Replacement hoses not available.

Central States Thermo King to the rescue, again — remanufactured from scratch. $35 each. Hoses back to Neighbor Dan. Reinstallation promised for this weekend … and then he still has to check out the geyser from the reservoir.

Right, that’s another story.

<scrunches forehead really hard, squeezes eyes closed, clenches fists> I believe … I believe … I believe I will get to drive the bus again someday!

I had noticed that the power steering fluid was low and was disappearing after I refilled, and I’d had the engine compartment cleaned so I could see where the fluid was coming out. On a Saturday afternoon after the cleaning, Jonathan opened the hood and found that the cleaning wasn’t necessary to locate the leak — a hose was shooting a sheet of fluid out of a crack in its side when I pressed the brakes. When I pressed the brakes? Ah, hydraboost.

The hose is on the driver’s side of the engine compartment and joins a couple of pieces of steel line that run up to the brake master cylinder and down to the power steering gearbox. It’s part of the hydraboost system — the power brakes are powered by the power steering pump rather than by vacuum pressure, as on many passenger vehicles.

Chasing a New Line

Well, drat, I took careful notes of all of my phone calls trying to find a replacement or rebuilt line and now can’t find them. Working from memory:

I started with Bumper to Bumper in Newton, who were recommended to me as being a good source for parts for big ugly things. They had nothing, but referred me to a hose company in Wichita. They weren’t actually in the business of making this type of hoses, but referred me to someone else, who referred me to someone else, whom I visited after work.

Meanwhile I called O’Reilly Auto Parts in Newton, who had nothing but suggested I call the Chevy dealership. This was the most promising lead so far — I got a part number, the information that it was a discontinued 20-year-old part, and the locations and phone numbers of the three dealerships in the US that showed the line in their inventory locator. I also got the price — when new, $230. Okay, WOW.

California was supposed to have two but told me they hadn’t uploaded inventory to the locator service for at least two years and didn’t have any. Another place (Oregon???) also didn’t have any. Alaska has four of them, new old stock (so they’re probably brittle by now), for the original price. Plus shipping. Uh, no.

After work I raced across Wichita to the company in the southwest industrial district who rebuilds hoses and tubing, arriving just barely before they closed. They looked at the compression fittings where the hose joined to the tubing and the amount of rust pitting on the steel line and told me that they likely couldn’t put on new fittings that wouldn’t leak.

But I should try “CSTK,” who brazes new fittings onto tubing. On the north edge of town — literally about as far away as you can get in the Wichita metro area. And only a few minutes from closing.

At least it wass on my way home, so if I didn’t make it I wouldn’t have gone out of my way.

I made it.

Central States Thermo King

CSTK turned out to be Central States Thermo King, who normally work on cooling systems (reefer trucks) and manufacture hoses that have to bear much higher pressure and contain much smaller molecules than those of my power steering fluid. They took my line and said they’d have it ready the next day.

I went back, picked it up, and paid them $37.14 for their work. I felt like I should have tipped them half the $200 I saved, but I’ll opt for trying to send a little more business their way instead.

Look at this immaculate work. They cut off the old fitting and brazed on the butt end of this new crimp fitting.

I think the pressure rating on their hose should be … adequate … for my power steering / brakes system.

I fished the whole line back through and around all the obstacles, reattached it and all the clamps that hold it in place, and refilled the power steering reservoir.

No more leak, but the power steering is still growling (even now, after driving it occasionally for several months and running the steering back and forth from end to end a number of times). I first attributed this to air in the system that needed to work out — and it may be — but I also note that the power steering pump clearly has a bearing going out, and I need to replace it before I get too worried about getting all the air out of the system.

Ah, well. It’s progress.

Expenses

It currently latches from the outside, so it’s not usable as an emergency exit without moving the hasps to the inside. It’s very heavy and the handle is high up, so not everyone I know is capable of lowering it. With the hasps inside, in a fire one could unlatch it and push it open to let it fall to the ground; but in other use, it would require two people (inside and out) or a winch to open carefully. It just doesn’t work for me.

First Junkyard Trip

Last Monday on my way home from a holiday trip to Lawrence, I stopped at the junkyard between Newton and Walton to look around. I hadn’t planned the visit and had neither target dimensions nor a tape measure with me; but I quickly found a bus that suggested a return trip was worthwhile.

