When I comment on Bus recons, commercial vehicles.

[RMM]

I hope all goes well! :dblthumb2:
If you have the time, detail your processes and products and post them: it would be very interesting to read.

 

[tuscarora dave]

Hey T.D. I work for 2 different bus companies and have been doing this type of work from time to time, although I mainly just drive them and train new bus operators. This is no easy work! But if it opens some doors for you in terms of future opportunities, then I'm happy for you. One thing for sure is these buses will always be out here on the road, and the work will always be available.

Yeah, no doubt about that. They are run and run and run and not many folks work on them as far as detailing them goes. Most of these places simply have no Idea who to take them to or how to care for the exterior themselves. I'm specializing and have been factory trained by Braun to service and repair the wheelchair lifts but some of them get detailed too.My digital camera quit working on me so all I have is my cell phone to take photos with. Honestly there won't really be time for many in process photos but I'll try to grab a few along the way and once it's all done I'll say a few words about the stuff used to do it.

 

[tuscarora dave]

Here are a few pics I took today while grinding and sanding away at this project. I did a lot of sanding and rust removal and a little bondo work today. I'll lay down some primer tomorrow and do some trim painting before doing the brown stripes down the sides and across the back of the bus.

Changing the thin pin stripes to one solid black stripe because of how beat up they are.

Dang this is tiring work. The thing looks awful right now but I have a vision...

 

[Y2KSVT]

Keep it up, Dave! This is living proof that not every detailer gets to work on already clean Ferraris, all day, everyday! Can't wait to see your progress.

 

[wheelman302]

Your not a detailer,your a bus restoration expert!

 

[tuscarora dave]

Just got back to the house and am I ever beat... Sorry no pictures to upload today. With this storm we had and a few other client emergency jobs and my November 5th deadline approaching fast, there's not much time for taking photos. Yesterday I finished all the sanding, removed the oxidation on the fiberglass roof cap with purple scotch brite by hand, buffed out the fiberglass roof cap (one handed reaching from a ladder with a rotary and wool pad) and got the entire bus washed so today it could be taped up, primer applied and the first coat of paint applied. I had to do some custom paint mixing to get the color right and luckily got a dead on color match.

One quart of satin cranberry, 1/2 pint of gloss leather brown and about 1/2 pint of gloss black.

I decided to use a Rustoleum oil base over Rustoleum Rusty Metal Primer, (remember this is a low budget restoration) topped with a helmsman marine Spahr urethane for some added gloss. This is all being applied with a 4" foam roller so there will be a little wet sanding involved between the second color coat and the clear coat application.

Tomorrow I'll get the second coat applied and while it's drying I'll be attacking the wheels to get them ready for a coat of black paint. I've been accelerating the paint dry time with the use of a heat gun.

Yesterday I had my vinyl graphics guy come in and measure everything up for the new lettering which will be installed early Monday morning so all the paint work attention will be where the lettering will go so it can have maximum drying time for Tom the vinyl guy.

I'll grab a few photos tomorrow before dark to post up tomorrow evening. Thanks to those who are following this thread.

 

[tuscarora dave]

My helper left me high and dry today. I worked out a deal with a new guy to come help from here on out. When they start not showing up when they say they will, it only gets worse from there so out with the old and in with another guy who seems a bit more hungry to earn some side money.

In light of the no show I had to really stay to the grind all day so there was definitely no time for photos until I was done with my work for the day. Anyone who gets help to come...a word of advice... get a good jump on the job and work long days as if you had no help at all. This way when you have a deadline and your help doesn't show up you still meet your deadlines. You helpers will have one of many excuses, you customer doesn't want to hear any excuses at all. They want the work done by the deadline...period... It's your responsibility not your helpers.

Good thing I learned that lesson long ago or I'd be screwed right now. Well I'm not screwed and the syringe of OG stays in my cabinet and the work goes to someone new.

Here are the few poor quality cell phone pics I could get tonight as I was shutting things down.

 

[tuscarora dave]

Sorry for the rant above, about my helper not showing up. That just gets frustrating when there's a tight deadline.

I finally got this mammoth finished tonight but it was way after dark until I got the interior cleaned up so these are the exterior photos I got of the exterior earlier this evening. I'm so completely shot tired that I'm not going to do any sort of write up this evening. If anyone has any specific questions or comments I'll be more than happy to answer anything at a later date.

