Design Realities

Now that the roof is painted white and we have enough paint for the two upper panels, we are thinking of putting on the insulated rubbery paint, then stenciling and painting a design on ourselves, then apply the clear coat. Solution or madness? It could mean the difference between the bus looking like this:

BLEAHH. Not much more exciting than what we have now. Maybe less, if that’s possible.
Or this:

Mexican Dragon Motif. We like Mexico and were born in the Year of the Dragon. Plus we could totally paint this ourselves. Or this:

Variation. I like the redder color better, I think.
Or a more traditional Chinese Dragon:

It’d be nice if we could have a nice generic American dragon. You know how prejudiced some people are about foreigners and we want to be able to stay in the RV parks without being kicked out as riff raff.

What do you think?

Roof Painted – Check!

Actually, now that Jim has painted the roof of the bus, we are thinking about using the extra paint (quite a bit left over) to paint and insulate the sides. Then maybe a Mexican Dragon stencil design that we can do ourselves. But first, the roof. It took quite a while! The bus is big!

The paint has always been a problem. The guy we bought it from hated it as soon as he started to spray the color and it has been that way ever since. Except for the peeling off parts due to inadequate prep.

Part of the problem: the vinyl graphic trim on the original tour bus. He left it on and painted over it. That worked well…

Scraping that off was one of the hardest parts.

Scraped, ready for primer.

The view from the top

More photos here.

Wanna See?

Jim’s progress on the roof project?

Edited to add: Jim said this is the old roof, not the new. That is coming soon. Like later this week if the cool-ish weather holds. Also upon furhter examination, the garden is more grown, so this was probably taken last summer.

This is uncanny, it’s like this goggle earth picture was taken today! Or within the last few days anyway. Click on the link, switch to satellite view and doubleclick a few times to enlarge. Note neighbor’s dead tree in back and dying in front, meaning this is very recent. You can see our bus from space.

Weird!

New Wheels and Tag Tires – Check!

Well, the neighbors didn’t kick us out and now we are back to just having a bus in the driveway, instead of a bus on jackstands with giant tires piled all around.

From this:

While we were waiting for the wheels, Dale, our freelance bus mechanic showed up to help Jim re-install the brake shoes and charge the driver’s side air conditioning. Jim is going to write about that whole process. But it is done!
Two dirty bus men:

Sometimes I think Jim’s clothes are going to spontaneously combust!

On to the wheels!

 

These guys were great. They called the salesman who screwed up the first order a “maroon” and said they had been installing tires since before he was born.

Much better! Jim said the tags were 13 years old, as opposed to 7, which is what the seller told us. Later he (the seller) said he didn’t know how to read the code… Let’s see, and had supposedly built like a dozen buses?

Next: New house batteries and detailed description of the driver’s side A/C.

We Have Art!

It’s time to turn this bus into our bus! We bought a quilt and wall hanging from Marvelous Marg Higgins. I have admired her work for years and it was finally time to get some of it!

We bought this quilt for the bed. Isn’t it cool the way the pillow part is set off from the rest of it?

And without the distortion of the fisheye…

Then we hung this piece in the slide. We like it. Thanks Marg!


By the way, that couch is for sale. It is leather and folds into a bed. Want it?

It’s Always Good to Have a Plan

That’s what Jim always says. And we all know what happens to our plans… Well, Friday we had a plan to get refurb wheels and a couple more new tires. Those tags were way old.

As you may recall, ours are totally functional and strong but they are all different colors from white to rust and basically, they look terrible. So Jim set up the wheel and tire guys to show up on Friday and swap out our wheels with nice pretty refurbished steel wheels in silver. We considered (for about 10 seconds) a beautiful set of polished aluminum wheels, but at $300 + each plus the new hardware needed to switch from steel to aluminum we decided that we could buy a lot of diesel for that. Besides, for basically what we would have paid for the new hardware, we got two new tires, 8 refurbed wheels and a spare!  What a deal. The real clincher is that all 8 wheels and tires are the same! Color, age, etc. so we can rotate any combination to any position - not a possibility when you’re running 6 alum and 2 steel inners. Plus, we’ll have a spare!

They were efficient and knew their stuff. By the time I got outside with the camera, they had all the old wheels off and were getting the new ones aired up. That’s when things started to fall apart.

First Jim noticed that their refurb wheels were not all the same, some were two hole and some were five hole (whatever that means!) He had specifically told the salesperson that he wanted them all the same. Then, when the tire guys started looking at them, a couple were heavily pitted from rust and in worse condition than our existing wheels, albeit freshly painted. One of the Jacks (they were both named Jack) pointed out that the lug holes on a couple of the ‘new’ wheels was starting to get rather thin – evidence of a wheel old, used and abused. So, as usual the plan began to come apart. Now what?

We could send them home, make a plan to take the bus to their shop and leave it for TWO WEEKS while they took our old wheels off, sand-blasted them, powder-coat and put them back on the bus. Not a good option:

First of all, if they had the bus for two weeks, what would Jim do with himself? I guess he could move into the bus and work on it while it was there, but of course his shop and all his tools are here.  I knew that wasn’t going to fly.

