Welcome back everyone to this blog, Some weeks has passed now since we last posted about the progress with the restoration.
There has been a gap of around 3 weeks in the weeks, This has been a tricky time for Jordan trying to manage the business and family life. His son spent a week in hospital meaning he was just unable to get up to the yard and do some work on the bus. Which is why there has been some filler content to help fill the gaps but the motivation with everything has been rather poor due to stress etc.
Good news is we are back on the go again just in time for week 9 to not happen a week later than 8 due to another family hospital visit which just can’t be helped. However.
Week 6 and 7 saw Jordan and Shaun remove the last of the flooring around the cab and move the seats into the storage unit so they are now gone and out the way. We also took the chance to start some of the prep work as we had little to do really and the rot we found in the week before was cut away so we could size up the job and the best way to tackle it. We have two ways we can tackle it.
1.We replace what we have taken out how it was.
2.We put an entire metal plate down adding to the strength of the floor in a area that seems to rot a lot more than other areas
This is something we are really looking at and what is the best way the best solution and the quickest with the metal we already have is to just put the plate down and make the area better, Plus the wiring harness holder is also one of the metal parts that went bye bye and was totally rotten it was a miracle that the plate was still there. It looked more like wires holding the metal than the metal holding the wires.
Week 8 then was Jordan on his own and deciding that needing a change of pace as we currently are in a yard close to TDTT and will soon have the chance to get into the building however for this the engine needs to run to build air pressure so we can get into the shed. So the engine in this week would see some attention and see if Jordan could get it to run on all cylinders and smoothly. So starting with putting the fuel pump back on again Jordan has tighten it to a inch of the life of the nuts however like most things there is one on the bottoms which no longer has a nut on it and on this day he couldn’t get a nut on it again He will try the following week. But something that he didn’t check before this was there was life in the batteries and its only when checked it was found the isolator was left on so the batteries had been drained.
After a short walk to the petrol station to get a bit of fuel for the generator they was on charge and the true state of how low they was shown as the charger refused at first to put charge into them. So that pretty much ended that Jordan did what he could slung the batteries and charger in the boot of the car and headed home.
Once home he started with the brand new battery which showed voltage of 4.5v this takes the battery out of its warranty if it won’t come back to life. But after 2 days of charging and a little bit of amps it was able to be bought to life. Next up was our old battery which has been going a good few years this also shown a voltage of 4.2v so a little lower once again this was thrown on the charger and this time the charger shown 0amps being put into the battery. Jordan left the charger on trickle and around 3 hours later the amps started to climb. At this point it was cranked to the 2nd charge rate and once again around 2 days later it was fully charged.
We have just ordered off amazon another battery CCA (Cold Crank Amps) checker so we can see the life of the battery before they are put on the bus Although it is not brilliant we can afford both batteries to be half health as they are over kill for the engine and bus they are on. The results will be posted soon as we have them on our social media.
There is going to be a gap again before week 9 is filmed this is due to another hospital over night stay but week 9 should see the batteries put back on the bus and we can look into the cylinder firing issues and hopefully get it running sweet as a nut again, Otherwise we could be looking at more of a look into it. It could be a simple thing as the fuel lines are mixed up need to check how many it is firing on and if its 2 have a look and check they are not swapped and trying to fire at the wrong time. Could also just be a poor injector that is clogged up. We still have a lot to look at with the lack of wanting to start and it is still clear there is air getting in somewhere or a back pressure that is allowing air to travel though the system making it so it needs to be bleed before it starts each time. This also could be as simple as a fuel line issue and Jordan can have a look at this with some slow and thoughtful investigating.
Till next week, Stay safe and look out for your Family.
Jordan