As soon as we made it home, we notified our homeowners association of our newest adventure and asked for grace (and a week) to get the bus stripped of all the school signage and lights so it would be legal for us to drive on the road without impersonating a schoolbus.
Sunday: Ivo started stripping the insides of the bus. The seats were mounted with bolts and nuts through the floor, so it took two people to remove them. One in the bus to un-ratchet the bolts and one under the bus to hold the nuts. It was a tight fit under the bus around engine parts and lines. So R jumped at the chance to help and get dirty in the process….
After that, we had to have a talk with the girls about safety gear and appropriate work attire.
Meanwhile, M and Cindy tackled the outside of the bus. All wording and signage had to be removed. Heat was the way to go. The hairdryer wasn’t strong enough, so Cindy pulled out the embossing gun. With heat and scrapers, we picked away at it. Slowly, oh so very slowly….
Sunday night we purchased a new, stronger heat gun and more scrapers.
Monday – Even though sitting on pins and needles Ivo had to wait until schoolwork was complete as well as his own day to day job to be finished to get his helper working again. They removed the last two benches as well the a/c ducts on both sides of the bus. In the end we also emptied the upper dash box in preparation for dismantling. While Cindy and M continued to pick away on the outside…
Tuesday: Removed rear heater.
Ivo disconnected the hoses closest to where they exit the bus. Instead of draining the entire heater of coolant liquid, he put a cork in the end of each hose and used a zip tie to put a Ziplock baggie around the end with the cork, then pulled the hoses out of the bus and looped the hose in order to have the front heater still working properly without losing too much coolant.
We took off the stop arm and solenoid, finished removing all trim pieces and dashboard and removed four of the wheelchair tracks with R. While under the bus, we also removed the heater starter wire from underneath.
At that time, it was discovered that the protective sheet metal under the AC units had come loose. That could have caused a serious accident on our trip! It took three bolts to fix it. Cindy removed the “School Bus” sign from the top rear of the bus and continued removing reflective tape along the side.
Wednesday:
We took safety arm motor off and reinstalled the tow hook afterwards. Removed two ceiling panels (that is a LOT of screws) in order to remove the front top compartment. Doing that revealed many unattached wires, so we cleaned all those up. Disconnected the flashers and consolidated all loose equipment. Later that evening Homeowners send approval for bus to stay through weekend.
Thursday:
Took the ceiling panels in the back off and figured out that the black box in the back is actually the AC control unit. Unfortunately, it will be in the way of the construction plans, so we tried to figure out how to put it in a different location or mount it differently.
R helped to get one more wheelchair track out but discovered one of the tracks had bolts that cannot be reached since they are over the AC vents. We will have to come up with an alternative solution to get that one out…
Cindy scraped the “School Bus” sign off the top front of the bus, as well as the handicap placards.
Friday:
We took a lot of wiring out of the back, as well as the flashers (that make people stop when the door opens) that have to be removed. After cleaning up from that, Ivo tried to start the bus and was met with dead silence…. oops…
Rest of the night was spent trying to correct the issue. In the end Ivo put all loose wire in one big wire nut connected to the ground, and the bus started. Will have to figure out at later date which the actual culprit wire is… The happiness of the fix did not last long though: once Ivo tried to put the bus in drive…. the bus still wouldn’t move! We concluded that the airbrakes were under a safety interlock as the emergency window alarms had been removed.
Saturday:
A nice full day to work on the bus. But that entire day was spent trouble shooting the airbrake problem. Meanwhile Cindy continued removing wording and reflective tape from the outside of bus. At the end of a very frustrating day, Ivo gave up and cleaned and vacuumed the entire bus to at least get the bus ready for storage. IF we could ever get it to move again… It was a very frustrating day, amongst issues losing the door of the electrical panel that was blown off by the wind. Now to find new hinges for that one…
Sunday:
Shopped for some tools while continuing to research how to release the airbrakes. Cindy spent the afternoon continuing to strip the sides of the bus. One side is completely stripped of the tape, but now we have to go back over it with an adhesive remover to scrape the last of the goop off.
By 4 pm, Ivo finally figured out the wiring issue, the air brakes released, and the bus was able to be move!! Yay!! The reflective tape was completely gone from the right side of the bus and the glue goop was cleaned off. By 5 pm, we decided to call it quits and take the bus to storage. What a first week! Did not get the flooring ripped up as we hoped but having a day job and maintaining the homeschooling schedule and activities does not leave many hours to work on the bus.
One reply on “Week #1”
Awesome website! I enjoyed reading the details of what you guys have done so far!