20th POST OF THIS OLD BUS

The ceiling is up. I went up to L.L. Johnson Lumber Co. in Charlotte to buy 1/4” luan plywood that has all the plys running in the same direction. You can get a sheet with all the grain running lengthways (they call it “column ply”, or all the grain running widthways (“barrel ply”). The English language is just weird. Lengthways is a real word, but widthways is not. That's just not right. What's so special about length that allows ways to be tacked on and not width? I don't get it. Anyway, I bought 8 “column” sheets so I could easily bend the plywood to fit the curve of the roof. The plywood is covered with light gray (don't get me started on how you spell grey) Naugahyde with 1/4” foam backing. I got help from Mark Walling. This is definitely a two man job. The first panel, we covered the panel and foam side of the Naugahyde with contact glue, bent the panel and held it with wire and applied the Naugahyde. We then took the sheet with the bend held by the wire and screwed it to the ceiling. It worked OK, but we found that it was easier to just screw the plywood up, and then glue the Naugahyde to it. We had some bubbles develop, but they were gone in a couple of hours, after the volatiles had gassed out through the Naugahyde. A lighting console will go down the center of the ceiling where the foil is. I'll add aluminum strips along the seams to cover them and add a touch of Deco.

The power management system was delivered a couple days ago. It's a Victron Multiplus. This is the latest in power management and was developed for the power yachting market. It's a 3000 watt true sine wave inverter and a four stage programmable battery charger. The AC power from a campground hookup is fed into Multiplus; from there the unit determines if AC current is needed and distributes it. If there is power left over, it sends DC current to the battery bank to charge the “house batteries” and, on a separate circuit, the starter batteries . If there is not enough amps coming in from the hookup, the Multiplus will add in phase AC amps from the house batteries via the inverter to meet the sensed demand. It can be programmed for wet cell lead acid, gel, or lithium battery charging.  There are many more features, including an LCD monitor/control panel. The Multiplus eliminates manual monitoring and complicated switching. 

I started putting up some walls. This is the head. The door will be the same width as the hallway, so you can open that door and close the bedroom door and have a complete bathroom closed off from the rest of the Bus with the hallway adding temporary floor space to the bathroom. The walls are 3/4” maple plywood – no stud framing to maximize usable space. To anchor the 3/4” plywood, I used aluminum channel made to trim plywood edges.  I screwed the channel to the floor and to the ceiling. I then filled the channels with glue and dropped the plywood wall into the channels. Since a major component of Streamline Moderne Art Deco is rounded corners, I had to figure out a way to have sturdy, smooth, round corners. After trying mockups of PVC, 4” ducting, and heavy cardboard tubing that I cut into quarters, I settled on steel chimney pipe.  I routered  the edges and fastened the curved steel with body panel adhesive and screws. Once the adhesive had cured, I removed the screws and filled with Tiger Hair fiberglass to prevent stress cracks.  Tiger Hair fiberglass is like - well - like snot with cat hair mixed in.  AND, applying it is like - well - like trying to get a raw egg to stick to a Teflon covered wall.  I'm thinking of making a "How not to" You Tube video.  Once the Tiger Hair had hardened, I cover that with regular Bondo filler to smooth out the surface.

My goal is to have the Bus on the road in a month. Not completed, but wired and legal to drive. With this mild weather, I want to get some road testing done. My buddy Mike – the electronics whiz (wired a submarine with his own two hands back in '68) is helping me with this. I stripped the entire wiring system out and we're starting from scratch.  So far we've rewired the relays for ON/OFF, Start, High Idle and Reverse into the new dash.  Then we fired up the Detroit.  Purred like a 2180# kitten.  Everything works as planned so far!