Follow Our Progress
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May 13th
2004
It was kind of a frustrating day today. The weather report said
that the high winds that we've been having for the past week or so were
going to subside today...
I had to run into Sierra Vista to get a new fuel pump for the Jeep
and pick up a canopy so we could have some shade while working on the
paint job for the bus. By the noon, when I returned from Sierra
Vista, the wind was already picking up. We decided to put off
painting for another day...
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Becky and I went to work getting the front of the
bus prepped for painting again. Becky removed the mirrors
and scraped off almost all of the remaining silicone sealant
that someone had globed above the front windshield. I
removed the windshield wipers and finished off the last bit of
scraping.
It has taken a lot more time than I had thought it would to
prep the front of the bus. There are still some rusty
spots here and there that need to be sanded smooth.
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The front of the bus looks kind of strange to me
with the wipers, mirrors and headlight housings missing.
I can't wait to see what the bus will look like once we get
it painted. I think it will make a HUGE difference in the
way it looks and make it easier to get into the better RV parks
around the country. |
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This is why we didn't bother washing all of the
dust off the bus...
It's going to be entertaining trying to paint the bus if
there is any sort of breeze. The dust here is
horrible. You can tell when it's a calm day because the
mountains in the distance are bright and clear. Obviously
today was not a good day to try to paint... |
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Once the wind kicked up and made painting the bus
impossible, I turned my attention to the door of the bus.
A previous owner must have backed up and caught the door frame
on something because there was a pretty big dent in it that
hasn't allowed us to close the door and get a good seal against
the frame on the leading edge of the door.
I spent an hour or so removing and hammering the frame pieces
back into alignment. The body of the bus underneath the
frame of the door was pretty bent up and resisted being bent
back into shape.
Re-installation of the door frame went pretty smoothly even
though the underlying metal was still a little bent up.
You can't really tell that the door frame was ever
damaged. Everything lines back up and if I can find a
replacement piece of rubber seal, the door will seal well enough
to keep out any real drafts. Once we finish painting,
someone will have to look really close to tell that the door
frame was ever damaged. |
Hopefully tomorrow morning it will be calm and clear enough to clean
the front of the bus and shoot a coat or two of paint on it and have it
dry before the dust kicks up in the afternoon... We still have a
lot of prep work to do, and once our test section on the front of the
bus is complete and works out, we still have the rest of the bus to prep
for painting - oh boy... |
