Inset: One of our bird feeders - for the other snowbirds who are too dumb/disorganized to get out of here on time.
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Jan 2, '03: If you'd told me I'd be working on this project for four years before I
get to drive it, I'd probably never have started! But it was, after
all, a Flxi - I _know_ I'd never have done this for any other bus. We
started our last bus project - converting a recently-in-service schoolie
- at the beginning of August, '83, and were on the road before the snow
flew. (It _did_ eat up quite a few more hours in the seven years
following, but we were on the road, all systems go, by
mid-December!)
Inset: One of our bird feeders - for the other snowbirds who are too dumb/disorganized to get out of here on time. |
But then, that didn't include a few of the "other things" that our Flx required, such as :
But this summer, I finally got the interior finished up - all but a few hinges and mouldings left to do. And a tiny bit of plumbing underneath, and a couple of minor details like that. Well, probably another 6 weeks of details - installing a new heater, organizing a reverse lockout on the tranny linkage, putting on a couple of extra signal lights, tracking down a little strangeness in the marker light wiring, and installing new marker lights on the front. Yeh, maybe 2 months! But then, it'll be finished! (yeh, sure, snide!) I stopped all these detail jobs to get going on the outside painting when I suddenly realized the birdies were getting ready to leave the Hollow.
Fortunately for me, another friend dropped by - a guy I'd met around another hobby - restoring British motorcycles. Turned out he'd been a painter for most of his life, (and sandblaster) and before I knew it, he'd signed onto the job for a very generous price which I could barely afford, and the two of us proceeded to paint and prep for a month.
The first day, the afternoon of the great sandblast, we shot a gallon of primer on ol' Flxi just to keep the dew off. The next day saw us refinishing in small sections. I took the roof, sanding with #80 grit paper - the blasted surface of the entire bus was about the texture of this paper to start. While I did this, my new friend Lance proceeded to start replacing the Bondo in the few places it had been blasted out, as well as in a few more that needed it. As I got each section of roof down to where it needed 120 grit, I re-primered it and moved onto the next section. I don't remember bus roofs being so _dam_ huge! It took me a over a week just to get the roof primer/filled and decently smooth for final sanding for the finish coat.
Then, with Lance still splashing Bondo around - he was careful to ding out as much as possible, so there's no place where the filler's more than about 3/16" - I proceeded to sand around all the windows, between the roof and the aluminum sides. Same thing; 80 grit, 120 grit, primer, more 120 grit, more primer, till I ended up with 250 grit and fairly smooth shiny primer. On Lance's advice, I used ScotchBrite (TM) pads for the final primer finishing. Then came below the aluminum. And the back. By this time Lance was helping me with the sanding, I was running out of Lance money, and it was 3 weeks later. He hadn't been working every day, fortunately, or for really full days, and he gave me a real break because we're buds and he likes the bus, but that was still $350.00 for his time. Less than half of what he should have got, but he's also semi-retired, so I lucked out there. As for paint, so far I was in for 3 gallons of Industrial-grade primer, at $40 per, for another $120. I cheated a bit and used industrial-grade enamel for the roof as well, for another $40. I used low-end automotive enamel for the white below, for $90.00, and you know what? Nobody, including me, can see the difference between Home Hardware Metal Enamel, and the THC, or MRP, or whatever it was. Another $90.00 for the Chevy Blue, which was just enough to finish the job. And of course, $90.00 for the metallic charcoal around the windows. (Don't ask why - it had something to do with the original plan being charcoal and white, but we decided halfway through that it needed more color, and a more '50's feel to the paintscheme. SWMBO wouldn't go for pink, so it was turquoise - and a hard colour to find, I might add! And another $100 for Bondo and sandpaper.
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By this time, weather was beginning to become a problem. I had to wait until 11:00 or so in the morning before I could get into prep in the places which weren't in direct sunlight all morning. But I started to get the skirting painted. Gloss white up to the stiffeners on the sides, with a little swirl action at front and rear, to emphasize the sxy lines of this lovely Art-Deco bus. |
Meanwhile, it got colder each day, with the window of paintable temperature decreasing daily as well. It got to the point where I had to pick the day's painting in terms of the sun - I had to move the bus around so that the morning sun would be shining on the next day's painting section. By the time I was painting the roor, I had to wait for the frost to melt off the roof before I could wipe it dry, sand it, wipe it with thinner, by which time it would be warm enough to paint, paint it, and there was just enough time left for the paint to set up solid before it got too cold again.
| Finally, I was stopped by temperature and length of day. Almost got it done, but I wasn't going to paint on metal that was too cold, or on a day that I wasn't finished with enough time for the paint to cure after shooting. So, by the third week in October, the process was halted. I only needed another couple of painting days, but by this time I was waiting more days for temperature than I was getting to paint, so we stopped just short of a full load. The charcoal grey around the cab windows and windshield, and the front cap, and we're done. |  stopped painting well before this pic was shot! |
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