Sharkey's blog

OK, there you have it so far. The disappointing news is that there are no additional photographs of the bus construction until those you'll see below. During the time that I prepared the framing for sheathing and installed the roof and wall aluminum, I had a roll of film in my 35mm camera. Normally, I purchased 12 or 24 exposure rolls so that I would not have to wait so long to fill up a roll before having it developed. The particular roll of film under discussion went past 12 exposures. Then it went past 24. No problem, I thought, I must have purchased a 36 exposure roll this time. When the counter rolled over 37, 38, 39, I had the sinking feeling that something was wrong. I opened the case of the camera in a dark closet to look inside, thinking perhaps the film had come loose at the end of the roll or broken in half partway through. What I found was that the film had slipped off the take up spool before the first shot and all 38 or 39 exposures were on a single frame. A year's worth or photos ruined.

What didn't get preserved for posterity was the application of many strips of 1 1/4" aluminum. These were contact cemented on most all of the primed steel framing to separate the steel from the skin and more importantly, to remove any "steps" in the framing that would cause the skin to have wrinkles, dips, or bulges where the framing changed levels due to being built up of layers. Hard to explain, but many of the joints were lap joints between framing and rivet plates, etc. The aluminum strip, applied over the lower of the two pieces of metal would give a single plane for the sheathing to cover, so no variations in the surface to account for.

The roof was applied as a single roll of aluminum 40 feet long and 108 inches wide. It was intended as a replacement roof for a mobile home, and had to be custom ordered. In addition to the cost of the material and shipping, there was a "cutting charge" of $70 or so. I rented a crank-operated material lift and secured the help of a friend to hoist it up to the top of the bus, where we rolled it out carefully over a wooden framework that I had rigged up to allow it to lay flat until it was all extended, at which point I removed the wood and the aluminum laid down to cover the arc of the roof.

The roof was caulked all around the edges and literally ~thousands~ of holes drilled through it and the framing underneath so that I could set closed-end pop rivets. After it was all secured, I scribed a line all the way around and used my new pneumatic shears to cut the overhang 1/4" from the facia, leaving a small overhang of aluminum. The finishing touch to the roof was the application of five gallons of "Snow Roof", a white elastomeric coating that sealed all of the rivets and prtected the new aluminum from corrosion.

The sides were a bit easier. Sheets of aluminum 60" wide by 12 feet long were positioned three per side, caulked, and riveted in place, after of course, drilling thousands more holes...

A view to the rear, the back end was left unframed for the winter, with just some 2x4's and plastic to keep the weather out. You can just see the aluminum furring strips between the framing and the skin...

A couple 2x3's span the walls to hold up a shop light. It was very good to have a solid roof on the bus so that rain, snow and particularly, wind were no longer a problem.

View to the front with some clamp lights added for illumination. A 4x8' sheet of plywood formed a work surface. The next task was to fabricate up some steel rivet plates for the front wall and install the aluminum sheet there too. After this was done, I began installing rigid insulation in the roof and walls, eventually installing wood furring strips on both the ceiling and walls, and installing a second layer of insulation over the top of the first to eliminate any interior-to-exterior heat leaks.

And so, that's really about it. The rest of the project from here is contained in the "Photo of the Day" archives on the other part of the site.

Over the winter, I made some designs and drawings, and came up with an eve design that could be used to join the roof and walls. I knew right from the start that I wanted the roof and walls to have a crisp intersection, an actual eve that would prevent water from the roof from simply running down the sides of the bus, and one that would allow me to have rain gutters when the bus is parked stationary.

The profile of the facia/eve is straight from the Grace bus, although the material and dimensions were worked out to suit my construction. In the end, I had eight ten-foot sections of 16 gauge cold rolled steel formed at a specialty sheet metal shop, four for each side of the bus. These allowed a 2" lap at the roof, so that the roof aluminum had a structural surface to rivet to, and 2" vertical at the top of the walls for the same reason. The facia is welded into place on the rafters and pillars, and adds structural rigidity to the framing, as well as creating the design I wanted. I completely enclosed the top plate steel, and as an added bonus created a 5x2" chase the entire length of both sides of the bus, a feature that I was able to put to good use later when I started installing electrical wiring.