If you haven't seen the before photos of this, please go back to the first post in this thread and check them out. Thanks for looking. TD

 

[Vegas Transplant]

Done.
Done right.
Done by deadline.
Enough said.

Keep on grinding TD rops:

 

[BillE]

That sucker came out pretty darn nice!

Good job Dave...

Bill

 

[vet]

Dave, you are an inspiration!

Great job!

 

[MarkD51]

That's really some fine work that you've done!

This vehicle truly did first look like a bone yard basket case that sat for years somewhere. Mark

 

[tuscarora dave]

Keep it up, Dave! This is living proof that not every detailer gets to work on already clean Ferraris, all day, everyday! Can't wait to see your progress.

Thanks, I know that this type of work is a bit different than what you normally see on a forum like this, and perhaps it would be better suited for an auto body repair discussion forum. Auto Geek Online however, is my forum of choice so I can only hope that my posting of jobs like this one will help some member in some way. Thanks for the encouragement...about halfway through this job, I was really needing some.

Your not a detailer,your a bus restoration expert!

I might not have been at the beginning of this job, but I'm certainly closer to the mark now that I've worked through to the end of it. Thanks.

Done.
Done right.
Done by deadline.
Enough said.

Keep on grinding TD rops:

Thanks VT, I was wondering where you'd been these past few days. I was hoping and praying that you weren't under the water from Sandy. I just figured you were out helping those that were. Your well being, input and opinions in my threads are important to me.

That sucker came out pretty darn nice!

Good job Dave...

Bill

Thanks Bill. With the one rear bumper end being broken off (not pictured in post #1) and given that the bus is over 17 years old and the budget didn't allow for a new set, I really began to feel a bit nervous about coming up with a solution for how to make the rear bumper look OK. A bit of creativity and some inexpensive yet durable feeling plastic, combined with a tape measure, sharpie pan, panel saw, sand paper and paint, I think my custom bumper ends turned out acceptable in the end. That's the only part of my vision for the finished product that was unclear to me.

Dave, you are an inspiration!

Great job!

Thanks Vet...That really means a lot to me.

That's really some fine work that you've done!

This vehicle truly did first look like a bone yard basket case that sat for years somewhere. Mark

Thanks Mark, I'm still waiting to hear what the "powers that be" down at Pleasant Acres think about the end results.

 

[Paul Mitchell]

Great work Dave. Looks like a new van!!

 

[Kaban]

Dave, awesome job!

I would not even call this a detail. This is a restoration. Most detailers would not even bother with rust removal and paint and bondo work since that's the type of stuff bodyshops do. Huge respect for going all out on this one.

 

[tuscarora dave]

Great work Dave. Looks like a new van!!

Thanks Paul

Dave, awesome job!

I would not even call this a detail. This is a restoration. Most detailers would not even bother with rust removal and paint and bondo work since that's the type of stuff bodyshops do. Huge respect for going all out on this one.

Thanks Kaban, It was quite an intense project with the strict deadline, my help not showing up during the most needed time and the fact that every time I went to buy materials to do the job, it seemed that the stores I went to were fully stocked on everything except for the items I went there for. :doh: Throw hurricane Sandy in the mix too and call it a lot of pressure to reach my full potential while being as frugal as possible. I'm certainly glad it's done and out of my shop. Now if the check would just arrive in the mailbox all would be a cool breeze on the other side of it all.

Tom Petty said it best, "the Waiting is the hardest part".

Now that I got the emergency jobs out of the way that were coming in during this project that couldn't be touched until the bus was finished, I'll try to outline some of the processes, products and materials used during this job.

Sometimes a task can appear to be so big that you just don't know where to start. With the pressure being applied not only from the owner of the bus, but the pressure of taking phone calls, giving sight unseen estimates, dealing with visitors to the shop during this job, scheduling appointments for after this job was completed, trying to arrange for the vinyl lettering guy to get in on my deadline for this project, trying to arrange a trip to Maine to do a detail for a client during a Thanksgiving trip to see my brother and family in up state NY and of course running for supplies....it leaves the thought of what I did and how I achieved it all but a vague memory at this point, so I'll do my best and in no specific order.