This Bluebird appears to have been through a fire and then filled with crap. The amount of random garbage inside reflects the amount of random garbage throughout the junkyard, which is why I call it a junkyard instead of a proper salvage yard.

The door handle says “Bluebird” on it. I’d probably replace the Phillips screws with carriage bolts so it wouldn’t be so easy to dismantle from the outside, and I’d intend to add a lock of some sort.

More garbage, yay!

The deadbolt mechanism has a big red safety handle on it. I expect I could rebuild this with something more, shall we say, subtle, while retaining the ease and obviousness for exit in a real emergency.

Second Junkyard Trip

Saturday morning Jonathan and I headed back to the junkyard to bring home a door. After a quick measurement showed that the door I’d already found would fit my bus, we wandered around for an hour looking at all the wondrous crap and searching for other donor buses.

Here’s a little bit of the flavor of the better-kept parts of the junkyard — an actual path with waist-high weeds, random stuff, and a glorious vintage bus that would regrettably require reconstruction more than mere restoration.

Bowling trophy? Hardly. That’s a 40-gallon steam-jacketed tilting kettle. By way of perspective for the size of this thing, that’s a wringer washing machine to the left and a lawnmower-size engine to the right.

The kettle lists for $26,000 and can be had for $12,000 used. The full set of technical specifications from the manufacturer is available as well.

This particular kettle is missing the rolling stand and the gauges and hoses are corroded and weathered, but the stainless kettle itself is immaculate. It might be hard to press back into service in a commercial kitchen, but Lawrence’s wife is interested in it for a dye vat for her fiber arts. I’m guessing when I go back, Lawrence will come along to negotiate.

Here’s the junk barn in the junkyard. Anything here look familiar?

We weren’t able to find any more Bluebird buses, so we returned to the yellow, purple, and soot-colored one I’d already found and removed the door. It was so warm out that our hands were too sweaty to get a good grip on our (good) screwdrivers, so we had to use the cordless drill to take out all the Phillips screws holding the hinge. I expect I’ll replace them with (real) rivets or carriage bolts as well.

I paid $100 for the door.

Test-Fitting the Door to the Bus

Whoever reworked the door took the chrome handle that I think one uses while climbing in the emergency exit and welded it above the new doorrampstairs — I’m not quite sure why. At any rate, it interferes with the placement of a proper door, so Jonathan and I took turns cutting it off and grinding down the welds.

Here’s the new door set in place. It’s a good fit!

It sat a little cockeyed because the hinge hangs below the bottom of the door, but it’ll mount straight.

From the inside, it already looks so much nicer than the wooden steps mounted to the current door. I hadn’t thought I cared about having windows out the back and I had planned to leave the (future) bathroom door(s) closed most of the time; but this view makes me think I should plan things so the bathroom door(s) can stand open while not in use. I love this!

That Big Hole

My brother and I looked over the remaining framework and the welding that was done to convert the door. I need to do some further examination, but our direction is that it may be easier and give a better result to go back to the junkyard and remove the entire rear corner from the salvage bus, cutting ribs to replace what was removed from mine and leaving factory-formed sheet metal still riveted to the ribs wherever possible. That’s going to be a chore.

Should have bought a bus that didn’t come pre-stupided.

Expenses

It didn’t take long to notice the water leaking from the lower end of the pump and dripping back down the line from the tank. Hand-tightening the lower (supply) fitting increased the rate of leakage.

For perspective, the tank is out of view above the camera, the white plastic ring is the fill neck and the clear tube and galvanized pipe are the fill lines, the pump is bolted to the aft end of the battery compartment, and the black hose from the top of the pump curves off to the left and then up into the bus to the sink.

I drained the tank, removed the pump, brought it home, and cleaned it,

at which point the problem was much more obvious in good light.

Out of curiosity, I opened the pump to see where all and how badly it was cracked.

Ah, pretty badly, then, eh.

Since it looked fairly easy to clean the broken edges, I was further curious whether plastic-repair epoxy would do any good. I scrubbed the broken ends with a wire brush, then mixed up and applied the epoxy. I clamped it up to cure overnight.

