Probably two more days under the hood

Today I put aside the Autozone tube bender and pulled out the cheaper Harbor Freight bender. Within minutes - literally I had bent a piece of tubing to exactly the shape I had failed on multiple times yesterday to do using the Autozone tool.

The goal today was to do the two small pieces of tube that go from the 45 degree bracket bolted to the chassis to the block on the chassis leading to the line that loops around underneath the radiator and turbo intercooler. Looking at the line that goes underneath, it looks very daunting, almost as if I'll have to become some kind of monkey to be able to install it!

So, both sides at the front now have brand new flexible brake lines to the wheels and brand new solid lines with brand new coil armor.

Making the solid lines was pretty easy using the Harbor Freight tool. It was just a case of bending the tube where the other tube was bent and trimming to length. As I had yet to put the flare on the other end, the unflared line was left 1/4 an inch longer. That allowed enough extra to create the flare.

Having flared and armored the line, I have to say it looks pretty good. It fitted easily in place and screwed in nicely. The trick to making brake lines play nicely is to put a tiny bit of grease behind the flare. Just a pinhead worth of grease is sufficient to lubricate the nut while also providing anti-rust protection for the scuffed area that was held by the flaring tool

For the flaring tool, after the debacle of the Autozone tool (does Autozone sell anything that actually works), the O'Reilly's tool came up trumps. It does a really nice job of the flare. In fact it's not possible to tell a difference between the flare on the tubes as they arrive and the flare I made.

It was a pretty simple matter. As there's no vice here I just used a G Clamp to fasten my flaring tool to the bench I welded together a few years ago. Incidentally, people online looked at photos of the bench I'd made and cried that it would fall apart and that the welds are worthless. Well, it has stood up to 250lbs weight and years of use and abuse with no degradation.

So, making the brake lines was pretty straightforward. I didn't want to dive in and do too much because that just tempts fate. Thinking about that front line, It probably only has a couple of fastenings under the radiator and then goes straight to the chassis connections. I bet it just lifts down and forward in one piece. That's a job for tomorrow perhaps. 

What I'm doing right now is the front brake lines. I want to make sure I get them right before I work on the back brakes. I still need to look at the brake pistons. I have no idea how those work or how I maintain those. That's a job for another day however. The goal is to replace all the brake lines. Those I have replaced so far (bar the one that exploded) have all looked pretty decent. I'm pretty sure the little shop of horrors will be at the back because those connections look very rusty.

The one brake line that will be challenging is the curved line over the differential. I have a feeling that won't be curved but more hexagonal. Keeping it simple never hurt. None of the brake line at the back seems to be armored. That will change. Every line I install will have armor even if there have to be gaps in the armor where I fasten the line to the chassis.

Meanwhile the wonderful Rustoleum elastometric paint is peeling off the roof. I can see great hunks of it blowing in the breeze. That's despite the fact the original paint I put on is Rustoleum and that's holding on well. I even washed the roof with an industrial cleaner. This is the problem with Rustoleum - it doesn't matter how good your surface preparation is, it doesn't hold on consistently. Sadly, they're about the only game in town.

Getting somewhere - just not quite sure where!

Having decided to replace all the brake lines on the bus, I made a start. Yesterday I tried to undo the driver's side front brake line. I failed so I took a photo of the area I couldn't see clearly and found there was a spring clip holding the flexible line to a bracket attached to the chassis. 

That made life a lot easier. It was easy enough to undo the connection. Even the spring clip came out fairly easily. When it came to the flexible line going to the wheel, that was barely attached. It wasn't even finger tight. I was not at all surprised when no brake fluid came from that line. It must have been thoroughly air locked.

The new line is installed. That was probably the simplest thing I did today. Going from below the bracket is a C shaped line. That didn't look in bad condition but I said I was going to replace every single brake line and so I will. 

After having several attempts at making a line and not getting one that slipped into place nicely, I gave up for the day. The line on the left is my own creation and the line on the right is the original. They're close but no cigar.

