Follow Our Progress

September 29th 2003

We only worked on the bus for an hour or so today.  My Jeep decided to give me some grief.  I had just replaced the brake master cylinder before our 6000+ mile trip in August.  this morning there was brake fluid on the rubber mat...  I assumed that the brake master cylinder I had bought was a dud and would need to be replaced.   I went to back out of the garage and stalled the car immediately.  The clutch was so short that I could barely shift...  Anyway, a closer inspection under the dash revealed that my clutch master cylinder has gone out .  I checked the fluid level and sure enough, we had most likely sucked air into the lines running to the slave cylinder.

I added more fluid and crawled under the car to bleed the lines and couldn't get the bleed valve to crack.  I just couldn't get both hands in the right location to crack it without risking bending the tubing...  Anyway, I ended up driving it over to a local garage and they put the car up on the stand and bled the line for me.  The clutch master cylinder is on order and should be here on Wednesday (man was it expensive compared to the brake master cylinder).

It took us a good portion of the day to take care of the Jeep issue, get some grocery shopping done and get to the bus.

	Becky and I wanted to get the other panel up in the back of the bus, but both of us together were not able to open the window to get the rubber trim pieces out of the way. I took a look outside and quickly discovered why we were not able to open the emergency exit part of the window...  There was a solid 1 inch bead of silicone around 2/3 of the window in place of the stock rubber gasket. It took me about 15 minutes with a sharp utility knife to get out enough of the silicone to try prying the window open.
	I got out the pry bar and with a little careful work managed to finally break the seal the silicone had on the window.  There have been quite a few discoveries like this as we have been working on the bus.  I guess that I am beginning to get used to the goofy fixes that people have made to the bus over the years.  This is just another mess that will have to be corrected before we can come out from under the roof where the bus is stored now. We finally managed to get the window open and removed the rubber trim pieces from the inside edge so we could accurately trace the window opening on the new panel.  Unfortunately, one of the support beams from the covered RV spot was in the way and kept me from being able to trace the window anyway.  Rather than move the bus, I traced as much as I could and we used the cutout from the panel on the other side to finish the window tracing.
	I am so glad that we traced the piece of plywood siding from the other side of the back of the bus before putting it up.  It took no more than 10 minutes to cut out the piece and it fit almost perfectly on the first try. One small cut to shave off a corner and we had the piece in place and ready to trace most of the window opening.
	I consider the two panels in the back of the bus the most difficult to cut, lots of rounded corners.  Now that they are both done, I feel much better about paneling the rest of the bus. As soon as money permits, I will buy more paneling and work my way around the rest of the bus.  In the mean time, I'll work on getting the rest of the inexpensive lath pieces in place and work on other tasks that need to be done.
	The finished panel in place and secured.  It looks really nice and hides all of that pink insulation.

Money is tight now.  We've spent a bit over budget, so I have to switch over to working on tasks that don't require more supplies.  There are a lot of things that I can work on...  All of the vinyl strips on the outside of the bus need to be removed in preparation for painting, lath needs to be put up in preparation for plywood siding, the back bedroom wall needs to be framed, Insulation on the walls in the last 4 feet of the bus needs to be done, the rubber flooring in the front of the bus needs to be chipped away, etc...

There's plenty to do without spending a lot of money!