promise that we would be back for Monday morning.

 Sat. morning was me, my coffee, two home made breakfast sandwiches and CBC radio. I hate to start making noise before 9 am so it turns out to be a fantastic quiet time to sit and think about what will happen today!

 The day turned out to be a day of little jobs. Not so little in what has to be done but, little details that I have been looking at for...years! saying "oh ya, I'll get at that soon." Today was the day.

 I needed to remove the front wheel to get at a little finishing detail in the front passenger body panel in front of the wheel well.

 A little Bragg Creek Nip and tuck!