If my readers remember, I bought a brake line flaring tool from Autozone and it was utter trash and had to be returned. I must have bought this brake line bending tool from Autozone too. It won't bend lines to 90 degrees. It bends to 85 degrees maximum so I have to complete the bending manually.

In the end, temporarily I put the old solid line back. I'll replace it when I can do a better one. I have plenty brake tubing to work with. I have to say the new flaring tool is excellent. That, I got in O'Reilly's. The one tubing bending tool I have that works well is the one I bought from Harbor Freight. The Autozone tool is not helpful even though it's easier to use.

The aim this week is to get the brake lines under the hood done. After this I'll work on the back brakes. Currently, despite spraying the line liberally with PB Blaster, the flexible line and the spring clip are hard to separate at the front on the door side of the bus. I shall visit that again tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, it's Thanksgiving and likely to be another superspreader event for the Coronavirus that's rampaging at the moment. I'm not going anywhere so it's just going to be a regular work on the bus day. By the end of tomorrow I want to have the other flexible brake line done and the two small C shaped lines too. Perhaps if I'm very lucky I can get the line done that goes along the frame rails from one side to the other. 

One question I have is whether the bleed screws should be replaced. They are clearly missing their little rubber caps. Mind, Schroeder valves on the tyres are also missing their dust caps. Mechanics are awful for losing dust caps and protective caps off everything. Mind, having seen how loose that one brake line was and how airlocked it was, I'm betting the money I paid to have the bus maintained last time never got used on that brake line. It is absolutely not beyond mechanics to claim they have done a full job when it has been half-arsed. The rest of the time paid for working was probably used for viewing porn in the break room.

Woohoo Tax time

Yesterday the tax bill for my bus arrived. It was a whopping $26.52 which by the time they had charged me extra for the luxury of paying online was $27.97. One would have thought that payment online would have been encouraged rather than penalized due to the Covid situation. On the other hand America seems quite happy for 6% of the population to be killed off by the population's intransigence and hatred of anybody not seen as perfect. Yikes - that sounds a bit... Aryan!

So, throwing my trusty bedroll on the ground, I lay under the bus and disconnected the old camera. Fortunately the connections on the old camera mirrored those on the new camera so it was almost a case of plug and play. I did have to release the cables from tied down cable conduit but that was no big deal.

Popping the camera into place was a pretty simple affair. I will definitely have to replace the rather sad looking reflective tape on the back of the bus. Indeed there's a plan afoot for that since so much paint is now beginning to peel after 6 years in the South Carolina sun.

One of the important things was to install a bracket above the camera to protect it from rain and from falling objects. The last camera protruded a long way. This one is almost flush with the body. The last one was broken by a sheet of steel being dropped on it.

The camera really isn't that visible. It'd have been nice to have it mounted somewhere black but I'm not about to spend a day drilling by hand through a 1/4 inch thick steel bumper to install a camera.

Upon testing, the corners seem a little blurry but this is not a big problem. The whole point of a rear camera is so that I can see if I'm about to mow anything down. With the C-DVR that I have, attached to that camera, I can record when I'm driving. In an accident even the worst possible video evidence can be invaluable. That's why both front and rear cameras record.

One of the things I like about this camera is there are none of the annoying and misleading lines that many cameras have built in. Perhaps there's a case for replacing both the front and upper reversing cameras with similar cameras of which, oddly enough, I have two. If both lack the irksome lines then that really will be a step forward. For some reason, this camera also looks to have a wider angle of view which is very welcome.

I still need to work on brakes. I'm not a huge fan of lying underneath a vehicle - even though there's plenty room under my bus. I'm not a fan of walking underneath aeroplanes and there's plenty room underneath them! Perhaps I have a touch of claustrophobia?

