Passenger Bus Workday Dec 12, 2019

Prior to the December 12th Workday a few projects were done. We received as a donation from Aries Limited Products a new muffler. You will notice that this muffler is for either the Passenger Station Wagons or the Commercial AA Trucks where the exit pipe is cut short. We will have to fashion our own tailpipe for the 157 inch wheelbase chassis (W157).

The Torque Tube was prepped with a finishing body glaze that was used to fill in the pits left from many years of exposure to the weather.

This was later painted black. The brake cross shaft was rebuilt with new bushing surfaces and brass bushings and the brake arms reattached by heating and peening the pins. This was then finished in black too.

The split rings for the wheels and tires were refinished with the body glazing compound to fill in the rust pits, sanded, primed and painted with simulated cadmium paint. Out of 10 split rings that we had, we were able to get 7 decently refurbished rings. Somebody PLEASE start to remanufacture these!!!

In preparation of mounting the wheels and tires we looked over the lug nuts and studs that Ken Ehrenhofer sent and decided that the cadmium plated ones weren't as nice as the originals in regards to pitting and finish. So we elected to send the bus' original parts back to Ken for plating. We also sent the hubcaps, but Ken found better hubcaps that weren't so beat-up. We will receive these in the New Year.

We discovered that one of the Brake Adjusting Shafts had a nasty crack in it. These parts are not remanufactured, they may look like the same as the passenger ones, but they are much bigger. I put out a request on the Ford AA forum website for a set and luckily I was contacted and was able to procure two pairs of NOS. THANK YOU !

Now on December 12th, 2019 two of us put together the rear end. Here we are greasing the ring gear surfaces all the way around. Seeing how we will have this chassis completed well ahead of the bus body, we thought it prudent to coat all of the gears in grease even though we will be filling the differential with gear oil. We felt that this was just an added protective measure to assure that the gears do not start to have surface rust in its wait for the body.

We applied 3M aviation high tack to the gasket to help keep the gasket in place.  We are using a 0.010 inch thick gasket which is the same thickness from the original one.

We applied gray forma-gasket sealent to the flanges and gasket before final assembly of the rear end.

Next we assembled the rear end, torque tube, u-joint (packed with grease) and short shaft to the chassis.

 You will notice that the brake cross shaft is mounted and finished here too.

Thank You to Neil Wilson for pointing out that Ford made a change to the assembly order of the short shaft. This was corrected later as will be shown in a later posting.

Our next workday was December 17, 2019