First I'd like to thank, give props to and give some possible exposure to Tom Reardon (owner) over at "Autoxpressions" in Hershey PA. I am extremely grateful that Tom came out last minute to measure up and get the ball rolling for the vinyl lettering needed to get this job completed before the deadline. Not only did Tom come out last minute to get the dimensions, order up the graphic design for the lettering etc. but he came out on a Sunday to letter the bus up so I could meet the deadline. I was pushing forward on scrubbing the interior when Tom showed up with his wife and daughter on his personal time to meet the demands of this job. Awesome guy for sure!!

Just before jumping in to the interior scrubbing, I had removed all the caulking on the roof of the bus and re caulked the roof. Of course there was old caulk and silicone debris all around the bus on the ground that had to be cleaned up after the interior was finished. I got done cleaning the interior and then walked around the bus to see how Tom's vinyl lettering turned out. I looked on the ground near the rear of the bus and there was a neatly swept up pile of caulking and silicone debris laying there. Not only had Tom come out on a Sunday to help me meet my deadline, while I was scrubbing away at the interior of this bus, Tom had taken the time to sweep all of that debris into a pile for me when I wasn't looking. Now that's going way above and beyond the call of duty!!

That's Tom Reardon at "Autoxpressions" out of Hershey PA. If you are reading this and have any vinyl lettering or auto graphics needs in the Central PA area, please give Tom your support buy calling for an estimate.

OK moving forward, when this bus arrived as seen in the before photos it was a complete mess inside and out. This is a 1995 model bus and I have to wonder if it was ever washed in all of it's years of service. Apparently not many times anyway.

The first thing was to get the crud off of the bus overall to see where that would leave me. I hired in 2 outside helpers to take care of removing as much crud as possible from the bus while I finished up the "Q-Straint" electric wheelchair tie down installation that I was performing on the "Autoability" wheelchair accessible mini van that was in my shop.

"Gizmo" worked on first washing the years of crud off of the bus with a very strong mixture that I made up for him in the wash bucket. I mixed up 1 gallon of Purple Power, 1 cup of Meguiars Deep Crystal car wash soap and filled the rest of the 5 gallon bucket with water. You'd think that this would have cut through anything that was on the bus, but there was still a lot of crud left after the initial scrubbing. I'm talking years of imbedded crud in the soft and somewhat thin paint that these buses are coated with. It would take a special product to quickly remove all of that imbedded crud.

I set Gizmo up with one of my Flex 3401s and a 6.5" cyan hydrotech pad and handed him a 16 ounce yorker bottle of Poorboy's World Pro Polish, instructed to him that we're just going for clean and shiny and to put the scratches out of his mind all together. The paint on these buses is way too soft and thin to think "paint correction".

While Gizmo was running the Flex around the bus like a scrubbing bubble, I had "Josh" working on removing the old cracked up vinyl lettering with a heat gun and some plastic scrapers that I keep handy. We quickly realized that not only could we not get the old graphics off without damaging the paint underneath them, but there was very dark burgundy vinyl letter ghosting where the lettering had been. I quickly handed Josh a right angle air die grinder with a 3M Roloc pad and backer installed on it and told him to try and remove 100% of the lettering without going too deeply into the paint underneath the lettering. Josh then used lacquer thinner to remove any remaining adhesive left behind from the old lettering. Josh showed up the following day and scrubbed the interior walls, ceiling, and cockpit area clean. This would be the last help I would have with the project.

Some of you may remember this thread I posted recently.. http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/off-topic/55321-sometimes-you-just-get-hooked-up.html

Well this stuff would really come in handy. As a matter of fact... this stuff is the only reason I took the job in the first place. I knew that I had plenty of otherwise very expensive sanding materials to do this job with. If I had to buy all of the stuff I knew that I would use, "at regular prices" I would have simply passed on this job because the cost of it all would have been prohibitive to meet the customer's meek little budget for this project. They had "The Volunteers" raise the $1000 that I charged them to pull off this project. At that price for all the work involved, including the paint caulk, cleaners, labor etc. etc. I would have been working for $5 per hour. Mark Knopfler said it best..."Oh that ain't workin"...

Well the rest of the body of this bus is pretty much expressed in the photos, a lot of grinding, pre-cleaning, bondo application, sanding, feather edging of paint, a lot of 3M "Edge Release" blue painters tape and a lot of time and labor.

