92 Collins Shuttle bus

[PhilipE]

Am I going to pull the ply up OY?

I haven't decided yet. Thats on the inside of the bus. My concerns are the outside this summer. I can tell you from looking under the bus. The floor pans were painted when built. There are no rust holes showing in the main body pan. The pan is rusted bad in the drives seat area. Being in CO for 20 years can cause that. Then it spent the rest of its life in MO and KY and ended up in Indiana.

Jolly R I feel the same way. My wife required side by side seating. That is hard to find in a bus. In my searching. I found 3 with side by side seating in my price range. one had a Dmax, the other had a 7.3, both had 250K or above. Myself I will not touch either of those engine in a class 5 chassis with that type of milage. I can find good running 5.9's for about half the price of those engines in the used market.

[Oldyeller]

Originally Posted by PhilipE

Am I going to pull the ply up OY?

I haven't decided yet. Thats on the inside of the bus. My concerns are the outside this summer. I can tell you from looking under the bus. The floor pans were painted when built. There are no rust holes showing in the main body pan. The pan is rusted bad in the drives seat area. Being in CO for 20 years can cause that. Then it spent the rest of its life in MO and KY and ended up in Indiana.

Jolly R I feel the same way. My wife required side by side seating. That is hard to find in a bus. In my searching. I found 3 with side by side seating in my price range. one had a Dmax, the other had a 7.3, both had 250K or above. Myself I will not touch either of those engine in a class 5 chassis with that type of milage. I can find good running 5.9's for about half the price of those engines in the used market.

My bus showed no rust underneath but the plywood under the rubber flooring was water saturated, in constant contact with the sheet metal floor and had caused rust to work down from the top. I'm about to start remediating this week . . . gonna be a PITA.

[Jolly Roger bus 223]

i would not be scared of the duramax or 7.3 with that mileage especially if they had maitenance records but i have seen both of those motors go over 400,000 with basic maitenance.
my old work truck has the 2000 duramax and it is over 450 now and is still loaded down and pulls trailers loaded like it did 200,000 ago and that was without the injector recall performed. because it was used when we bought it and i didnt know anything about it at the time

[PhilipE]

Well time for an update.

Here is a current pic of the front end. The green on the front is boat fairing compound. Same as body putty but an epoxy based.

I had to remove the old turn signal assembly and do some redesign work. I could not find any original lights after a long search. I also did a search on other lights that might be graft able into the openings. That was a fruitless search to. The pic you see is the foam form I made to plug the hole and give the epoxy some shape. I will be working on that tomorrow. Then compound on it.

The last pic shows a flat area on the end of that foam plug. That is where the turn indicator lights will be. I will be using small push in marker style lights for turn only. The marker light will be a Peterbuilt front finder marker light mounted below that point between the bumper end and that trim rail. There will also be a side camera mounted in that space also.

BTW that foam plug is number 5 I made. All were different. Trying out designs for different type of current produced lighting.

Tomorrow start on left side plug and work on right side.

[Oldyeller]

Nice thing about playing with these old buses is we can do pretty much what we want. Good to see you making progress.

[PhilipE]

Originally Posted by Oldyeller

Nice thing about playing with these old buses is we can do pretty much what we want. Good to see you making progress.

I don't mind doing modifications. I had hoped to not do any. I think the rear lights I am going to have the same problem.

The hard part to modifications is making them look good instead of something thrown on as an afterthought.

[PhilipE]

Well time for another update. The rights side foam plug is all most done Tomorrow should get it finished. If you noticed I have removed the right side front fender flair. It has minor cracking. The rubber molding is junk so it needs replaced. That means removing the flair, which also makes it easyer to cleanup that area under the molding for paint.

[PhilipE]

Now for the right-side turn signal plug. That is the first coat of mud on it. All the white stuff you see scattered below and around that lighting plug is jell coat from crack repairs and sand threw into the original jell coat.

[Oldyeller]

Good to see you making progress. I'm interested to see how your bus turns out. As I believe I said before, it's a very cool bus.

[PhilipE]

OY I try to make some type of progress every day. A lot I don't show in the posts. But it is stuff that needs to be done before paint gets thrown at it. Take removing that front fender flair. The rubber molding was bad. But it wasn't a deal breaker. What was the deal breaker? there was no way to cleanup under/around that rubber and get a decent paint job. I could have repaired the flair on the bus. With no way of cleaning around/under that rubber to paint sort of killed that thought.

That trim molding that holds the glass panels to the body. Try sanding that stuff bare for a repaint. My thoughts "Ain't no way". Cheaper to blow out the rivets and replace it. Plus, most of the rivets are loose. So they needed replaced also.

It's a never-ending battle. I am just taking them one skirmish at a time.

[PhilipE]

OY

Let me give you an idea of my quality level of work. This pic was taken almost 5 years ago. That truck I did a cab swap and all the paint work 5 years before that. That camper on the flat bed. I made that also. This bus will be at the same level. So its going to be a slow long uphill battle.

[PhilipE]

Time for another update.

Here is the right front fender flair on another panel I pulled off. That flair is almost done. That green patch is the last coat.

On a side note. The person that put on that yellow paint needs a serious beating. It was cheap paint; it was not thinned any from what I can tell. If you tried to use anything higher than 80 grit paper. It just stopped up paper almost instantly.

[PhilipE]

Now on to the other panel. I pulled the panel off between the entry door and rear axle. That panel took a beating getting it off. The panel was sandwiched between two sections of aluminum. With 30 years of road debris it was locked it pretty good. That panel has a piece missing, it has some cracking to repair, plus the damage I caused. I will be doing some reinforcement work on the back side of the panel before reinstalling. Most of the cracking was caused by someone removing support braces from frame to bottom of panels. Or factory not installing braces. The panels are drilled for braces.

BTW I still would like to get my hands on that painter. He really needs a good beating. I still have four more panels of that trash.

That long panel took 25 sheets of 6" D/A paper 80 grit to get that yellow off.

[Oldyeller]

Good progress.

[PhilipE]

Originally Posted by Oldyeller

Good progress.

Might get along farther along if the rain stays away for a while.

But I know the farmers need it. So I am not going to complain too much. I have friends that farm. I don't want them to treat me like that painter I would like to meet.

[PhilipE]

Here is another update.

The right-side turn signal plug is done. If you notice in that pic I have also been doing some polishing below the passenger window.

[PhilipE]

Left side turn signal plug will be done when I sand off the three small areas of fresh green showing.

[PhilipE]

Glass panel from door opening to wheel well. It has two small areas that need a very small amount of filler, then it is done.

[PhilipE]

I have removed the rear panel from the weel well to the rear cap. It had a corner broken off and a few cracks. The cracks have been repaired, working on the missing corner right now.

[PhilipE]

I have removed the grill to modify it for turn signals. I didn't get any pic's before I dropped it off for welding and powder coat.