The weather is turning cold and I realized I had better prioritize some projects or get stuck doing them in the snow. First on the list was to get the three water tanks installed – fresh water, gray water, and black (poop) water. The most important is the poop tank. That has to be installed in order to install the toilet – an inside winter job. The toilet dumps directly into this tank, so it has to be securely attached to the underside of the floor just below the toilet. Basically the layout of the entire bus is based around the location of the toilet!

I built a rack to hold all three tanks and keep a total of 1800 pounds of water from moving around in stop and go traffic. The last thing you want is 65 gallons of poop on the loose! I can wait until spring to get all the plumbing done.

With that completed, I moved inside to get the floor ready for vinyl flooring. -I used 2 gal. of Bondo to fill all the floor seams and counter sunk bolts. Then the belt sander to finish. After four days on my hands and knees, the floor is now smooth and ready for vinyl floor covering.

I got a new steering wheel! It's a 17” all aluminum, no dish, Joe's Racing wheel. The first fit of a new dash went well. I'm ready to temporarily install the gauge pod and gauges and begin wiring some of the switches and gauges.

I wanted some Art Deco touches to the outside of the bus in addition to the cool front and rear roof running lights, so I designed side marker lights that had a little more style than the original. I found a guy on line that has a water jet cutting machine in Battle Creek. I took him my drawing and dimensions. We converted it to a CAD drawing and cut the pieces out of 3/16 aluminum in less than an hour – start to finish. The actual cutting time was less than 10 min. The machine cuts the metal using a 60,000 psi water jet. Total cost - $40.00.

I started on the rear window. Replacement window for the rear are nonexistent. I'm going to replace it with fiberglass-over-foam that will look like the original window with a dark tint. Got the foam cut and inserted into window frame and then sealed all the seams and edges with a can of foam insulation. Next step is to sand to the contour of the original window, then lay up fiberglass over the foam, finish sand, and then paint it to look like a tinted window. Sounds easy enough. I wanted to paint somebody looking out the back window, but Teri says that would be tacky. I'm thinking Yoda waving...

Dash is ready to install and begin wiring to engine, lights, sending units, etc.  Not to worry.  All the wires are labeled.  I had to crimp 60 socket pins onto the red and black wires, then insert into blank sockets, then label them to match the sockets on the dash.