I started the sanding that needed to be done on this project with a Harbor Freight mini pneumatic DA sander/polisher...lol...yeah right!!! That lasted a whole 3 hours until the free rotating spindle assembly bearing blew apart on me, so I finished the day out by sanding with my Meg's G110V2 and my one and only 3M "Hook It" 3" backing plate. This Backing plate would last the entire job through...to include 2 more 10 hour days of straight sanding. The first day of sanding after the HF sander blew apart, and using the Meg's polisher for the rest of the day had my hands all cramped up and the polisher got heavier and heavier by the minute. The entire time I was sanding with it...my mind was on the "Matco Tools" pneumatic DA sander that had been in the back of my bedroom closet for the last 20 years. I bought it when I worked in the body shop as a younger lad. That night I went home and dug it out of the closet, wiped the dust off if it and prayed that it had a standard 5/16th 24 thread like the rest of my DAs have. It does...and it has an 8mm orbit too...thank heaven... This pro quality tool that had been in hibernation all those years would be my saving grace though the rest of this job. In fact, it spins a backing plate so well that I might even polish with it from here on out.

The headlights and all 6 tail lights were polished out with M105 and an orange Cyclo pad using the Matco air DA sander.

A little about the paint used on this job.. I was pressed pretty hard to find a real cheap solution for my needs in the paint department for this project. At $25 to $50 per rattle can for a auto paint supply color matched automotive paint solution...that was not a feasible option at the price I was charging for this project. It would have taken 10 cans of paint to do it that way, and I just wasn't willing to be that charitable. I took a piece of the one broken bumper end with me to Lowe's to seek out an oil paint color match. I found an oil based "cranberry" satin exterior door paint by Rustoleum that appeared to be an exact match in color as per the outside label. I bought 3 quarts of it. I also bought a can of Rustoleum gloss black oil based paint for any black trim that I would need to paint.

Back at the shop when the time came to paint , I opened up the "cranberry" paint and it looked like some bright shade of red lipstick!! I had to get creative at this point so I ran down to the local hardware store and bought an 8 ounce can of gloss leather brown oil based paint to try mixing some colors. Mind you that the bus already had 3 different shades of brown/burgundy paint on it upon arrival to my shop from previous repainting efforts. I mixed the entire can of gloss leather brown in with 1 quart of the cranberry paint in a Ace Hardware paint mixing bucket, and while the gloss leather brown did change the color a bit, it did nothing to darken the paint for a near match. I took the gloss black paint and begun to pour about an ounce or 2 at a time in the mixing bucket and thoroughly stirring all the colors together to homogenize to one well mixed color. Eventually with enough black paint added, I came up with the color that you see in the end photos.

It turned out to be a pretty close match in the end but I still had the whole "satin" thing to deal with... It turned out pretty dull as I first expected it to. When I bought the Satin cranberry paint, I figured it would end up pretty dull. So to deal with that I asked the paint specialist at Lowe's to point me to the most durable clear gloss oil based coating that he had. He took me over to the Helmsman Spahr urethane varnish section and pointed out a marine version of Spahr urethane. Hey I figured if the regular Spahr holds up so well on headlights, that the marine Spahr would have to be even more durable so I grabbed a quart of it to add a top coat to gloss up the satin paint that I would roll on to this bus body with 4" foam rollers.

The temps were dropping while I was painting and I had a tough go at making the paint look as smooth as I would have liked it to be. The cold bus cooled down the paint to the point that it was getting really thick in consistency as I rolled it on to the body of the bus, so I just did my best to roll it out as thin as possible. The more I rolled it out, the stickier it got and the texture that I was trying to get rid of just got worse and worse. I had my kerosene heater on high to try and combat the cold weather but remember, my shop is only so big and I couldn't fit the bus in and shut the overhead door too. I got my heat gun out and tried to warm the areas where I was rolling the paint on and that only helped minimally so I figured the next best thing would be to roll on a second coat the following day to try to thicken the film build of the paint enough to allow me to damp sand some of the texture down before applying the clear. This I did try, but the color cut through to the Rusty Metal Primer that I rolled on before the color coat before any real texture reduction could be achieved. I simply had to stuff my OCD into a closet, move forward and accept that "it is what it is".