This photo also shows the steel tubing that was welded in between the rafters at the center and to each side to provide stiffness, and to give even more surface to rivet the roof sheathing to.

With the facia installed along the sides, I spent the spring constructing the compound curves at each end of the bus roof. These were built up using custom jigs and templates from flat and straight sheet metal and square tubing. When I began the first end, I had no idea what I was doing, I just started sculpting the metal, imagining the end result, and adding pieces as I went. Whatever I did, I knew that it had to be repeatable at the opposite end, and reuse as many templates and materials as possible.

The 2x4 scaffolding here was a custom job to allow me to get close to the work without teetering on a ladder.

I remember well one incident while this front work was being done. I had taken down the plastic sheeting on the front wall to do some welding, and after one session with the MIG welder, I raised my welding hood to find that the plastic sheet I was sitting on was afire between my crossed legs. My first reaction was the same as I would have if it had been a sheet of newspaper on fire, I slapped it out with my right hand. BIG MISTAKE!!! Unlike newspaper, there was a big puddle of molten plastic under the flames, plastic that immediately adhered to my bare skin and began burning the crap out of my hand, in spite of the flames being extinguished by the impact. I grabbed the plastic and pulled hard, and was horrified to see my flesh peel off with the now partially solidified puddle of plastic. This was a nasty 3rd degree burn that took many weeks to properly heal.

The worst part of all of this was that on my other hand I was still wearing a thick leather welding glove with a cuff that went up my arm well past my wrist. If I had used my left instead of my right hand, I would have suffered no injury.

Moral of the story: Make sure that in an emergency, even a small one, that you have a response instead of a reaction.

So, the old walls and roof framing are off, the new framing is up, and it's time to get busy enclosing the interior of the bus.

Before the Fall weather went completely T.U., I managed to cut the roof rafters to length, weld them to the plate and fabricate gussets to fill the little wedge-shaped gap between the bottom of the curved rafter and the horizontal surface of the plate. Everything was painted with primer/sealer as I went, and surfaces that still required welding were masked off and left bare steel. The plastic sheeting and blue tarps were pulled back as time permitted and work moved forward between periods of wet weather.

The plywood jig that I made to erect the vertical pillars was modified to serve as a rafter-setter, it held the to outside walls at a preset distance, determined what was square in relation to the sides of the bus, and set the vertical rise of each rafter. In the end, there were only very small differences in a couple of the rafters that required shimming to make the roof surface a perfect arc from side-to-side and flat front-to-rear.

Eventually, the weather in 1995 deteriorated so much that work on the bus was stalled. The framing made a stable support for the tarps with the help of some 2x4's, drywalls screws and C-clamps. I also fabricated dozens of makeshift C-clamps by cutting sections out of 3" PVC and ABS plumbing pipe, slitting the sections once lengthwise and spreading them over the framing to hold plastic in place. They are visible all along both sides of the bus in this photo.

The amazing part is that this whole mess survived one of the wettest winters that Oregon has seen since I've been here, and the inside of the bus stayed dryer than it ever did with the factory roof and windows!

Yes, it even went through snow and wind. Check out the hay bale twine and bungee cord hold downs for the top tarps!

Today while getting on the freeway to go to work, I spotted one of these San Marcos Crown conversion coaches going the opposite direction. It was grey, had the skylights in the slanted portion of the roof raise, and was towing a vehicle behind. That was all I saw before it was gone. Would have been nice to talk to the owner...

Once the bus was settled into position on the newly leveled ground, it was time to begin the roof raise.

First, I removed all of the exterior aluminum roof panels by shearing off the inside of each aluminum rivet holding the panels in place, then using a pneumatic hammer with a punch driver end, I drove the rivets out of the metal from the inside of the bus. Tarps over the outside of the roof skin kept these rivets from flying all over the place, but even to this day, I still find them from time to time in the gravel of the driveway, or pushing their way to the top of the soil around the bus.