The new top camera probably needs a waterproof enclosure. I'm thinking something with a sloping roof that will prohibit water collecting on top. I'm also thinking of including an Anderson recepticle as I still feel a roof mounted 10W flexible solar panel might be an interesting experiment. While I'm up there, one of my marker lights has gone out so I might just replace the whole marker light unit. I've been fighting against these LED things but I might just try one to see how long it lasts. One thing's for sure - if it's a sealed unit, it won't suffer from bulbs jogging loose as happens with other units.

Friday the thirteenth arrived

 It was only a day late. I went to work on the bus today and if it could cause a problem it did cause a problem. In hindsight it was all rather comical really. 

The goal today was to replace the broken camera that's currently dangling due to my own ineptitude. On the first time around covering the back windows with fridge steel I had a case of butterfingers and dropped a sheet of fridge steel on the camera, breaking the mount. Well that had a few curses floating around afterward and it embarrassed the bird on the tree next to me so much that it turned bright red and flew away only to be mistaken for a cardinal by a nearby hunter who shot it and had it for dinner.

The camera to be installed is a bit different in that it's flush-mounted and circular. It came supplied with a little cutting tool which I put in my Walmart power drill. Well, that didn't seem to want to start cutting so I had to drill a pilot hole. The pilot hole didn't achieve much because the bit didn't cut the steel. That was probably because it was designed to be installed in the plastic bumper on a car. It certainly would not have done anything with the 1/4 inch thick steel bumper on my bus!

So, I tried to enlarge the pilot hole with a step bit. The cordless Walmart HyperTough drill crapped out immediately - the battery never holds a good charge - not even from new. I switched back to the corded Walmart HyperTough drill and the chuck siezed on me immediately, refusing to tighten on the drill bit.

Hunting around I found my new Harbor Freight cordless drill but all three batteries were out of charge. That led on to a long hunt for my Harbor Freight corded drill - the one I bought by accident. Eventually I did find it and put the step bit into it.

Having cut the hole to size, I sprayed it with primer and then half an hour later with grey topcoat.

Holding the camera up to the hole I discovered that the cutting tool supplied with the camera had been hopelessly undersized. Imagine somebody less capable buying the camera kit and carefully drilling the hole then finding it too small. It might even turn them away from DIY.

The drill bit being clearly undersized I pulled out the step bit again and enlarged the hole fairly swiftly. 

After cutting the hole near enough to size I used a grinding bit in the drill to enlarge the hole slowly. Well after an hour of that I went back to the step bit and cut the hole big enough.

When I left the project due to darkness falling with a thud, I'd cut a piece of aluminium bracket to rivet above the camera in order to protect it from as much precipitation as possible. Having cut and drilled and primed the bracket I went inside for the night.

This was a simple two hour project that turned into an all day project due to Walmart's wonderful HyperTough tools turning out to be HyperCrap. In fact I think the frequently derided Harbor Freight tools are of much higher quality that the Walmart tools. Having seen Walmart customers, perhaps their tools are intended for people that would spend left over money on tools after supporting their meth habit.

Tomorrow maybe I'll finish painting the bracket and install the camera as well as the bracket. It's a good job I didn't do anything with brakes!

Speaking of brakes, Carolina International never got in touch to say they had the flexible brake lines I'd ordered. At the moment I have a working brake flaring tool having returned the Autozone tool that had clearly been manufactured by a drunkard. This one I bought from O'Reilly. 

In order to replace the broken front brake pipe I have to remove the pipe for the back brakes. That means I have to empty the whole braking system so I might as well install all the brake lines while the system is dry. As I don't see the point of draining the system, installing a couple of pipes, bleeding it and then having to repeat the process to install the next batch of pipes when they arrive, I held off on brakes for the day. At the moment the main brakes (the back brakes) still work.

A small advance.

Continuing on the brake saga I have learned a lot. To sum it up... Brakes need to be double-flared, not single flared. Finding the double-flare tool in Harbor Freight is impossible even though the website claims it's in stock. OEM flexible hoses are terribly expensive. The back of brake flares can be lubricated with grease. I'm using brake caliper grease.

