Rusty 87 build thread

[EastCoastCB]

Looks like classified gov't top secret bus pics.

[musigenesis]

Starting to look OK.







Ospho on the floor to see where I'm going to have to patch (going to weld sheet metal on).



My new mail slot. Did some demo on the other corner which is in much better shape. This is the only bit I'm going to have to repair. I'm going to weld in a piece of leftover 2.5"x2.5" angle iron on the inside, and then a 16ga patch on the outside to fill that rectangle.

I think the other corner was so much worse because the license plate light was leaking so badly.







Still more bondo, and more to do. My other bondo efforts revealed how much the paint shows any imperfections in the smoothness of the patch. This corner is already going to look funky but I want to minimize that as much as possible.



I'm wondering what the light pointed to in the next pic is. I guess it's a tail light, but on my bus it's wired up as a brake light. Do I need to have these legally? Or is the brake light up above (in between the backup light and the turn signal) sufficient? I had to delete the one on the left as part of the corner repair, and I'm going to cover over this one on the right as well, and if I need to have additional tail lights I'm going to get something else and install them.

[musigenesis]

Originally Posted by EastCoastCB

Looks like classified gov't top secret bus pics.

It's a combination of not wanting to show my license plate number and not wanting to see my own bald head.

[musigenesis]

I cut this piece and it fit perfectly first time. Never happened before.



And then I welded it in place in my usual haphazard style. That has happened before.





Welded hole patch experiment.





More frankenwelding to stitch on the new outside panel. I somehow keep convincing myself that I will be able to weld over 1/8" gaps when in fact I can't.

[Yukon Cornelius]

looking good, keep cracking on

[musigenesis]

Deleted right tail light.





Pretty aggressive visitor who showed up the other day. 4" to 5" long. Apparently these guys eat lanternflies, which may explain the size - I've never seen one this big in person.





My left corner top had a couple of major dings. Hammered it as flat as I could from both sides.





Bondo glass first coat.





















Scraped the paint off all the rusted rivets on the back, which was all of them, then osphoed them. Painting them with POR-15.



I made the mistake of not completely cleaning the paint off the rim the first time I worked with the POR-15 a few weeks ago. Today the lid was impossible to get off, had to hammer a big screwdriver under the lid just to get a big enough opening to pour the paint into a new container.

[musigenesis]

[musigenesis]

[musigenesis]

1/8" galvanized plate cut to fit behind lights ($8.25 for a 48" x 8" piece, love me some Fazzio's):





Locked into position with four 1/4-20 screws. These may not have been necessary but they held it in place initially and will at least take some stress off the rivnuts.



Closed-end rivnuts in place of the original sheet metal screw holes. My initial attempt at placing one of these a few days ago resulted in the rivnut nosepiece breaking. This time I clamped the two pieces (original bus body and new plate) tightly with small c-clamps through the center hole, and then I had enough chooch to crimp the rivnuts properly without snapping the nosepiece. Rivnuts went in "wet" with seam sealer.







This might be overkill for the lights, but these openings were a major source of leakage (both from the big holes and the screw holes) and I want to make sure these stay dry.

[Yukon Cornelius]

It's about what gives you piece of mind, or at least that's what I tell myself when I over engineer the crap out of something.
If nothing else, you're refining you rivet smashing processes...
My load standards officer use to say "don't practice until you can do it.... practice until you can't f@ck it up"

looks good

[musigenesis]

Stink bug season. These things love my bus - it was full of thousands of dead ones when I got it.



The rivnut on the right got messed up because it's directly over the post on the inside of the skin.











Cut away the skin and drilled out the post behind it to clear room for the rivnut:

[banman]

Great effort!
Way to eat the elephant, one bite at a time!

I like a product called "duroglass". It's like bondo BUT it's structural having long glass fibers and a more epoxy like base.

For welding across a sheet-metal gap -- If you have access to both sides -- hold a piece of copper tube or plate under the gap. It will keep the weld puddle from falling through and the weld won't stick to the copper.

I'm on the road so no access to my saved links but getting a better helmet with a bigger screen will quickly make you a better welder. I don't mean a $200 Lincoln helmet either -- good stuff for under a $100 but HF ain't it.

[musigenesis]

Originally Posted by banman

Great effort!
Way to eat the elephant, one bite at a time!

I like a product called "duroglass". It's like bondo BUT it's structural having long glass fibers and a more epoxy like base.

For welding across a sheet-metal gap -- If you have access to both sides -- hold a piece of copper tube or plate under the gap. It will keep the weld puddle from falling through and the weld won't stick to the copper.

I'm on the road so no access to my saved links but getting a better helmet with a bigger screen will quickly make you a better welder. I don't mean a $200 Lincoln helmet either -- good stuff for under a $100 but HF ain't it.

If I can get a helper, I may try having them hold a copper plate under the small holes when I weld them over so I don't have to create a giant metal turd to do it. Thanks for the tip on that. That's something that would have been very useful when I was welding the bent piece of angle iron for my corner repair.

I hear you on the helmet.

[musigenesis]

A thing I learned about rivnuts: it seems you need to have the materials already joined tightly before you crimp the thing on. On my first attempt I was relying on the rivnut to bring the two pieces together (they had a gap of more than 1/8" between them) and it bulged between the pieces instead of on the inside and I broke my mandrel to boot. So for these I cut the inner hole first and then used two little c-clamps to join the pieces before rivnutting. Have not broken my mandrel since.



After welding on a patch and bondoing it I was able to set the last rivnut.



Finished seam-sealing the backside. Almost ready for painting.

[Brian S]

Nice work.

[musigenesis]

Test patch for final color (antique white):











These clearance lights suck. Made new gaskets for this and it still leaked. Need something else that fits here.



Morning sun and glossy paint really expose a crappy bondo job:





New taillights. These are meant for a trailer so I have a little bit of extra work to do to waterproof them. I'll be drilling another hole for the wires to go through, this is to make sure they fit in the right place.









Because of the new framing behind the left rear corner, I couldn't keep the original 4" round taillight (or put anything else in that spot). So I needed something that was both a stop/turn/taillight and also had the license plate light.

I'm not really sure how to hook up the license plate light for this, since the left light has the same number of leads as the right one. Maybe it's just always on or something.

[banman]

The licence plate light should be wired to come on/off with the parking/running lights.
No need for a separate circuit, and for sure NOT always left on.

Just splice it to the tail light wire.

[o1marc]

The license plate light bulb is the running light bulb, there's just a clear lens under it. Where are they leaking from? The wire hole? Have you used a proper grommet for sealing hole and wire?

[Native]

Hey Musigenisis ... rust remediation is a tough job. Your bus and ours both suffer from the wheel well rot and the back light drip. I sympathize with you. However, it does feel GREAT to get rid of a hunk of RUST and make it solid again. Keep up the good work.

[musigenesis]

Originally Posted by Native

Hey Musigenisis ... rust remediation is a tough job. Your bus and ours both suffer from the wheel well rot and the back light drip. I sympathize with you. However, it does feel GREAT to get rid of a hunk of RUST and make it solid again. Keep up the good work.

Thanks, man, appreciate the kind words. It is indeed tough but I feel all this work is giving me more of an emotional attachment to this hunk of steel ... which is probably going to lead to more bad decisions down the road.