Raffle Bus Update - Jan. 10, 2026

2026 Jamboree Splitty

We had a good Saturday this week. Bill Ross is working on the few interior rust spot repairs mostly at the floors and at the two lower anchor points for the front seat belt bolts. He cut out the old rusted areas and showed me how to properly cut out and fit a patch piece. Then he welded it in and ground the welds down. This process is so easy to describe and so very difficult to do. Took hours.
There is a thicker steel piece welded below the interior sheet metal that was rusted very badly. This piece is what the seat belt bolt goes into. I took it home to see if it could be cleaned up and saved but the rust was too far gone to make a safe repair. So today I spent longer than I should have cleaning up the surface welds and trying to figure out if the steel plate I had on hand would work as the reenforcement piece. Looks like it’ll take a trip to the steel supply house for some steel we can cut down and make work.
Tomorrow I’ll work on fabricating a few pieces to use to repair the small rusted area at the front corner of the driver floor. Bill showed me a good way to make the pieces for him to weld in next Saturday. I hope I can do it well enough for it all to go together. We’ll see……

Author: John Manning