Second, not all of our wheels were ‘better’ than the refurbs and they were still all different. So, that option was quickly rejected.

So he and the salesman talked again and he promised to have 9 refurbs – all the same – ready to go on Monday. So now the plan is for them to come back on Tuesday get ‘er done.

See what I mean about the pitting? Stay tuned!

Home Bound as in Not Going Anywhere Soon

And that doesn’t mean we’ve been traveling. It means we aren’t going anywhere until the wheels/brake shoe situation gets resolved. We are getting new wheels shortly anyway.

So why not have a bus on jackstands in your driveway with the giant tires laying alongside on the lawn? Sorry neighbors, but they all love us . At least all our neighbors know that when Jim starts something he always works till he  finishes it. It just takes longer to finish some things than others. He’s not like the guy whose stalled car restoration has been gathering dust in the garage for ten years (or out on the driveway). We’ve seen plenty of those. In this case, we’re just waiting for our freelance diesel mechanic to carve out some more time for us.

Originally, it was just a leaky seal on the drive axle. So when we finally convinced him to come out and fix it, other issues arose. Removing the drive wheels reveal a broken stud on the radius rod to the rear end. A “DOT violation” as he described it. And even if it wasn’t a DOT nono I would’nt drive it as is. So a leaky axle seal has morphed into a brake shoe replacement/8 new radius rod bushings/radius rod studs repair job. So now we wait. Don’t tell me bus people don’t have a sense of humor.

4/23/12 update: So Dale came back to finish the job and it was amazing!  In one day, we replace the brake shoes on both sides of the drive axle, replaced the bushings on the radius rods on both sides of the drive axle and the bushings on the radius rods up front!  Then we charged the new driver/passenger A/C system.

It was a big day as I had to remove both rear hydraulic levelers (and the PO did not design these things to come off) and then reinstall the levelers. Help Dale as needed and run to the hardware store for, well, hardware.

Battery Racks Built

Jim built these racks/cages, whatever, for the batteries. I think I heard him say he was getting new batteries too. He learned to weld when he was restoring cars, so that came in handy here.

He is working on installing a water filtration system that I’m pretty sure is up and running and free of leaks (at this moment in time…)

JDW update: I always thought it would be great to have a separate tank just for drinking water! Like Sean and Louise.  We drink a lot of water! Sure, we could drink out of the fresh tank (most of the time), but there are going to be situations where the “fresh” water is questionable. So I started doing some research on a solution.

Our first attempt was to install a separate pump and water spigot at the kitchen sink for drinking water. We just bought a few 5 gal. water bottles, stuck a hose in and Voila! we had clean water. I just didn’t like the idea of hauling that extra weight AND the storage space those things use.

So, then I discover the Doulton Ceramic Stearasyl Filter! These ceramic filters not only filter the water, they purify it. You can fill your fresh tank from a lake and run it through this fitler and drink it safely.

So, that’s what I did. Pics soon on a future posting. Stay tuned.

And look for a post soon from Jim (AHEM!) about the successful refurb and install of the Driver’s side AC system. Check!

Shelves and More Shelves

Jim and his brother had built new cabinets, but Jim went on a woodworking spree and made lots of shelves, in the bus and in the bays.

In the newly built overhead cabinets.

And, not shelf but cabinet related: He wired a receptacle in one of the overhead cabinets.

And this is major, the pantry. These adjustable shelves slide out when needed and lock into place when not. The taller area on the right is a broom/vacuum/jacket closet. When we bought the bus, this closet had a Splendide washer in it, which we sold. This is much better!

In the kitchen, across from the sink. We used to keep the coffeepot in here, but now we don’t even need to do that since Jim installed an undercabinet coffeemaker and toaster oven. More space.

And the toaster oven was stored under the sink:

Lights that come on in the bedroom closet when the door opens.

And more shelves in the lower half.

And certainly not least, a shelf in the biggest bay. It goes back to the tunnel and will be great for our chairs, awning, stuff like that.

More bus yoga required on this job. Good thing he goes to “real” yoga.
Or is this actually the real yoga? Anyway, we have shelves!

Before and After

Hopefully it wasn’t necessary to label that…

Not exactly bus related, but isn’t everything these days? So, in the spirit of Getting. Rid. Of. Stuff. I cleaned out what we call the Girl’s Garage this weekend. Jim actually cleaned out his shop too before he was onto other things coming here soon. So we can remember ourselves.

I also made a good discovery about Craigslist. For free stuff, I just post the address, no email, no “save for me,” just come and get it. And here’s the important part: Take It All.

I had four lots, garden stuff, flower vases, cookie tins and coolers. Posted each separately and said had to take it all. The first person who came must have thought I meant everything on the curb, so she took it all! It was awesome! I helped her load her car.

More Before and Afters coming, these of the bus. Jim has been a busy bus man.