Big Yellow Project

[MP&C]

Well here's the saga of the latest bus repair. It seems a new driver at a local high school was attempting to back out of a parking space and missed the BIG YELLOW vehicle already occupying where he intended to move. Maybe they should change the color of those buses so you can see them coming.





Note door gap closed up here...























So from the onset, it looks like we need one new door, a filler panel, some "adjustments" to a couple door frames, painting and buffing.


Filler panel was fabricated out of 18 ga cold rolled steel, abraded with the DA, and prepped for SPI epoxy primer..





New door and filler panel have been sprayed with SPI epoxy, here shown after blocking with 400 grit..





New hardware getting prepped for painting...





Stainless hardware is used to stave off the rust issues. The bright polished finish does not provide good adhesion for a paint finish. Additionally, we've found that excessive paint build on these promotes cracking/chipping of the paint while driving them in during installation.. So to minimize the build on the hardware, we have eliminated primer on these parts. We media blast with 80 grit garnet media, blow off with air, and they get yellow urethane directly on the abraded fasteners. This method has shown to work well with NO chipping...














Dis-assembly..











The filler panel is actually sandwiched between two flanges at each luggage box, so the bus needed to be jacked up about 8" where the filler panel could be slid in place from the bottom, and bus dropped back down to level before attachment so we didn't have any twist in the boxes.











All door gaps addressed, painting, touch-ups, and buffing complete, ready for school!

[flashed]

It looks much better ,shame they cant be a brighter color so they can be seen better .

[MP&C]

Always a new challenge every day....











The strong winds this weekend knocked over a dead oak tree across the chain link fence at the local high school, and this was the bus that found the overhang..

[Rickysnickers]

job security one might say

[Rickysnickers]

Nice job on the repair BTW

[MP&C]

He's got just shy of 20 buses, so odds are that I have at least one repair a year. This is the second in a 3 month span.

[MP&C]

Tonight found us working on the bus to remove some of the damage from an oak tree. Here's our damage...








The headliner above the step area was cut out to give us better access to the roof skin..











We got much of the damage roughed out, but there's quite a bit of stretch in that roof skin still to remove.

[Rickysnickers]

With all that practice, I can only imagine what your truck looks like!

[MP&C]

A few more hours was spent getting the light opening to match the new, unbroken light, we welded up some of the screw holes that had torn, and given some of the structural members in the way of the roof, we had to settle for no oil canning and a slight low that needed filler.. The owner was more concerned about leaks than having the roof top that no one can see returned to perfect. Here's some of our implements of correction










Last night we finished up sanding the roof repair on the bus, and started to get things covered up for primer.. Being the lighter of us two, guess who got roof duties for rolling out the shark grip?





This is starting to look like a hazmat incident...








Tonight we'll get some SPI epoxy on the bare spots and filler





The sheet metal on the front cap seems a bit thin for it's purpose, so rather than trust the new light to clip nuts again, a surround ring is made from 14 gauge cold rolled steel to make an anchor plate. The Vise-jigsaw is used to cut out the center...











note throttle control...





Using transfer punches, mounting holes from light are marked onto the ring and drilled to 17/64 to accommodate 8-32 rivet nuts...















It was also media blasted to prep it for the epoxy primer session for this evening.

[MP&C]

All ready to spray...





Here's the SPI epoxy sprayed on the repair area...





as well as on our bolting plate we fabricated. This will be riveted behind the panel using stainless pop rivets..





First coat of BASF Urethane, and a shot of the scaffolding setup used...





Final coat...





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiYA19ELpj8


Unmasked, we'll let this set a bit and get it re-assembled on Tuesday night.

[flashed]

Looking much better .

[MP&C]

Thanks!


All done with the school bus! To recap, Before:









After:

[flashed]

Looks good .

[Keith Seymore]

Nice work; I appreciate you highlighting the steps.

I don't envy you, though: that's a lot of YELLOW.

(Looks like you have a nice place to lay out your tools while working....)