Primer Coat Down

 Bus, Paint  Comments Off on Primer Coat Down
Oct 062010
 

Got the Rust-Oleum Clean Met­al Primer down today.  Phew.  Fumy.

Navistar International ISIS DVD

 Bus, Planning  Comments Off on Navistar International ISIS DVD
Oct 052010
 

While this does not seem to have all the infor­ma­tion I was look­ing for, it does have a great deal of the infor­ma­tion I need­ed for the engine.  Huzzah!

Excess Oxide Removed

 Bus, Cleaning, Metalwork, Paint, Pictures  Comments Off on Excess Oxide Removed
Oct 052010
 

Cough.  Sput­ter.  Good lord that was a lot of dust even with mask.  Due to the sever­i­ty, I end­ed up using a fine steel wire brush on the drill.  Worked per­fect.  Swept and air hosed out the bus sev­er­al times.  Every­thing is ready for tomor­row being paint day.  Assum­ing I don’t end up seri­ous­ly ill.

Random Lessons I Have Learned: Part 2

 Bus, Gripe, Metalwork, Paint  Comments Off on Random Lessons I Have Learned: Part 2
Oct 042010
 

Bus smoke!  Don’t  breathe this!

Seri­ous­ly.  Wear a mask.  That thick white pow­der is zinc oxide.  You know, the stuff that makes welders sick?  While I was smart enough to wear the mask for the bulk of today’s exper­i­men­tal scrub­bing in a dry area, I failed to do so in a patch at the back door.  It was­n’t much, but it was enough to make me feel like crap.  It isn’t just for welders to keep in mind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_fume_fever

Ospho Applied

 Bus, Paint  Comments Off on Ospho Applied
Oct 032010
 

This time I was smart enough to wear gloves and rub­ber boots.  Yay me.

Bad News: Coolant

 Bus, Planning  Comments Off on Bad News: Coolant
Oct 022010
 

When I removed the heater coolant loop I found two very bad things:

  1. It was green.
  2. It had gunk in it, like­ly small amounts of set­tled oil.

Now.  Why is it being green bad you ask?  It is because the DT466, while a mag­nif­i­cent engine, is prone to var­i­ous issues if one uses improp­er flu­ids or sim­ply does­n’t change them out when sched­uled.  Green antifreeze is /not/ what makes the engine hap­py.  Green antifreeze is what makes the sleeves eat through rapid­ly due to cavitation.

The sec­ond prob­lem, the gunk?  Yeah, fair­ly obvi­ous do-not-want issue. 😛

Worst case was I have to do a rebuild, looks more like­ly that will be the case.  Rough­ly $1100 and I get to basi­cal­ly start new on engine wear.  Not a bad deal.

TSP Stage Complete

 Bus, Cleaning, Paint, Pictures  Comments Off on TSP Stage Complete
Oct 022010
 

Start­ed a bit late today, ground down all the rust with a 6″ course grind wheel on a drill.  An angle grinder or some such prob­a­bly would have been bet­ter as while the drill was far more maneu­ver­able, it was shak­ing hell out of my hands.  That mat­ters when you are doing sev­er­al hours of that crap.

I’ve also removed the radi­a­tor hoses on the loop lead­ing to the pas­sen­ger front and pas­sen­ger back heaters.  Did­n’t like the flu­ids one bit, more on that in a fol­low­ing post.

After sweep­ing and using com­pressed air to clean out all the debris, I used a strong solu­tion of TSP in hot water and a scrub bush to work my way across each pan­el, spray­ing and scrub­bing.  After that ordeal, I used remain­ing solu­tion to spray over the entire floor and some spots I want­ed to insure were clean.  This was soon fol­lowed up with hos­ing out the bus with a spray noz­zle sev­er­al times until I was sat­is­fied.  Remain­ing stand­ing water was swept out, fan was put in on high to help it all evap­o­rate one more time.

Random Lessons I Have Learned: Part 1

 Bus  Comments Off on Random Lessons I Have Learned: Part 1
Oct 022010
 
  1. Start from the begin­ning with a good, full can­is­ter dust mask.
  2. Wear a decent pair of rub­ber gloves and rub­ber boots when work­ing with TSP.

Current State

 Bus, Pictures  Comments Off on Current State
Oct 012010
 

Some quick pic­tures of the floor post drying.

Paint Plan

 Bus, Paint, Planning  Comments Off on Paint Plan
Oct 012010
 

So, appar­ent­ly paint­ing is a lot more dif­fi­cult than I thought.  After a good amount of research, I’ve reworked the plan and bought all the appro­pri­ate products.

Phys­i­cal Clean:

  • Grind to remove remaining/missed screws and nubs.
  • Wire brush all rust spots.

Chem­i­cal Clean:

  • TSP (TriSodi­um Phos­phate) — Clean of grease/glue/etc.
  • Ospho Rust Treat­ment for Met­al — Gal­va­nized Met­al Etch & Rust Conversion/Primer

Paint:

  • One coat Rust-Oleum Pro­fes­sion­al White Clean Met­al Primer
  • One coat Rust-Oleum Pro­fes­sion­al Paint

The end col­or will be Smoke Grey in this case as it was the least offen­sive not-white col­or avail­able local­ly.  So far as I can tell via hours of research and talk­ing to sev­er­al peo­ple, this is indeed the best route to go if not overkill.  As I have no bloody inten­tion of hav­ing to do this again, overkill is good!

I’ve yet to decide what man­ner of top­ping will go onto this.  If I go with foam pan­els for the floor, I will like­ly end up going with a spray in truck bed lin­er for long term dura­bil­i­ty and sound damp­en­ing.  If I go with a high den­si­ty spray in foam for the floor sim­i­lar to what I intend to do for walls and ceil­ing, it will like­ly stay as it is.  The lat­ter is a bit more expen­sive in the short term, but I am lean­ing strong­ly in that direction.

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