Meanwhile, the housing was also cracked in a couple of different places. I epoxied it, clamped it up, and let it set overnight as well.

Upon reassembly, the glued cracks did appear to hold together.

But still it leaks.

Looking at how it’s built and where the water is coming out, I think it’s leaking out that large crack that goes circumferentially past the screw. Maybe a thin coat of RTV on the inside of the housing would stop the leak?

This repair is mainly for entertainment, mind you. But if it gets me by until I get the shower built and require a higher-capacity pump, so much the better.

Currently if the bus is closed, I have to open the heavy rear door to get in.

I don’t have a good picture of just the door, but the rod going horizontally across from the handle in the center of the bus to the door (hidden behind the cabinet) mechanically holds the door closed (by design) when the handle is latched in the closed position. As long as the handle stays latched, you can’t open the main passenger door from the outside.

With my highly-skilled momentum technique, I can close the front door from the outside so I don’t have to walk around, open the rear door, walk through, close the front door, walk around, and reclose the rear door; but once done, I then have to do the hokey-pokey to get back in.

I’d really like to be able to lock the passenger door and have a way to get in from the outside. And unlike many other bus-RV converters, I really don’t want to replace the bus door with an RV door — I’m not out to hide the fact that the vehicle started life as a bus. Until I have good reason to feel otherwise, I’d like to keep the accordion-fold door.

I’d love to motorize the door and add electronic entry — although at least in the long term, I need to have a purely mechanical way to get in, as backup in case something goes wrong with the motor.

Automotive Power Window Motor

“Neighbor Dan” has a pile of removed auto parts in the corner of his shop, and a guy comes by occasionally to haul the pile to a scrapyard. Dan has offered me anything I want out of the pile, and he says he has three more of these power window motors that I haven’t found yet. I’ll keep digging.

I don’t know that this is the motor to use for my power door, but it bears consideration.

It looks pretty obvious why it was replaced — the cable is all messed up and broken where it wraps around the spool.

With the jammed-up cable spool taken care of, the output shaft spins at almost two rotations per second. That’s a little fast if I were going to attach it directly to the door-opening handle or use it to replace the handle altogether. If I were to do that, I might use pulse-width modulation (PWM) to slow it down.

The motor coil resistance is 1Ω or less, so the motor draws at least an amp and I’d need a pretty hefty FET to drive it. (A compensating factor is that the motor would normally have a pretty short duty cycle, so the FET wouldn’t have long to heat up.)

Alternatively, I could use the motor with the spool and cable (maybe one of the others isn’t as messed up) and use a larger pulley / spool on the handle end to “gear down” the rotational speed.

I’ve considered that I could remove the manual handle, do away with the connecting rod, and fabricate an entirely new means to close the door. But as it’s constructed now, the rod does double-duty closing the door and “locking” it shut once closed. If I did away with it, I’d have to recreate that functionality on my own.

I’m Open to Something Completely Different

If someone knows of a better way to lock and unlock a bus front door from the outside, or motorize an accordion-fold door, I’m all ears.

The bus blades use a different means of attaching to the wiper arms than do standard automotive blades. The bus wiper arms each have a hole in the end and a large, ridged washer welded to the blade side of the arm.

The blade attachment mechanism has a captive bolt that goes through the hole in the wiper arm and an acorn nut to hold it in place. The bolt both holds the blade on the arm and — through friction with the ridged washer — sets the angle between the arm and the blade (which need not be colinear).

I think if I removed the welded-on washer, the wiper arm might fit the clip on a standard blade, without this mechanism. That would eliminate the ability to set the angle of the blade, though; and I do have the blade at a slightly different angle than the arm. I may consider knocking off the washer in the future, rather than continue to modify standard wiper blades.

(My local) Autozone doesn’t have wiper blades to fit the bus attachment type, so I modified a Rain-X blade. Mr. Negative at Autozone suggested duct tape and said no matter what I did it would look stupid. I believe the psychological term for his behavior is “projection.”

The first step was removing the stock clip that snap-fits onto the center post.

Then I cut and removed the post.

The post’s holes were just the right size for the bus clip’s blade-to-clip bolt. I tightened the nylon-insert lock nut enough to squeeze the new blade’s walls down almost to the width of the bus clip, to reduce lateral and angular play.

