Department of Corrections Bus

[Leftyclick]

So it's been slow going with our bus lately. Due to work and other obligations I haven't been able to spend near as much time working on it as I had hoped. I found that it had a couple of pretty bad leaks after some of the rain storms that we have had this fall. It seems to have been leaking at where the roof meets the front of the bus as well as where it meets the side above the door. I cleaned out as much of the old caulk/filler as possible and used Butyl-flex gutter and flashing sealant to seal those areas and where the roof meets the back of the bus. It seems to have sealed it up pretty well! I was also able to pull the rest of the roof trim down (which I think may have been used to attach the air conditioning duct work) and I pulled up all of the old floor. It definitely has some rust, as you can see, but it all appears to by just surface rust.

I think I swept about 20 pounds of dirt and dust out the old girl! I was also able to completely flush the coolant system, replaced the thermostats, topped it off with Fleet Charge antifreeze and installed a new coolant filter before the winter temps arrived. During that process I found that the pump that pushes the coolant into the bus was leaking, as well as the front heater core. As a quick fix I just bypassed that entire part of the system and just looped it back into the engine until I get the chance to fix it.
We are currently getting ready to install the floor, but we now have another slight setback. It looks like I have some leaks in the walls (probably from the windows) and into the floor. They look to be minor, but it will still have to be addressed. I am afraid that we will have to pull the walls apart to track them all down. Hopefully it won't be too bad to resolve.

 

[Leftyclick]

Hello all! It has been a while since I have posted an update, but we have made some progress. For one, I decided to go ahead and change the oil and filters. Even though this sounds hardly worth mentioning, it was quite an ordeal! The 7.8 diesel takes over 5 gallons of oil and two oil filters! It was a little more messy than I had planned on, but it is done. We also decided to completely gut the interior, mainly due to leaks and wet insulation. This has let us see every place that was leaking so that we could seal it up. I've attached some pics of our progress below. The floor looks more rusty than it did, but it's just rust dust that has spread around from walking so much on the floor. That should be taken care of soon.

 

[Leftyclick]

I have also pulled all of the extra wiring out of the bus, and there was a good bit of it. There appeared to be wiring for school bus lights in place, but they were not connected to anything anywhere in the bus. I recently purchased some new side mirrors as well and got them installed. When I bought the old girl, there were only a set of passenger side mirrors, and they were not that great. You can see them in the attached pics. I also bought a leather seat out of a Minivan to use as the driver's seat, so I will have to figure out a way to mount that once I get the floor in.

I had really hoped to be further along by now, but I have to say that I am pretty pleased with my progress. It has been quite a job so far, but I am very glad to say that we are about to start building, rather than just disassembling!

 

[PDBreske]

The front end of that Ford looks mighty intimidating. There's something about those hard edges that I really like. Those sharp lines also make for easy paint outlines if you want a two-tone scheme—could be a very cool paint job in this vehicle's future.

 

[Leftyclick]

Thanks and I agree! I really like the look of this model Ford.