As you may already know from some facebook posts, I came down with mysterious muscle/tendon pain that felt like I had worked out at the gym for 12 hours after being a couch potato for decades. Morning pain and stiffness was so bad that I was unable to reach over shoulder height, couldn't lift my knees to my waist, couldn't squat and get back up, couldn't ride my mountain bike, and had lost 90% of my grip due to pain in my wrists. It took three months to get a diagnosis and start treatment. Needless to say, not much got done with the bus. I have polymyositis rheumatica (PMR) – an auto-imune disease similar to (but not as bad as) rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, scleroderma, etc. Notice that this is only one letter away from PMS, a much more horrible condition. I started taking Prednisone two weeks ago, and I'm now back 100%. Amazing! I'll have to be on the Prednisone for 6-12 months. It has nasty side effects, but with a healthy diet and regular exercise, I should be able to keep them to a minimum.
 
We went to the bus rally in Flint and also to the Woodward Dream Cruise a few weeks ago. Learned a lot and took home a lot of great ideas.  There were 31 bus conversion there.

We also did the Woodward Dream Cruise.  40,000 customs and restorations cruising down Woodward Ave. and they estimated over 1 million spectators.

My brother, Todd, has been over through the Labor Day weekend – actually from Saturday through Wednesday. We reached a long sought milestone on Tuesday. We finished laying the structural floor which gives the bus about 50% of its rigidity. This took way longer than I expected – following what I call the “5X Rule”. The 5X Rule only applies to something you've never done before - versus the “2X Rule” which is the actual time to complete a project you've done a few times before – versus the “1X Rule” which applies to stuff you've done ten times or more. All together I laid nine sheets of plywood and only averaged 0.75 sheets per day. That's twelve full days (8-10 hrs.) to lay nine sheets. The top of all the bulkheads had to be rotary sanded with 80 grit to get good glue adhesion. Each piece had to be rabitted at the side wall to slide under the bus rails running down the sides. Then all contact surfaces with the bus frame and plywood edges were glued (twenty four 10.5 oz. Tubes of liquid nails). I used an air powered glue gun. Finally, the sheet was drilled and screwed down with ¼” self-tapping flat-head Torx bolts. I used about 500 bolts, not counting the edges, which requires nuts and bolts every four inches – about another 100 bolts. This part is a two man job requiring one person inside the bus and the second under the floor on the outside. The final sheet was dead on square!

I've also been stripping the paint off the outside. This is a slow process because you have to wait 8-12 hours between application of the stripper and removal. The stripper I'm using is called Aqua-Strip and is very nice to work with. It's like thick wallpaper paste. It doesn't run, is non-toxic, and cuts through the paint well. The only negative - $78.00 a gallon! I figure it will take 5 gallons to strip the whole bus. It has taken three applications to remove the six layers of paint down to pristine aluminum. The OEM green base primer and gray second primer were very good products. They're very thin coats, but require a fresh layer of stripper and steel wool to remove. We've got about 1/3 of the bus down to pristine aluminum.

On the mechanical side, I've got the radiator out and have modified (as in torn out crap to make room) the engine compartment to get the radiator up further from the road. As it hangs out behind the rear wheels it was prone to skid damage on slanted transitions from parking lots, etc. to the road. This will require rerouting all the coolant plumbing at the front of the engine. I ordered four 1200 cfm electric fans to pull air through the radiator. They might arrive tomorrow (I hope, I hope). I'll have to custom fabricate a radiator shroud to enclose the fans to get maximum air flow through the radiator.

With the help of Kevin VanVeelen (my expert glass man) we have installed and removed the windshield twice, so far. The windshield is two piece with a bar down the center. I want to eliminate the bar to give a smoother look to the front of the bus, and eliminate the annoying obstruction of the 1” wide center bar. On first attempt, we could not get the center edges of the glass close enough to meet in the center without being too far from the outside edges – even with the center gasket still attached. That process took us six hours as the gasket has what's called a locking strip that you press in with a flat plastic stick and lots of soapy water. Once convinced the windshield would not be water tight, we pulled the locking strip out (3 min.) and came back a second day for another shot. This time, after welding a 3/8” wide aluminum strip to the outside edges of the window opening, we tried again. Still too big a gap in the center. This time it only took us three hours to get the glass in and out! Now I have a plan to use panel adhesive and one and a half inch wide aluminum to narrow the windshield opening. We'll have to shorten the original gasket, but I think it will work this time.

I've got the driver's seat positioned, so we can go shopping for seats. Becky, Teri and I went to Ikea and discovered that I can do all the cabinets and LED lighting using their products. This will mean a huge time savings in building cabinets and installing lighting.

I hope to get plates, and have her on the road in a month or two. The inside will be empty, but I need to keep the mechanicals operational and get some shifting practice in. Hope you enjoyed this issue of This Old Bus.