The removed panels were numbered and stacked up for possible reuse on the new roof structure (they were never resued, in the end, I made the new roof one-piece, 40 feet long by 8' 6" wide).

Removing the tarps made it quite light and airy in the summer.

When all of the interior sheet metal was removed, and as I took the trim from around the windows on the outside, I found that all of the wall framing had stress fractures at the level of the bottom of the windows on the right side. Only the first pillar behind the curb door and the last (visible above the ladder in the above photo) were intact. Many of the rest of the pillars had been welded and patched with rectangular tubing, and additional screws set in the structure to attempt to stabilize the metal fatigue. Fortunately, I removed all of the brittle and cracked metal, all the way down almost to floor level. After the demolition of the body, it was quite apparent that the school district had been waging a losing battle with the frame of the body of this bus, which was probably why they sold it with the running gear in such good condition. The body just wasn't safe to carry student passengers any more.

During this stage, I had thoughts about a couple of the rigs in Rolling Homes that had canvas roofs that let in light, danced with the patterns of overhead leaves, and could be rolled back to let the sky into the house. Of course, reality set in when I remembered that I don't live in the tropics somewhere and that a secure, insulated roof above my living space would be more comfortable most of the year...

Once the roof joists and associated framing was removed, it was time to take the rest of the walls down. Here's my friend Mark and his youngest son, Jay cutting off the last panel of wall. Mark was responsible for finding the bus in Portland, so I made sure to guilt trip him into coming down for several important phases of the early construction.

The first step in removing the walls was to cut the pillars at the bottom of the windows. The belting was unscrewed a couple of studs before the place where the new framing was being installed, then the original framing pillars were cut almost at floor level. As the new framing was put into place, the belting steel was screwed to it. This allowed the thick corrugated steel belt panel to stay in place while the new framing was welded in. I did not want to have to completely remove the belt, as it was 35 feet long, very heavy, and probably would have been almost impossible for two people to handle.

Note that the interior walls and ceiling, entire roof and walls were removed a section at a time without the use of any cutting torch or sledge hammer. A die grinder was used to cut through tough welds, and a sawzall and circular saw with a metal cutoff wheel made most of the cuts. My cheapo pneumatic hammer gun with punch and chisel attachments got into tight corners, and in a pinch, a hand chisel and small hand sledge were used to knock stuff loose.

A load of 1 1/4" square steel tubing was delivered in 20 foot lengths, and cut to suitable sizes to make the wall framing. My sheet metal shop fabricated shims that allowed me to use 1" square tubing as a splint inside the 1 1/4", taking up the excess clearance so that the tubes telescoped fairly tightly to minimize strain on the welds that connected the new construction to the original "hat channel" of the bus body.

As the new framing went in, the belting along the sides changed it's position on the bus. Originally, the bus had walls that curved inwards from the floor level, gently forming a barrel shape before making a sharper bend above the window to form the roof. I wanted straight up-and-down walls, so the belting took on a slight twist as it was attached to the new framing, until the last of the old framing was removed and the entire structure was plumb and at a right angle to the floor.

Here the top plate has been installed, a piece of 1 1/4 x 2" thick steel rectangular tubing. The piece of plywood you see covering the emergency door on the left is actually a template that was used, sliding it along the rail that runs just above the floor on both sides which was the mounting rail for the bus seats. It served to set the width of the framing evenly, and to insure that the new framing was parallel and 90 degrees to the floor. The welds that join the new framing to the old are visible at the second horizontal member above the floor.

Also in this pic, you can see the first three roof rafters sitting in place before being cut to length or welded in. I had 14 pieces of 1 1/4" square tubing custom bent in Portland after a local shop destroyed six pieces attempting to arc them on a circular tubing jig. Seems that square and rectangular tubing is much more difficult to bend properly. This will impact later construction, as you'll see.

