Well hello apprentice bus mechanics! Sorry, I didn’t see you there, you caught me by surprise.
During the last visit Ian had filled the differential and gearbox with oil.
It seems the diff has let a fair amount of the oil onto the garage floor. It’s not quite the Exxon Valdez down there but there is a fair puddle.
Ian reckons it’s the pinion oil seal. It’s actually a worm drive and the input is underslung. If the input shaft seal is leaking it’ll leak most of the contents out eventually.
Looking at the diagram below I’m not even sure what the pinion oil seal actually is.
Some sort of spring loaded thing?
Ian said, “Being a Bristol the drive flange will be almost impossible to get off”.
So that’ll be fun.
While Ian started adjusting the brakes I thought I’d fit the speedometer. Five minute job right?
Wrong.
When the cab was rebuilt there is now a structure that slightly overlaps the hole so the speedo won’t go back far enough to fall down the afore mentioned hole.
As you can see it’s only about 4 or 5mm (less than a quarter of an inch in old money) but that’s too much.
The troublesome part is this bit under the windscreen.
It’s a folded aluminium part that’s screwed to a piece of wood behind it.
I unscrewed it and used the Powerfile to
make a right mess in the cab cut a reveal in the wood so that the speedo would drop into the hole.
We considered bashing a reveal into the aluminium cover so that the speedo could be removed and replaced at will. But I didn’t want to make a bodge of it so I’ve decided to leave it alone. There’s only 7 or 8 screws so I can remove it in a few minutes. If it turns out to be really annoying I’ll give it a thumping with a planishing hammer some other day.
Next we need to contemplate, restore, and rewire the dashboard illumination system.
It’s a terribly complex system comprising of 2 12V lamps in 2 standard bayonet lamp holders.
Both of them need to come out to rewire them but, let’s be honest, they aren’t going to come out in one piece. Predicting that this would be the case I had already bought some new ones and just cut the shade ring off the old ones with the powerfile as I had it there.
Easy when you have the tools.
I wonder if they actually work?
That means grabbing the battery off the shelf and connecting it up, then just turn on the sidelights.
Yay! That’s all done then… Well, not quite. We are missing the bracket that clamps the speedo in the hole. As I didn’t want to lose any of the bits I screwed it all back together and basked in the glory of my accomplishments.
Now, you know I said that I’d grabbed the battery to test the lights? Well, we’d never actually put the battery on the battery tray. As it’s heavy I thought I’d fit it and clamp it down so I didn’t have to hump it around anymore.
The battery trays are new so this is the first time they’ve had a battery on them.
How long does it take to fit a battery to a bus? Five minutes? I think we all know how this is going to go don’t we.
It turns out that there are a couple of problems.
The general arrangement of the contrivance is like this.
The problem is that the threaded bar is welded horizontally so it can only work with one height of battery. The one we have is slightly short so if you nip the top clamp in the ‘correct’ place (as shown above) the battery can just bounce around.
If you back off the stop nut and try and tighten the wing nut it just rolls the battery onto its back because there is no top rail for the clamp to pull against.
Ideally it needs the top clamp to pull down towards the opposite corner so it pulls the battery against the rail at the bottom. And if the clamp could swivel a little it could accommodate different heights of battery.
If that’s as clear as mud, don’t worry. I have one of the battery trays back in my garage where it can be reimagined into something that works. All will become clear at some point in the future. Probably in tedious and needless detail knowing me.
Now we can probably guess an answer to that question I asked earlier - ‘How long does it take to fit a battery to a bus?’
About a week by the time I’ve finished messing about. Maybe two.
Anyway, while I was mucking with the batteries and after Ian got as far as he could with the brakes he started refitting the dampers.
It’s getting there. Just slowly.
James
