Wild Blue - Page 4

Accordion · 02-18-2013, 11:22 PM

Beautiful job on your bus. The ceiling is awesome. I wish I would have done wood instead of carpet.

inkblots84 · 02-19-2013, 03:11 AM

Amazing bus!!!
Thank you for sharing your story, tips and solar info! I've been reading up on solar systems and I know we need it but I'm usually just scratching my head about it. Many thanks for the translation haha.
My question is do you remember the inner dimensions of your bus before your conversion and after? Did you lose a lot of living space with the insulation? When we get our bus, insulating is a high priority as we have family in MA and plan on spending time journeying across some of the Northern states, some of which will probably be during winter.
Again kudos on your bus, it looks line a great place to live!

browncrown · 02-28-2013, 05:20 PM

Wild Blue, those cabinets are beautiful...really like your design work

bus-bro · 02-28-2013, 05:31 PM

All I can say is also wow! If you ever need another bus to work on, let me know. Mine sure needs some of your cabinetry magic.

NilesSkoolie · 02-28-2013, 08:09 PM

Great job!!!, a lot of inspiration.... I can't wait to start mine this week.

Tango · 02-28-2013, 08:32 PM

Great lookin' cabinet work! Love the moon phase lighting.

LuckyChow · 02-28-2013, 09:59 PM

Very nice work. I can appreciate the time that went into this. The details make good work look great. I usually spend 3 hours planning to every 1 hour working. I'm not even going to get into the "re-do's" that come along every so often. Thanks for sharing your work with us. Your bus has been an interesting work for me.

Accordion · 03-01-2013, 05:05 AM

That is some beautiful craftsmanship. I love the curves.

Shadoll · 03-01-2013, 10:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Accordion

That is some beautiful craftsmanship. I love the curves.

I concur. Wondermus.

Diesel Dan · 03-01-2013, 11:45 AM

What they said! Thanks for the inspiration

Diesel Dan · 03-01-2013, 01:29 PM

There seems to be some debate about the necessity of priming. I did not prime my bus, except for a repair spot here and there but I did sand it all at least to scuff it up. I have not had any problems with my paint except for right around some crevices on my front grill which I probably just didn't reach when sanding or cleaning. I painted my bus in October of 2010. I used a cheap air sprayer with Rustoleum gloss white oil-based enamel thinned with acetone. I did have a hell of a time dealing with the galvanized sheet metal I used to cover my windows though. I'll never used galvanized metal again if I plan to paint it. I'm no expert on auto body painting, but that is my experience with painting my bus.

MikeyBskunk · 03-01-2013, 02:16 PM

i also did not prime my bus i did this in these steps,
1. washed my bus compleatly
2. wiped the bus down compleatly with an acetone soaked rag (by hand) haha
3. painted without primer 2 coats roof, sides, and rims

i think it came out great, the acetone is like a liquid sanding it smoothes and cleans the metal perfectly you can really feel the dffrence

Tango · 03-01-2013, 11:55 PM

Another good alternative is "Liquid Sandpaper" --- It is a de-glosser and cleaner you can wipe on with a rag. Works well to aid in bonding new paint over old.

Shadoll · 03-02-2013, 10:55 AM

At some point I will need to repaint my bus, which will take some doing as I believe they painted it with a latex of all things. Sprayed but every little bump peels some paint off. But that will be at a much later date. Good to know on the how too's though. I'll probably have to really strip it first.

I'm suprised you got away with leaving yours yellow so long. Here when I went to the DMV the woman's first comment was ... it can't be yellow. After I had just got done saying it was the big blue bus outside. Don't get me started on our small town employee base.

I like the look of the blue and different rub rail color in contrast to the solar panels. And noted the chains.

Tango · 03-02-2013, 12:57 PM

Hey Shadoll --- I'm in about the same boat. Nearly all of my bus appears to have had the original paint blasted off at some point and was repainted with #@!%&#! water-based latex house paint. Just maybe the worst thing you could possibly put onto metal. Especially bare metal. It falls off in chunks the size of your hand and is chalky & flaking everywhere.

In the process of sanding & welding things I have discovered that everything that was painted with the latex has a layer of surface rust under it while any of the metal that still had some factory paint (orange for skoolies back in'46) was bright, shiny metal. I will definitely be re-blasting with soda whatever is left before I begin any of my exterior paint work. Thank goodness they left the interior alone and it is in remarkable condition to be over 65 years old.

Surprisingly, the undercoating on areas like the wheel wells has also held up incredibly well. I stripped and treated them both expecting to find a lot of rust but there wasn't any...inside or out, where it had been undercoated with whatever asphalt like material they applied at the factory.

lornaschinske · 03-02-2013, 03:09 PM

We already had a coat of white paint (drips and all) on our bus. I wiped it down, a section at a time, with a sander/deglosser. And then rolled oil based exterior house paint on, a section at a time. I tried to sand the drips out. I can live with the old drips.

roach711 · 03-02-2013, 06:41 PM

From what I've read:

Latex over latex or oil over oil is fine (but clean the old paint really well first).

Latex over oil is usually ok with good prep work, meaning the surface is clean, clean, clean and de-glossed so the new paint has something to bite into. TSP was the most common suggestion for cleaning the old paint.

Oil over latex seemed to be what caused the most grief. The oil paint film is harder than the latex paint film and many had problems with the oil paint film cracking.

Given the nastiness of removing an entire coat of paint I'll be going big on the preparation phase. That's one job I really really don't want to have to do over. Consensus was that latex paint was a bad idea on vehicles.

Tango · 03-03-2013, 09:39 AM

As a side note --- Detroit and many makers went to water-based primers several years ago to cut costs (not to save the environment). Net result...new auto bodies are rusting much worse than before the switch. It's still as simple as water + metal = rust. Properly applied over another type of primer or paint you can get away with it but water based paints are still not "there" as far as durability on metal.

Diesel Dan · 03-04-2013, 08:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ramblin.ruby

... What grit should I aim for? I'm totally new to auto painting. Any suggestions are a great help...

The grit you use will be mainly related to how nice you want your finish to look, tempered by how much work you feel like doing.

Personally, 220 grit finish sanding was good enough for me. My paint job had a fair amount of orange peel, but that was due to my lack of experience using a paint sprayer rather than my sanding decisions. Some areas turned out smooth, and if my whole bus had turned out like that I would have been thrilled.

Tango · 03-04-2013, 09:11 AM

If you have a decent compressor...blasting is by far the easiest and fastest way to deal with irregular shapes. And these days you can pick up a little gravity feed gun for around 60-75 bucks. And if you use baking soda instead of sand, you don't even need to tape off any glass plus you avoid inhaling silica dust. Still want to use a mask & eye protection, but soda is a whole different animal than sand. Northern Tool even sells a little portable Klutch (house brand) soda blasting set up for just over a hundred bucks. Worth that much in time & blister savings!

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