The modified blade fits and works perfectly. Stupid indeed.

After unloading the last removable items from the interior, I dropped the bus off at Hinz Motors to have the engine compartment pressure-washed. It’s easy to see that the brakes and power steering each have small leaks; but with so much gunk on everything, it wasn’t easy to see exactly where.

Greg only charged me $21.46. I think he should have asked more and I tried to tell him that, but it’s hard to argue with the guy holding the cash register. So to speak.

I think they did a bang-up job. I had no idea there were colors under the hood! Blue hoses, red cables, orange stars, green clovers …

The leaking parts are nice and squeaky clean. Once everything’s completely dry, I’ll take it for a spin and see where the fluids show up.

It’s home!

“Neighbor Dan” and I left at 5:30 this morning to go up to Manhattan, rig the split shifter, and bring home the bus. Dan pulled the split shifter off the differential, decided the shifter motor was just old or gummed up, and got the shifter engaged into high with some electricity and some thumping. The drive back was pretty uneventful — in particular, the shifter did not drop back out of gear.

Dan thinks the split shifter motor may just need lubrication or new brushes. He described how easy it is to remove from the differential; so I’ll start by taking it off, drilling out the three motor-mount screws off of which I broke the heads, and seeing what I can do with the motor. I don’t want to do a short-term fix like lubricating it with a lightweight oil that will just burn off, so I don’t know yet whether this will be a rebuild or a replace.

Turn Signals and Schoolbus Flashers

While Dan was working under the bus, I was looking for a bulb I could use to replace the burned-out rear right-turn signal light. Thought I might be able to pull one from the schoolbus flashers (which I don’t need), but it turns out they’re sealed-beam units.

Ended up borrowing one from the back-up lights, since I wasn’t planning to do a lot of backing on the highway.

Fuel Economy

The fuel gauge started on empty and I put in a little over 40 gallons in Manhattan, so I know the tank is at least a 41-gallon.

I refilled in Newton, adding about 22.7 gallons after about 108 miles, so I got about 4.75 mpg, a little less than I was hoping for. Dan thinks a tune-up may get me a little more.

Parked By the Shed

My brother is indulging me and letting me park the bus behind his shed by his stick-hauling grain truck, for now, anyway. He’s already warned me not to get too comfortable with that — but I’m sure once he sees how charming the bus is, his heart will warm to the idea of keeping it nearby.

Today’s Expenses

For five and a half hours of his time, plus 220 miles in his pickup, Dan only asked for $125. I gave him $149 — everything I had on me at the time. A bargain.

Monday Retrieval Plans

I scheduled Monday off work and found that Lawrence’s daughter Mary could drive me to Manhattan to pick up the bus. Monday morning I went to my insurance company and got a liability policy. The $125 annual premium seemed low, but they explained they don’t expect the bus/RV to be driven every day so they have limited exposure.

Next I went to the courthouse to register the bus. I had already confirmed that I could register it as an RV, but there’s a matter of getting the correct weight on the title. The previous owner had registered it as a 3500-lb vehicle, and that’s obviously absurdly low. The vehicle department clerk (Ron Tozier’s wife Sandy) looked up other vehicles with similar VINs and found people registering them in the 7200 – 9000-lb range. (I love the helpful attitude in a small town.) She said she’d be happy to average them and call that the weight.

I wasn’t quite comfortable making up a weight like that, though; and I know I’ll be making a trip over the truck scale at the dump when I dispose of the ratty bus furniture anyway. So I got a 30-day tag and I’ll go back after I know the actual weight.

It Doesn’t Drive

Mary and I headed to Manhattan, I found out Mary listens to Fleetwood Mac (well done, young lady!), and Mary admired the lovely purple bus. I started up the engine (runs very smoothly!), ran through a pre-flight checklist (right rear turn signal doesn’t light; all others are okay), and then put it into gear and eased out the clutch.

Nothing. No movement.

Already bad. But I’ve seen manual-transmission vehicles that had a single gear — often a low gear — broken, so I tried it in 2nd. Still nothing. Tried several combinations of high and low on the split shifter with 1st and 2nd gears and couldn’t get it to do anything.

