Mirror Screws

For me, the toughest part of restoration is removing stripped or 'headless' screws/bolts from various components. Since this inevitably happens with 60-year old coaches sitting in decades-worth of rain, snow, heat and everything else, fastener restoration is going to have to be a core competency.

Take the side-view mirrors as an example. The main aluminum housing has a recessed ledge or seat around the sides on which the mirror sits, originally protected by cork tape padding to avoid glass-on-metal. Over the perimeter of the mirror fits a rectangular aluminum bezel about 3/4" wide through which 8 oval-headed Phillips screws hold it down and are tightened into threaded holes in the main housing.

In the one above, while two screws came out the normal way, six did not. Some of those heads were gone and those with heads, I drilled a hole down the middle, as best I could. Below is one of them; while some may unerringly drill exactly down the middle, I'm not there yet.

Some or all of the remaining screw heads in the bezel can be twisted out with a screwdriver since there's typically not much left holding it on.



Once every hole with something in it is drilled, using a cobalt bit marked with masking tape to the thickness of the bezel to avoid going too deep, the bezel still just doesn't pop off. Unless you can drill out exactly every piece of the former fastener, that won't happen. But if you can find an opening between the bezel and the body, you're in luck.

By very carefully tapping the screwdriver in either direction, the now-weakened fasteners will eventually give way. You'll have to do this around the perimeter and eventually the bezel will pop off.

 Then the mirror can be carefully pried up from the housing. In this one, there was a white putty-like substance under the mirror perimeter, cushioning it from direct metal contact and also holding it in place.

After cleaning up the housing comes the fun part. Unless you manage to drill out the entire body of the screw, you will have 'castings' from the remaining screw bodies like the one below.

These, of course, have to be removed and that's done nicely with a Dremel tool and cutting disk.

Grinding at the base of the 'casting,' it doesn't take long to get it off and relatively flush. This one is about ready to come off.

Here's where you see how close you got when drilling out the screw to the bulk of it in the threaded portion of the housing. I didn't do too well on this one - about a 50/50 gap.

You don't want to just keep drilling the hole to the proper depth in the aluminum. First, the bezel screw holes won't line up. Plus, you don't want to remove any more of the original material in the housing if you don't have to.

Using a cobalt bit in one of the good holes, you can determine how far the bit should go in when drilling out the others. A piece of tape on the bit will show you when to stop.

Using the small hole in the aluminum as the staring point, I drill slowly at a 45-degree angle into the remaining faster body, rotating the drill to straight up and down when it's in the screw metal. You end up with something like this.

Carefully threading the new hole with an 8-32 tap, you end up almost as good as new.

New Mirrors!

Kudos to Jeff and White Bear Glass. He's done a beautiful job of creating replacement side-view and interior mirrors for #739. And since they don't have chamfer machines any more, it was done by hand! These are absolutely beautiful!

Original and New Driver's Interior Mirror

Original and Hand-chamfered Edges

Two new (and original) side mirrors

New side mirror edge

Need mirrors or glass? Check out White Bear Glass and thank you Jeff!

http://www.whitebearglass.com/

Michigan Markers - Rear

Picked up the rear Michigan Marker unit today that John dropped off. The front and back of every Scenicruiser, if not every coach of that era, had a three-light unit at the top of the coach in the middle. Presumably these regulations first made an appearance in Michigan, but the origins of that name are unclear.

As you can see, some work is needed. Should this aluminum be polished and shiny? Also, two of the red lenses are missing, but John thinks he has them at home.

The trick will be to get the 3rd glass lens off the aluminum mounting without breaking it. I can already tell the two screws are locked and will strip. They're soaking in PB Blaster, but I'm not hopeful; there's not much Philips thread left on them. Of course, at least one of the other's will need the holes drilled and tapped.

Even more fun awaits refurbishing the sockets. While they should be relatively easy to find, as you can see from the photos, I don't yet have a single clue as to how they mount, how to remove and how to put in new ones.



One last challenge, the wiring diagram clearly shows a hot wire to each of the three bulbs and then to ground, presumably through the aluminum case. But does that mean no gasket material between it and the aluminum roof on which it mounts? And why does the middle socket wire clearly NOT go to the base of the bulb holder but to what looks like ground? Another project ... alright!

Middle Bulb Socket Wiring

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!