LOVE - HATE RELATIONSHIP

The Shop last Spring

While we did most of the interior work last year with the Bus outside, at our house, I needed a place to work on the exterior that would not be ruled by weather. I found the perfect building only ten minutes from home - a 56' x 60' pole barn built about six years ago and situated on two acres of land. The building has two 14' high doors at opposite ends plus two 7' conventional garage doors to the side bays. One bay we've converted to a paint booth with radiant floor heat, super insulation and

Interior

excellent airflow. Mark and I have a couple of cars waiting for restoration down the road - a '70 Chevelle Malibu SS, a '68 Torino GT, and a '39 Ford 2 door street rod that my oldest kid and I finished the first time around in 1990. Anyway, back to the Bus. I moved it over there in late June to restore, prep and paint the exterior. I've had three "deadlines" pass and it was still not in full primer. Once again, a project I underestimated x10. I bought this particular bus because of the fresh engine and

Distorted  panel

 

suspension. If I had it to do over, I may have taken a closer look at just how rough the exterior was. Here is one example of a panel that had to be replaced. Note the bulging between rivets. Electrolytic corrosion occurs between the steel backing panel and the aluminum outer panel, forming a white power oxide that expands to a greater volume than the metallic aluminum, pushing the two metals apart. Since aluminum is more malleable it deforms, causing the bulging between the line of rivets. Solution - remove the aluminum skin, apply a layer of undercoating to keep the two metals 

Corrosion under panel

electrolytically separated, and replace with a fresh panel from the donor bus. Many points of steel / aluminum contact were separated by what looks like tar soaked cloth at the factory. You can see some bulging of the panel above, but there are limits to the amount of rebuilding possible These buses were magnificently engineered, but I doubt those engineers expected them to be on the road almost sixty years later. My original plan was to retain the anodized aluminum bottom half and paint

Corrosion barrier applied

the upper half, but there were way more defects in the skin than I had originally realized, so I decided to paint the entire bus in order to repair all the damaged areas and fill holes cut for a refrigerator, furnace, outlets, etc. by previous owners. As I said in an earlier post, I wanted a clean roof which required 11 holes to be patched in the roof alone. In addition there were only four bay doors that were not damaged. I wound up using all three large bay doors from the donor bus, but they still required a

Replaced, re-riveted,painted

considerable amount of dent and gouge repair, as well as removal of all the bay door pull-out handles, straightening and re-riveting. In addition there are over 80 bolt-on window and trim parts that were all removed for repair and refinishing. Two of the bay doors were rebuilt to add expanded metal for venting the air conditioning units and the remote oil cooler. In addition, I removed the front license plate assembly and grafted in a section off the donor bus to give the front a smooth, unbroken

Some of the bolt-on pieces

look. The roof was sanded down to the original,very tough green prime, re-primed and then shot with white Imron. All the bay doors were hung with new hinge rubber. We etch primed all the bolt on pieces, doors and sections as we went. All bolt-on parts were seam sealed to create a smooth,tight, unified look. It's been three months of hammering, filling, sanding, priming, more sanding. I hate sanding! It's like a bad remake of The Karate Kid - wipe on, wipe off. Filler on, sand off, primer on, sand off, and on and on...

Panel repair

Refinished latch handle

Modified front

Old front

Silver at last!