I called Carolina International and was told there are 5 additional hoses in the brake system. One for each wheel and one from the main brake supply line to the arch over the differential. The two from the master cylinder were $68 each. The other 5 hoses come in for a grand total of $350 approximately. That's about $500 of brake hoses all told. While I *could* have gone cheaper and got very different hoses and so on, I want to get back to manufacturer spec. That way I know I have the best for the bus. To my mind there are two things one should never ever compromise on. The first is brakes and the second is tyres. Those are what will save your ass every time.

The Harbor Freight tool kinda-sorta worked but needed 6mm regular bolts rather than the weird crank things that were supplied. Even then it still didn't work all that well.

I managed to get some very nice looking single flares from the Harbor Freight thing but as I discovered I needed double flares I had to get a double-flare tool so I went to Autozone. Well, Autozone will not feature in supplying any more parts or tools. Having created a nice-looking flare, I noticed the flare was cock-eyed. 

Looking at the Autozone tool it's possible to see exactly why the thing was cock-eyed - the tool looks like it has been made by a meth head. It's nowhere near square. That put the kaibosh on doing anything with brakes this weekend. Having said that, I need brake armor and none of the local chains seem to sell it so I had to go to eBay. All told, replacing all the brake lines plus tools will probably end up costing me somewhere in the region of $600. Had I paid somebody to do this I'd be paying $100 per hour so it'd probably be an extra 5 hours pay at least.

This weekend, the back door got my attention. While I like having a window, the window was way oversized for what I need. It was a pretty big security risk so today was the day it got skinned over. Back in the summer I bought some sheet steel. That was all undersized so I had to pony up and buy the right sizes. Today the last of the last set of 4 sheets got used. 

Last week I painted the sheet after drilling holes in it. There it is, placed standing on the door handle surround and the hinge. Checking, I found it was half an inch too tall for the space provided. Thus I trimmed the area that would foul the hinge and handle surround then mounted the plate in place using a big magnet attached to the door to stop it sliding down. With that in place I drilled a couple of locating holes and after putting silicone seal all the way around, pressed the plate down over the seal, slipped two screws in the two locating holes and then went for my air riveter.

Using a combination of my air drill and my electric drill, I drilled all the needed holes then riveted the panel in place over the window. Just because I know you're curious, there were 86 rivets involved. The mandrels all landed on the ground pretty close to where I was working.

That's how it looked all riveted down and painted. The thing dangling from the door handle is my Harbor Freight magnetic picker-upper. That was useful for picking up all the rivet mandrels and pieces of rivet mandrel. Only one it refused to pick up and I'd imagine somehow that was anti-magnetic.

This panel I did not remove the glass first. There was no actual need since nothing will be on the inside liable to swing against the glass. Checking the edges of the doors there was a small light leak by the upper hinge. I can put some extra sealant on the door frame there. Otherwise it looked like nothing has warped so there should be no water ingress. I'll have to check after a rainstorm on that though.

After disappointments and problems, it's nice to have accomplished something. Speaking of problems - I bought shorter 5/16x24 bolts to attach my new circular convex mirrors. They're still a shade on the long side so I'll see if I can get shorter or I'll trim them. With the back window out of the way, that's one less big-sounding project to do. Projects like this take plenty time because there's so much involved.

The next projects at the back of the bus - fill the screw heads with Bondo and replace both of the malfunctioning upper camera and the broken lower camera. The upper camera has water issues fogging the image. The lower camera had a sheet of steel dropped on it inadvertently. Those can now be replaced since there's no heavy construction happening at the back. While I'm at it, I'll install a solar power inlet at the roofline just in case I want to install the flexible solar panel. In fact I might install that anyway since I have all the supplies to do so.

The roof vent has been waiting for ages and I'm pretty sure it's leaking, causing rust and destroying things. I've been tied up doing other stuff and haven't been keen on climbing on the roof anyway. The brake components should be available in a week or two so that's another big project. That might take several weekends to be honest but once it's done I shall feel happier. Tyres will be a big expense and they're due sometime too.

