40 Miles On The Freeway!!

Planned on spending about 2 hours doing the final hose routing/installing on the remote oil filter. The first hose went on easy, 50 minutes? Looking just like I’d hoped. The second hose, not so much. The hose I brought from home was 1-1/2” too short! So had to go to Orielly’s, Ace and NAPA, second trip today for NAPA, before I found hose the right size and strong enough to work.Then discovered the bottom fittings coming out of the oil pump were clocked wrong and the mustache bar modification that was made to allow the bar to fit around the fittings needed work. And that meant the bar had to come down, tools found to allow the bar to be further modified, reclock the fittings, and then reinstalled. Took hours! Had to refill with oil, spin the motor with the coil disconnected to get oil into the new filter and hoses so we wouldn’t starve the bearings of oil, and finally start the engine. So it’s done, looks as good as I hoped, no leaks and hopefully we won’t have to take the mustache bar down ever again. The next step is to start driving the bus. A lot! Need 500 miles of break in before we can declare victory. And it’s now ready to go. Well, it’s still up on the Jack stands I had to put under it today to work on it and was just too tired to remove them when I was done about 3:30 this afternoon. Maybe someone has a spare front driver seat we can temporarily use until our beautiful newly reupholstered seats are ready? Let me know and I’ll meet you at Russell’s and we can get it installed…. Thanks.

This is just a short status report on the Raffle Bus.  

Special thanks to Mike, Wayne, Dan W., and Miller for joining Russell, Greg and me today to knock out a list of final chores on the raffle bus.  

Just bringing everyone up to date on our progress.  

Friday was a day long exercise in frustration while working on the brakes. Russell and I got the new master cylinder, upper fluid reservoir and found the new lower fluid reservoir and the connecting tube were for a different year master cylinder. So I had to modify the tube and clean up the old lower reservoir, both of which took hours to get right. Got everything assembled and started bleeding the brakes. That seemed to be going ok, just taking forever when the master cylinder started making strange gurgling noises and wouldn’t pull fluid from the upper reservoir after pumping new fluid into the calipers. Finally decided that our new master cylinder was at fault. Luckily, when I called Mike and asked for his advice, he said he had another new one in his stash and he brought it to Russell’s Saturday morning. Life saver. It was a real struggle to get the bad new master cylinder out, transfer over the lower reservoir to the good new one and then install the new assembly under the bus. Really messy work with brake fluid dripping everywhere. But we got it in, got the system bled, and now have really good pedal pressure/feel. I don’t know what we’d do without Mike.Bill Ross came by after he got off work to work his magic on a very hard closing sliding door. It took a lot of head scratching but he was able to figure out what was wrong and make the adjustments needed to get the door closing as it should. Russell can put the door panel on now. He’s very happy…. Thank you Bill…Joe brought the new radio and dropped it off. It’ll look good in the dash. He wanted to install it but Mike and I were under the bus doing brake things and the bus on jack stands is too dangerous to have anyone working inside. Joe will maybe come by later in the week and get it in. Thanks Joe. But the big news is Reuben went and picked up the newly upholstered bench seat. It looks terrific. I think Russell posted a picture of it and I really like the material/color choice. It’ll be going in next. It was a long drive and a lot of trouble for Reuben to pick it up. Thank you, Reuben. I’ll start putting the dash/cover/padded trim back in place tomorrow. I’d been looking for a driver door switch for the front dome light and they are NLA. I’ve got an easy work around that I don’t need dash access for. So the windshield will go in next week and we can start test drives just as soon as the newly upholstered front seats show up. I think they’re being worked on now. I hope.

There was a lot happening on different days this week and I know I have some items that were done earlier in the week called out here. But you get the idea….

Thanks to Wayne, Dan, Russell, Brian, Bill M., and Greg B. for helping out at this week’s unofficial get together over at Russell’s. 

Thanks to Wayne, Dan, Russell, Brian, Bill M., and Greg B.  for helping out at this week’s unofficial get together over at Russell’s. 

For not having an official work party today, we sure got a lot done!Greg, Kitty, Ray, Laura, Russell, Bill R., David C., and Greta were all there today.Kitty came by and finished installing the curtains. The sliding door gave her fits, but everyone chipped in and figured it out.Greg and Russell worked on cabinets all morning and most of the afternoon.Russell got the windshield wiper assembly in and helped troubleshoot the washer system. The new switch works great, the motor works and the squirters spray as they should. There is some kind of air leak somewhere that still has to be found but the fluid itself doesn’t leak. Russell also helped me finish putting in the bolts at the CV/axles. Mike and Wayne had gotten the axles in earlier this week but 5 of the bolts were in such bad shape that they could not be torqued. I brought some from home so we were able to get the five new ones in and torqued down.The really hard job went to Bill Ross. He volunteered to get the front door latches installed. The passenger side went in without a lot of drama and the latch and interior opening handle went in with some modification of the lever arm rod. But the driver side was a real bear. Bill and I fought it for a looong time with little success. So I called David Cissna to see if he could help. He came by and after seemingly forever he and Bill figured it out successfully. David had to remove the window felt channel among other things to gain access to make things work. Then the outer handles went on and both doors now close and lock. It was a long, tough, frustrating job that they just wouldn’t give up on and were finally able to get done. Very, very impressive effort! Took a lot of grit. Thank You.And Greta was there with an amazing lunch for everyone. What a nice, nice job she does for everyone. Makes our whole day! Thank you Greta!

A lot got done at our work party this week. And it was because the turnout was substantial and everyone worked like crazy.

Well, we somehow got a fair amount done on Saturday March 29 build. The weather was perfect but we took two steps forwards and one backwards without our fearless leader (John Manning), who was visiting his son and grandsons in LA.  David C. worked tirelessly on the drivers and passengers front windows. The rubbers and aftermarket pieces did not fit perfectly, and he had to modify the parts so that everything fit perfectly. David C. also worked on installing the rear latch and things onto the engine lid. Well, the latter was again an exercise in frustration, in that the seal for the rear latch we ordered said it was for a '71, but it did not fit our latch.