And then lift the engine from its cradle.
We positioned the engine and then greased up the splines etc. for the drive.
And then we eased the engine into position.
Next we prepare the front engine mount before final positioning.
And finally the engine is resting in position ready for final bolting of the engine mounts.
Now that the engine is mounted we focus on the exhaust and intake manifolds. Here we are placing the exhaust rings in the manifold.
And the manifold gaskets on the engine.
Finally the manifold assembly.
We now install the donated muffler (courtesy of Aries Muffler)
And here we just finished installing the starter.
We next installed the heavy duty power generator that was original to the bus.
The next image is Don pointing to the emergency brake handle explaining that it really should be painted black like the stick shift. We decided to let Ken or others make a decision on painting it. The emergency handle was restored and nickel plated by others and looked so good!
Our final picture for this workday (April 2).
Don and I met again on April 16 to install the newly rebuilt distributer and adjust all of the brake rods. The brake rods will have to have its final adjustments once the bus body is finished and the bus can be driven.
We also installed the helper springs. The original setup has a section of fire hose underneath the helper spring bracket. This appears to be needed to avoid an interference with the emergency brake actuator. Luckily I know a local fire man and he gave us a 50 foot section of expired hose to use.
All we needed was less than a foot. The image below shows the helper springs installed.
Finally the big day comes to start up the engine. On April 28th, Don, Danny and myself went to task and rigged up temporarily the engine with gas, battery and electrics to attempt kicking the engine over.
Below are video clips of the engine running in succession. It took us a while to get the engine to run the first few times because our battery was a little discharged. But we got it charged up a bit which allowed us to succeed.
The next day Randall came with his big trailer and the "Bus has finally left the station" (Hampstead, NC) to journey to its next stop in Bath, NC (about a 2 hour drive) where Don has a storage unit.
Bath, NC Storage unit (Don and Randall)
Once in the storage unit we mount the spare tire in the spare tire carrier for the first time just to see if everything works.
And we mocked up the exhaust piping with PVC pipe. There is a local shop in Wallace, NC that we will have custom fabricate the exhaust pipe.
Then the only remaining task is to rebuild the steering column. We hope to be finished this summer and everything delivered back to Ken Ehrenhofer after a final farewell Coastal Carolina A's Bus Chassis celebration. For now the bus chassis will be kept companied by Don's 56 Thunderbird :)