At some point I do need to reprogram the charge controller to make better use of the battery and complete the flame shield for the other battery holder - which will be more complex due to the way I've built the battery holder. Eventually the aim is to install a second battery.

The winscreen wiper pivot I installed is very slightly crooked so I'll have to look at that again. That's a job for the future. It's an important job too. The roof needs a good scrub and the elastomatric paint needs to be beefed up as it's coming off in too many places. 

There is other stuff needing to be done like the crossview mirrors and the rear clearance lights. I'm getting there though.

Thwarted at every turn!

There are two big projects at the moment. One is the brakes and the other is the sheet of steel over the back window. Both were thwarted today by different problems.

The primary plan was to install or to work toward installing the sheet of steel over the last back window. The plan was to drill locating holes and then trim the steel before final painting. Looking at the sky rain was clearly not far away. Today was therefore a day for at least slapping a coat of paint onto the sheet of steel - which I did. The paint came out lumpy being at the end of the can of paint. That didn't matter though. The biggest lumps got flicked away but plenty more remain. The best that can be said is that the panel is both painted and textured. At the end of the day there are so many imperfections in my paintwork on the bus that it's clearly done by somebody that just wanted to change the color of the bus without throwing money at fancy prep work or anything else. All I care about is that the bus looks decent from 20 feet away. Nearer, I just don't care. The law says it cannot be yellow so it's grey.

Having slapped paint on the panel I turned to the brake lines. In contrast to the paintwork, these I am extremely fussy about. They have to be right and there is no half-way, quarter way or most of the way. They have to be spot on. Doing it myself I'm learning a lot and will be able to do this kind of maintenance on the road.

The brake line I did the other day looks pretty good though the line did slip a little. Today I made up the second line to go from the flexible hose to the chassis since I seem to have to replace both lines simultaneously. The line slipped and did very little else. Thus it was time to practice a little. 

Having cut several practice pieces and had them all slip in the flaring tool it was time to re-evaluate the flaring tool. That's where all the fun began!

The flaring tool (from Harbor Freight) looked to have a 5/16 bolt. The problem with the existing bolts is that despite the T bar on them it's impossible to get them tight enough by hand. As there's no hex head on the bolt, they cannot be tightened with a wrench. Trying a 5/16 bolt found it was a tight fit and met resistance after the first half turn which is the tell-tale sign that the thread pitch is wrong.

Out came the Russian thread gauge and the thread came up as being a 20 TPI thread. That was pretty useful information.

Next I grabbed a digital caliper and found the bolt diameter was 7.6mm. That's where things began not to make much sense. There is no 20 thread per inch Imperial bolt of 5/16th. The 7.6mm was a very sloppy size for 5/16. That was a big puzzle.

Grabbing a micrometer and setting it to inches, the bolt came up at 0.3047 inches. Trying it again in metric came up with 7.67mm. The puzzle continued. 

Eventually after taking a thought break I pulled out the thread gauge again but instead of measuring with the threads per inch side, I used the metric side and came up with 1.25 threads. That's when the penny dropped. This was likely a metric thread.

Heading indoors I looked up the metric and imperial thread sizes and bolt gauges. It turned out that what I have is very likely a sloppy 8mm bolt since 8mm is very close to 7.67 mm and the thread pitch of 1.25 is exactly what an 8mm bolt should have. It's so handy having standards!

So the paint is still wet and drying on my sheet of steel, the sun has come out and the sky has cleared to deep blue but I can't work on the brake lines until I get some 8mm metric bolts to tighten the thing down firmly in order to prevent slippage.

As I work tomorrow and there's a covid epidemic I'm limiting my trips out so today is going to be a day of relaxation. The next time I work on the brakes will likely be Tuesday as there's an election and I have the day off due to the election.  

Rather than including caustic comments about any of the candidates for election, here's a picture of the brake line I made earlier today. This, I'm sure would make a much better President than any of those currently standing for election. Indeed, that simple brake line could easily replace every single politician in the world, costing less to keep while providing far more value.