Monday, November 24, 2014

Working ahead of schedule

Two photos are attached - a before and an after. Four bunk beds were removed. Three were bolted end to end with a weird assortment of nuts and bolts. The far end double bunk was bolted to the side of the bus with a single carriage bolt that was passed through both skins of the bus. The near end was secured to the floor by two L brackets that were screwed through everything. Basically, the whole middle was loose and was therefore responsible for the horrible rattling noise.

Investigating further and upon removing the cabinet drawers and doors, it was possible to see the plumbing had been installed in a haphazard fashion. It's unknown whether the plumbing actually worked because it was incomplete. There were plenty parts that appeared never to have been used. Many were still in boxes.

The floor of the bus seems to be a one inch thick layer of plywood laid over the existing wooden floor. On top of that are some vinyl tiles. Stepping one one that appeared to be soft, the immediate fear was of a hole that went through to the chassis. Peeling away the vinyl tiles revealed plywood that had decomposed. Scraping the decomposed plywood away led to the original plywood floor which looked in great condition. Clearly, based on this sample, the whole of the second floor needs to be removed.

The electrical system that was installed seems to be somewhat Heath-Robinson with conduit going in all directions. That's something that will have to be stripped out as it crosses and blocks off many of the access panels to the electrics. Some of those electrics I need to access to work on.

Speaking of the electrics, the back of the bus has a bathtub. At the end of the bathtub is a plastic splash guard. That is (or was) glued rather ineffectively to a wooden panel. That panel in turn is affixed over the access panel to the right rear light cluster which urgently needs to be worked on.

Just inside the cockpit there is a big electrical distribution box with huge cables going up and down. The box is affixed to the bus by some badly fitting carriage bolts. Underneath the passenger compartment, where the cables go down, there is a badly constructed door that doesn't really fit well nor exhibit any desirable level of craftsmanship. Inside this is a coil of 110v and 220v cables. Alongside that is another abandoned rat nest.

Throughout the bus there are abandoned rat nests, dead insects and abandoned mud cocoons. It is my hypothesis that the bus (which has a Louisiana government sticker dated 2011) was in service as a relief school bus until some point in 2011. After that some hill billy purchased it to convert it to a hunting cabin. At some point construction stopped and the bus was put into storage. In storage it was infested by rodents and insects after which the fellow abandoned the project and sold the bus. The next fellow bought it, never had time to do anything with it and sold it to me.

This weekend, it's time for the rest of the cabinets, the bathtub, hot water heater etc to vanish. Then I can fix the electrics and remove the suspect floor. After that it's time to use it to transfer m'lady's belongings from her old house to her new house in the bus. Then I can think about fixing the rest of the issues.

Of primary concern right now is coolant. The bus has a 17 gallon cooling system. That's right - seventeen gallons! On Saturday I put a whole gallon of antifreeze in and it just vanished into the system. Clearly there's not enough in there. Similarly, transmission fluid is adequate but low. As far as oil, I have been unable to lift the dip stick as it seems somehow to be locked. That's probably low too.

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