Passenger Bus Work Day 9/14/2019

Hurricane Dorian came and went and for our rescheduled workday we had perfect weather thankfully. Our first task was to disassemble the rear end for inspection. We got lucky and the rear drums slid right off!



Disassembly of the brake and removal of the backing plates next.

It took us a little while to get the cross braces off - rusty stubborn bolts - OF COURSE !

But we did it and as you can see the main drive cover and the banjo all came apart with relative ease - except for that pesky round wire snap ring holding the speedometer gear!

Did anybody mention that these things are HEAVY!

Now we load the chassis onto the car trailer for transportation to the Powder Coating Company. Monday we will take it to be sandblasted and painted.

Next we decide to disassemble the rear helper springs for refurbishing.

We also did a little sand blasting of parts, but first a change of the protective screen to help see the work.

Upon inspection of the differential and axle bearings, we decide that the bearings and races have to be replace. This old bus spent many years in an old barn that periodically flooded the rear axles etc. We attempted to remove the bearing races unsuccessfully with a hooked slider hammer. Our solution was to Dremel a slice through the race to relax the press fit and that worked.

We also had time to straighten the mounting brackets for the spare tire mount. The Mounting brackets were slightly twisted.

After all the hard work we take time to go through our parts and determine what is good, reparable and non-reparable.

We load up the spare engine and the donated rebuilt engine to go to Don's workshop for a "once over" and assembly of a donated lightened flywheel with V8 pressure plate.

Here is an image of some of the restored parts for later assembly

And unfortunately the bus' bell housing had some damage - but no worries we found a replacement.

The bell housing is very usable, but we chose to get one that is not damaged.

We called it a day around 2pm (of course after lunch!). Monday I loaded up the trailer and took the chassis to "Area 51 Powdercoating" in Wilmington, NC. They have an oven that is 20 feet long that will easily take the whole chassis in for curing!

The chassis should all be sand blasted, primed and painted black in about a week. We are all very happy to get to this milestone.

Thank You Geri for taking pictures again !