September & October
Activity this month has been rather disappointingly
limited in comparison to previous months. The afore mentioned
un-loader, pressure regulator and compressor valves have been cleaned
and serviced along with the accelerator linkage and now await
refitting. More areas of the chassis have been cleaned, under-coated
and painted especially behind the nearside locker panel which gives
access to the master switch.

Trusty scrapper and wire
brush on the go
To achieve this it was necessary to
remove an engine oil header tank which was fitted in Yelloway days
but had (as the years had passed by) been disconnected probably as a
result of an engine change. The removal of this tank made it much
easier to get at the oily, mucky mess that had accumulated around
the wiring conduit leading from the master switch. This time
consuming job was probably something which should have been carried
out before we replaced the body framework and panels…….
Having acquired the seats last month, Steve spent a few hours
removing the seat belts which were fitted to them and carted the
legs off to work to be shot blasted. Once they were back in the
workshop the offside legs and a couple of seat frames were located
on the floor rail to determine the correct spacing of the seats and
where the 3 interior heaters should go.

Positioning of seats
and heater units
Now we know this, the
replacement water pipes can be cut to size and bent to shape. We
have decided to fit 45 seats instead of the original 49 primarily
because it gives a few more inches of leg room but also just in case
we don’t have enough seat material for 49!
A trip to the West Midlands towards the end of the month proved very
worth-while as we were gifted 4 brand new aluminium wheel arch edges
to replace our rather ‘tired’ ones. A big thankyou to Paul for this
donation – another item we thought we would never be able to source.
We hope shortly to take our damaged offside locker panels down to
his workshops to be used as patterns for replacements as we don’t
have access to facilities to add the ‘roll’ at the bottom edge of
these panels.
The repaired offside emergency exit door framework has been put back
into position to check clearances before it is re-skinned – this
being a pointless exercise previously while the coach was up on
jacks and the body ‘in twist’. A few minor adjustments are required
and then Steve will ‘bite the bullet’ and tackle the complicated
folding of the outer skin.

Repaired
offside emergency exit door framework