Well it's been about a year but I finally made it back, lol. It's a long story, but basically I wound up falling out of my bus and tore up my knee pretty badly. It happened late in the afternoon around mid-September last year. It was just getting dark when suddenly it started to rain like heck. I had some power tools laying around so I rushed out to get them into the bus. During the third trip I stepped on the top step with my right foot, but cuz it was dark and wet I slipped off and proceeded to to the splits, my right foot slipping off each step as I went down, but my left foot seemed strangely nailed stuck to the top step. Only when I'd completed a full split did my left leg follow and my left knee hit each step on the way down, and I finished with a half twist and roll for a great dismount, lol. Hurt like hell too.
So my knee was pretty swollen/damaged, had to take a month off work and then crutches for a couple more, and been causing me pain for the better part of 9 months. Guess I don't heal up like I used to, lol. Also had some family issues, my daughters having health problems and my mother too, so that's been occupying my mind and my wallet and so I just put the bus on the back-burner until recently.
I have been picking away at the demo on and off for the past 3 months, and frankly have been becoming more depressed with every issue I find. Mostly rust, grrrrr. So what happened was as I was treating the ribs with Ospho, I was also trying to avoid removing any of the foam insulation on the walls since it actually added to stabilizing the weak outer skin. So I was cheating a bit and leaving some parts, especially at floor level, covered (I think subconsciously I suspected there might be a can of worms I didn't want to know about).
But at some point when I was removing the wheel chair lift I discovered a seriously soft spot below the lift opening. I decided to open it up and take a look. Big mistake, lol. What I saw was that the outer U-channel which composed the entire lower frame of the bus body was completely rusted through. As in you could poke your finger through it. So that was that, I had to tear off the entire outer skin from the roof down. I found that about 75% of that outer framing needs replacing. Also found that no such size channel exists off the shelf and so had to have it fabricated at a welding shop.
When I showed one of the rusted pieces to the guy at the shop, he said it looked like it hadn't even been coated/painted at all, and I'm beginning to suspect that the jerks at the factory, knowing that these buses are only in service for around 8-10 years (maybe less) in most areas, decided that that was as long as they needed to build them to last. Typical disposable mentality and shite quality control if you ask me. And judging by the amount of rust covering everything on the underside of the bus, it looks like the mechanics for the bus service never bothered to spray wash the undercarriage to get off the winter salt build-up either, so that's a look-out for anyone who's considering buying one of these. Check up underneath along the outer framing supporting the floor, that's where you'll be able to spot whether the vehicle has a rust problem or not.
I'm just finishing removing most of the bad channel, and also found that there's a sort-of Z-channel that tucks up against that U-channel (tack welded to it) then comes up over the wood floor and forms the inner side of the wall at floor level (and what the interior skin is screwed to). The vertical support ribs sit inside this and are also welded to it. And about 90% of this stuff is rusted beyond usefulness, so am removing this AND I also found that 5 of the support ribs are rusted through on the outer side, so I'm cutting about 4-5" of these off and will weld in new ''feet''.
Oh yeah, one more thing, the cross-pieces, slightly smaller U-channel that fits inside the outer channel and span the width of the bus (sitting on the factory frame and supporting the floor) are badly rusted, especially where they fit into the outer channel. There are 8 of these and the 2 on either side of the wheel-well are so bad I'm going to see if I can somehow slide new pieces next to them (they were exposed most by the everything being thrown up by the wheels) and half of the rest need anywhere from 4-10" cut off and replaced. Yeah, it's a bit of a quagmire that I did not see coming, lol. On the bright side, the steel (12 ga. steel cut and bent) has only cost me about $300 so far, not as much as I feared it would, lol. I'll post some pics of the damage soon. Anyway, glad to be back and look forward to getting this project back on track ;?D
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