I had to be mindful of the areas where Tom @ "Autoxpressions" would have to apply the vinyl lettering, and completely finish painting those areas first so that they would be as cured as possible when he showed up to apply the graphics. And so it would go..those areas were completely finished before I moved on to the bumper and the lower cab and rear of the bus.

The rear bumper had a molded plastic end cap on one side that is shown in one of the before photos, the other side not shown in the photos was completely broken off of the bumper. The only local supplier of "Champion Bus" parts has a 300% markup on all of their parts and I do "all I can do" to not have to deal with them. Luckily for me...they are one of the few local places that also work on commercial wheelchair lifts. Every one of my new client's express a happiness to no longer have to deal with them now that they have found me to do their commercial wheelchair lift service and repair work.rops:

Anyway..I wasn't willing to foot the bill for new bumper end caps, nor did I believe they would be available 17 years after the original manufacture of this bus style so I had to get creative and "custom make" some sort of rear bumper and caps that would bolt onto the rear bumper using the original carriage bolt locations. This custom design and fabrication had to be both cheap and look decent enough. I found the right plastic that would meet all of my criteria of being cheap, thick, flexible and durable enough to take a hit of some sort without easily cracking. I'll just say that it's a Rubbermaid type of plastic material that cost me $7 at a dollar store. I found the plastic, pulled out my Sharpie, tape measure, HF mini electric panel saw and had at manufacturing the bumper ends that you see in the after photos. I sanded them as good as I could before rolling on the color and clear and making the rear bumper valance work with them.

I really don't know how the customer feels about the bumper cap end product (or the bus in general) but I can rest assured that I did my best with the time and money I had to work with.

The interior floors (with some tips obtained from Anthony over ay B&B Tennessee) was simply scrubbed "Cinderella style" as Anthony suggested with an APC mixed at a 50/50 dilution ratio and a scrub brush. The wheelchair tie down tracks were also scrubbed with APC and the same scrub brush but were additionally steamed afterward to remove as much crud as time would allow. Everything on the interior floors was triple rinsed with clean, water dampened MF towels to prevent any "graying" effect caused by any left over film of dirt/dissolved flooring material that is a common occurrence with this "School Bus" type of flooring. These tips were all graciously offered to me by Anthony and the worked perfectly. Too bad I had run out of daylight before getting finishing up with the interior flooring, combined with the fact that my digital camera quit working and my cell phone camera has no flash. As such.. there are no interior finished result photos. You'll have to take my word for it when I way the interior looked excellent, Thanks Anthony!!!

Well that about sums it up...Thanks to those who have followed this thread and thanks for all the great comments. TD

 

[Bates Detailing]

The interior floors (with some tips obtained from Anthony over ay B&B Tennessee) was simply scrubbed "Cinderella style" as Anthony suggested with an APC mixed at a 50/50 dilution ratio and a scrub brush. The wheelchair tie down tracks were also scrubbed with APC and the same scrub brush but were additionally steamed afterward to remove as much crud as time would allow. Everything on the interior floors was triple rinsed with clean, water dampened MF towels to prevent any "graying" effect caused by any left over film of dirt/dissolved flooring material that is a common occurrence with this "School Bus" type of flooring. These tips were all graciously offered to me by Anthony and the worked perfectly. Too bad I had run out of daylight before getting finishing up with the interior flooring, combined with the fact that my digital camera quit working and my cell phone camera has no flash. As such.. there are no interior finished result photos. You'll have to take my word for it when I way the interior looked excellent, Thanks Anthony!!!

Well that made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside - thanx Dave!

 

[tuscarora dave]

Here we go again!!!

When the exterior seams look like this....

Sometimes the interior ends up looking like this.

I guess this is my official bus restoration thread. We just started tearing into this thing today. Now that all the peeling vinyl and wet luan has been removed, I'll repair the outside seams before I go on my week long road trip and allow the interior to dry out good before putting the new paneling in. Quite a project.

 

[BillE]

Wow, that sucker is hurtin'! Talk about structure damage-you Sir have my respect for even considering this job.

Good luck (again) with THIS one.

Bill

 

[tuscarora dave]

Wow, that sucker is hurtin'! Talk about structure damage-you Sir have my respect for even considering this job.

Good luck (again) with THIS one.

Bill

Thanks Bill.

I think I should change my business name to, "Whatever needs done...We Do It"