2026 Jamboree Splitty
Started the week with David spending all day Monday continuing his work on the floor repairs. It was hours and hours of cutting, fitting and welding. Basically adding to what he had done Sunday. Sue and I came by to watch for a few minutes on our way to our Doctor Appointment.
Thursday Mike, David and I started in on the raffle bus. David continued his methodical, precise work on the floor areas and it’s amazing all he got done, hour after hour was spent getting it looking just so. His goal was to get everything cut, fitted, and tacked in place so Saturday Bill could do the final welding of all the seams and finish it off. Excellent job David! Can’t wait to watch Bill continue this effort.
Mike was able to get the rubber covers for the swing axles oriented correctly. I had put the covers in place earlier but what I didn’t know was that the clamps must be oriented just so. Because if they are not correctly oriented, when they fail on a trip and you’re trying to change them by the side of the road, you won’t be able to unscrew the clamps!
So whoever wins this bus will someday be on the side of the road and have Mike to thank for his foresight.
While Mike and David were busy, I started sanding the driver side of the bus. I brought my good sanding/vacuum combo that captures the dust as you’re sanding and keeps the mess to a minimum. Works great and I think it’ll really help speed up the rough sanding process. Got most of the drivers side done in just a few hours.
Mike and I then decided to start working on the six side windows. We started taking the frames apart to remove the glass completely so the frames can be media blasted and painted correctly. This is really the only way to do it right and is a ton more work than just masking the glass off and more or less just painting at it.
Each frame has two halves that are held together with four really small, really hard to access, really rusted in place screws. Each individual screw is a whole production in itself and there are twenty four of them! So we spent hours on this.
Russell got back from his trip to Antarctica and of course he jumped right in and started helping… After traveling most of the night!
Great to see you back, Russell!!
I had to leave early so I took home the last window we still had to do and I’ll be able to finish it in my garage tomorrow.
Author: John Manning
More images on our Raffle Bus #35 page
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