Went inside to ask how it had got to the auction site, and the front counter folks didn’t know but the folks in the back ALL KNEW THAT IT HAD BEEN TOWED IN AND COULDN’T BE DRIVEN. In fact, the previous owner had been driving it to the auction site when it broke.

I think that would be something I would mention pretty loud and clear if I were selling a vehicle.

“I Make Problems Go Away.” (Does That Mean Me?)

While they looked for a manager, I went back out, fumed, and pondered. My brother’s neighbor is a fleet and heavy equipment mechanic for the state, and I figured “Neighbor Dan” could easily fix the problem in his shop; but two hours from home in a parking lot, with probably not a lot of local options to buy parts for something that big?

The manager who came out was very helpful and indicated that just to get things started, he’d give me more time to explore my options without charging the “storage fee” for not having removed the bus from their lot yet. He almost offered to refund my purchase price — but if the problem has an easy fix, I do still want the bus, and I have no illusions that it’s in perfect condition and will never need maintenance. I just thought it was drivable, since I explicitly asked that before the auction and was told yes.

Driveshaft

I rejoined Mary in the SUV, explained the situation, and agreed to get lunch in town before heading home. Over lunch, I ran through the list of things I had tried with the transmission and wanted to tell Dan about. While doing so, I realized that just to be thorough, I should go back and see whether the driveshaft was spinning while the transmission was in gear. We went back to the bus, put it in gear, and indeed the driveshaft was spinning.

Ah, that changes things!

Split Shifter

I don’t know much about split shifters and I’ve never (knowingly) driven one before, but the idea is this: In addition to the transmission at the front of the driveshaft having different gears that vary the rotational speed between the engine and the driveshaft, there’s also a two-gear (in this case) selector inside the differential at the back of the driveshaft that varies the rotational speed between the driveshaft and the axle.

The split shifter is worth maybe half a gear of transmission; so when you shift 1L, 1H, 2L, 2H, …, it’s like shifting ½, 1, 1 ½, 2, …

Since the driveshaft was spinning but the rear axle wasn’t, it sure seemed there must be a problem with the split shifter. (I can’t picture a differential problem that would allow the driveshaft to freewheel.)

So where along the way was the problem with the split shifter — at the front of the bus by the switch or relay, in the line from the front to the back, or at the shifter in back? The split-shift switch on the stick shift had to be connected to the split shifter mechanically, electrically, or hydraulically, and just my luck — it’s electric.

I rolled under the bus and got into position, where I could actually sit fully upright. With the engine off but the ignition key in the run position, I had Mary toggle the split-shift switch back and forth. We could hear a relay click under the dash, but no whirring or clunking at the split shifter.

Electrical Testing

Neither of us had a voltmeter along (oh, the unbearable shame!), so we ran to Radio Shack and I bought what seemed like a nice pocket meter (in grey, not yellow). In retrospect, the battery compartment lid bulges almost enough to pop loose, it’s very hard to get the probe cables tucked away so the case closes properly, the lid is very hard to close properly anyway, and the way the lid folds back when open makes the whole tester very floppy and precarious. Oh, and the auto-ranging function — although it seems like a good idea — is incredibly slow, so it takes several seconds to take even the most basic reading.

Right, split shifter.

As Mary moved the switch back and forth, I could see (after waiting the requisite several seconds) 12V appear on the wiring harness connector at the green or yellow wire — so the signal was at least getting to the back of the bus.

I pulled the cover off the electrical panel, noted the differently-colored wires inside than out, and poked around the circuit board. I should have got a picture of the other side, but the short wires made it awkward. There are two (large) microswitches that align with two bumps coming out of the mechanical housing.

It looks as though the switches are NC and act as endstops. The 12V from the front powers the shifter gearmotor or solenoid until it fully engages the desired gear, at which point the “bump” pushes out to engage that direction’s microswitch and remove power from the shifter. Then the whole thing sits idly by until told to shift the other direction.

With the lid open, I was able to see the 12V on the appropriate traces on the circuit board — but still no action from the shifter. With this newfound information, I closed up and we went back home.

Monday Expenses

Repair Plans

“Neighbor Dan” thinks (as I do) that the problem is with the shifter, not the differential; that he has enough information to order a correct replacement part by the weekend; and that he can go up Sunday, fix the shifter in the parking lot, and let me drive the bus home.

More over the weekend.