Welcome to 2025 and week 12 of 104 of the restoration.
Well where to start on this one, We have returned into 2025 to the bus and wow after another 2 week break over the Christmas period, It was like what have we done. This week the motivation was there at the start of the day to crack on and get on with it, This was short lived as the day turned south and nothing was going right. I had charged all the batteries up the night before like I normally do and once at the bus it was the typical GoPro Hero 7 which decided the battery was empty even though it had not been switched on and not used. This happens from time to time and isn’t really annoying.
The first task i decided to tackle was the floor but which part, Well i decided to do the walkway section which seem to be the worse out of it all.
The floor was in the condition as the left of the picture so I would say that was a brilliant job and it has cleaned up well, However this small area used the total of the battery I had for the grinder which was a pain, This meant i couldn’t do anything else pretty much, No chassis work was able to be carried out this is one of the problems we are facing at the moment due to operating on battery.
After this I had decided when i arrived that I wasn’t going to start the bus due to the cold weather and the struggle we have to start it. However I had decided to change a fuel pipe to help the problem hopefully and then decided to attempt to start it and test a few things while it was running. It wasn’t to hard to get started but it was tricky to get it to fire on all cylinders but this still gave me the chance to check that all the returns was working, Pleased to say that the return from the pump seems to work as does the injectors so that isn’t a problem it would seem.
In the bigger plans for the restoration we have decided to complete the rear of the vehicle and then cover it up this might seem a strange way to do it but the rear is pretty much complete and once it is we won’t have any reason to to go to the rear. So with this in mind the seats will go in around the table area so we can build all that and have it ready. Then we will buy the flooring and get it all put in. For this the solar charging system also needs to be put in and thought out how we going to have it all set up. So thee controller has found a home on the wall and the panel on the roof.
This is pretty much going to need some new batteries but we can see how it goes for now with much more light.
The plan now for the start of the year is to do an engine Oil change and get the floor clean also have the other side of the table seats fitted and from there we can make our table and start to design what and how we want the power to run for us, We will be putting all this in before we called it complete and I am sure this will be true as the chassis is going to take a long time to do and the power steeering pipes to be replaced.