Mirrors

Even though 739 could move without its side-view mirrors, that's just one of many safety components that have to be in place to get on the road. This Friday afternoon the weather was so nice, I had to take a half-day of vacation and spend some time on various projects, including removing the two mirrors for replacement glass.

Each is held on with a hex head cup point set screw. I actually had a wrench that fit! And I had been taught to use plenty of PB Blaster. What could be easier? I started with the driver's side mirror.

After maybe up to 40 years of holding that mirror on tightly, that screw was not about to budge. It  had bonded well over the years and based on the fact that it would not move, I wondered if the parts might have welded together over the many years of sun and weather. So over to the passenger side.

Same story. But I knew to tap with a hammer, use a vice-grips for some leverage, and give that PB Blaster some time to work.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but that passenger side set screw finally moved!

And then too, so did the driver's side!

Then off came the two mirrors, right? Not at all. One didn't budge a bit and the other at least turned a few degrees in either direction. More PB Blaster, more back and forth motion, and eventually, the two mirrors gave up. You can see a bit of clean up is in order before reassembly.



On we go.....







Preservation Before Restoration

To my surprise this past week, I noticed flapping plastic from the roof of #739. I had just stopped by to drop off some parts, so I went inside and sure enough, the plastic above each of the four skylights had ripped. And I knew storms were coming Saturday evening.

So Saturday about noon, all I could find was some dry cleaning plastic and duct tape that ran out too soon! I found a substitute and this week will tell whether or not the patch job will hold until the skylights can be replaced. And did it hold against the torrential rains that fell Saturday evening?

The Glass

A Scenicruiser has 37 pieces of window glass, ignoring details like double-panes and the small sliding door for the driver. Part of restoration is to bring back the tinted glass to its original appearance. That is hard to do. The original window glass was two pieces of safety glass with variable green vinyl in-between to provide sun glare protection. You either cannabalize from another PD-4501 or you put in your own window material (glass or plexiglass) and tint it, usually with a film on the inside.

739 could be in better shape when it comes to the glass, but it could be worse. The numbers don't quite tell the story. With twenty-one good and sixteen cracked, we're doing better than 50/50, but it's the curved glass that's impossible to mimic easily. The flat glass on the sides is much easier; each sash has two panes of glass, one for each half that slides open.

We're fortunate to have both lower windshields, the driver and door glass, both 'D' windows and the upper-left opera glass, as well as the two rear side pieces. The full inventory is below.

So here are the tough pieces we're looking to replace:

• both upper windshields
• the right-side triangular opera window
• the rear center window

For the skylights, the current thinking is to remove the broken double-paned glass and replace with a single pane of tinted plexiglass which should curve to fit the seal and opening.

Next Steps

Thanks to Andrew and Ted, we now know the cooling hoses leak and replacements are ready to go. Once we can find the date/time to remove, replace, run and pressure test, we can inspect the air system and many other components which require the bus to be running.

We'll definitely want to know that all leaks are fixed since it'll take 12 gallons of anti-freeze and 11 gallons of distilled water to fill it up!