Looking ahead.

Yesterday the reminder for my bus insurance arrived. Everything seems to be working out nicely at the moment because a day or so earlier I had a message about an insurer in Colorado that will insure school bus conversions regardless of the title. Interestingly I’ve also encountered something called mandated insurance. Apparently it’s a Federal thing whereby if you can’t get insurance, the State will provide a list of mandated insurers that have by law to insure your vehicle.

Today I got on and attached the cable on the inside of the bus. Now it reaches the roof. That’s good but will have to be extended some to reach the new fuse box. That should arrive in a couple of days. Meanwhile I can get on and install the shower pump socket and the light/charging box in the galley. Now the problem with the galley box is I don’t actually have the USB charger for it yet. That’s still coming via the slow boat from China.

Today my louvered flapper vents arrived. Strangely they came from Lowes via eBay. They’re listed as paintable so I sprayed them grey to match the bus. There’s a plastic protrusion on the back that’ll have to be trimmed off but otherwise they’re perfect. They’re a little larger than anticipated so there will have to be some fiddling to make them fit. That’s nothing new though.

I should not need a bug screen with those. They close pretty tightly. That will improve airflow tremendously. Needless to say while the one looks pretty good, the other has slight texturing. It was sitting on my workbench, freshly painted and somehow ended up face down on the ground with sand sticking to the wet paint. I had to clean it off quickly with thinner, wait for the thinner to evaporate and repaint. I didn’t get all of the sand off but I got most of it.

Needless to say, today is both warm and humid with occasional rain. Not the best time to be painting or putting silicone sealant anywhere. Thus the best I can do is to paint the louvered vent covers and put them to dry where they won’t be rained upon. Thus I transferred the painted louvered vents to the bus for the moment.

The major issue right now is that because I cut my aluminum sheet into an attractive hexagon, my new louvered vents will protrude on the corners. That gives me two options - first to use some kind of spacer to keep the vent away from the body in order to allow me to use it without modification. The second is to build up the corners with Bondo  or the like. There is a third option which I have mulled over before which is to remove the aluminum and replace it. Cutting the 4 inch diameter hole in aluminum was challenging to say the very least, given my very basic tool set here.

I went shopping and ended up with both Bondo and some vinyl planking. While I was at it, I bought some jubilee clips that I can use to complete my plumbing. Now I have to find my steel brackets. I know I bought them. I just have to find them. I bought clips to secure all my pex tubing to the pex adaptors. I’ve heard people drone about using pex clips with pex but as long as it ensures a good enough seal, who really cares whether it’s the right thing. Jubilee clips are just far cheaper than buying a one-use tool - the pex crimper.

If the final modifications to my ventilation system don’t make the bus cooler inside in summer then I really don’t know what will. I could try elastometric paint. Rustoleum has some but I want to try everything else first because it’s a special order.

Having put the cabling up the inside of the bus, I now have to extend it to the fuse box, when that arrives and install my other utilities. For the moment, if it looks like a good day tomorrow, I might head under the bus to seal the new cable, install the piping for the remains of my water inlet (if I can find my brackets) and install my solar inlet.

That will leave me with the sockets and lights to install that go to the new fuse box and of course my keypad unlocker. While I’m installing that I need to tidy the birds nest wiring that goes to my standard door unlocker.

Right now it’s 77F inside the bus and I just turned my CPU circulation fan on. That makes a huge difference! I’m sure that my extraction fans when they’re updated will make an even bigger difference.

The last thing I did before I finished for the night was to spray my new handrail with rust-killing primer. It’s not forecast to rain but if it does, it should be adequately protected now. As the paint is wet, I’ll have to leave it out all night.

The plan with this is to spray it with black appliance epoxy and let that dry then put it in place and drill the bolt hole for the bolt at the near end. Having done that, it’ll be a case of spraying again around the freshly drilled hole and anywhere the he paint has become damaged then to mount it it place. I would have liked to have had it a color other than black but sea green/blue wasn’t an option. It was either black, white or biscuit in appliance epoxy.

As the insurance is due on the 21st of March, I’m trying to get it all finished by then. Then I can add up all the receipts to see how much it has cost me before insuring with a real schoolbus conversion insurer. It’s all rush, rush, rush. Still, I think if I can do the underbus stuff tomorrow then I can probably make that schedule.