Another of the reasons for choosing a Crown instead of many other bus chassis that were available was the "trunk" at the rear of the bus:

The inverse stair steps you see are actually the underside of the rear bench seat. The frame rails end at the lowest "riser", and the floor was cantilevered out over the cargo area, supported by the two diagonal braces made from round stock that you see.

The school district had been kind enough to supply a spare tire, nearly worn out and without a rim. It was stuffed into the trunk instead of placed on the spare tire rack under the bus. It was a real effort to dig it out of this area, being down in a well and weighing about 200 pounds...

An hour or so with the Sawzall opened this area up. The contour of the bench seat can still be seen by the remaining metal on the far wall. The next step in preparing the bus is to remove the step you see against the wall. It contains the engine muffler, which is about five feet long and exits through the rear bumper. I need this area cleared down to floor level to make this area of the bus useful living space.

Unbolting the diagonal supports and removing the plywood flooring opened the trunk area up to the inside of the bus. I have one more section of flooring to remove after cutting out more of the trunk framing.

Finally, the last of the demolition is complete in the trunk area. I've cut through the wall at the end of the frame rails, removed the muffler box and stripped the louvers off of the exterior of the bus. The floor of the former trunk can now be extended forward and a stairs installed to make access from the main level possible.

The engine muffler has been replaced with a more compact unit from the big truck wrecking yard and moved forward into the engine compartment.

Pieces of the old trunk framing were rewelded in new and better shapes to enclose the area and make a flat floor. All of this was necessary to allow a stand-up height under the rear sleeping loft, and to allow the installation of a full-height rear door.

From the very beginning, the Crown construction style appealed to me because there was no 'pusher' engine in the way of accessing the rear of the bus, and the trunk area made having a door almost at curb level possible in the back of the bus. I wanted a easy and pleasing rear entrance, one that didn't require a step ladder to use.

After the lower level construction was complete, I moved the bus to the larger forward area that was now leveled with fill, and erected a long, thin shed on the ground where the bus had been parked. The roof trusses for this shed are Rohn 25 radio tower sections laid on their sides, the roof joists are scrap wood, and the corrugated aluminum roofing recycled from an ancient battery shed in Portland. It's all put together with drywall screws. The purpose of the 8 x 30 foot shed is to give me a place to store the 20 foot long sections of steel that will be used in the construction of the Crown's roof raise.

Somehow, I managed to let myself be talked into posting some detailed early photos of work on the Crown. I guess it makes sense, if I can't post any new progress (since there hasn't been any), then I might as well show what I've already done. Come to think of it, that's much easier than actually working on the bus anyway...

The first thing I did after getting the bus home was to sweep it out, remove junk and debris, investigate and take photos of all of the nooks and crannies, and try to get some idea of what I was going to do with it now that I had it. In this photo looking forward, you can see that the band saw that I hauled back from my friend's house in Portland is still strapped to the grab bar at the front of the bus. Date on this photo and the next would be Feb 20, 1995.

Here you can see that I've pulled up the access plate in the floor to see what's under it (some radiator hoses).

One of the big attractions of this bus was the heavy-duty chassis and running gear. No worries about overloading this rig, and it's undeniable that these tandem-dual, fully driven axles have lots of macho appeal.

Once my curiousity was satisfied, it was time to actually work on the bus. Since it was still crammed into a corner of my driveway and sitting at an odd angle, I busied myself with rubbing off all of the black spray paint that the previous owner had used to obliterate the school bus and district lettering on the bus. I didn't stop when the spray paint was gone, but kept rubbing with the lacquer thinner-soaked rag until the lettering itself was removed as well.

Here's what the area alongside my driveway looked like when I bought the bus, a Rambler graveyard. I shipped the two left-hand cars off to a classic-car salvage yard (the one on the far left under the tarp was a rare 9-passenger 1960 station wagon, it was later rescued by a collector who restored it), and moved the right hand one to another part of the yard so that fill dirt could be brought in to level the area.

The fill is almost complete here, the bus is parked where the cars were previously, and the area in front of the bus is still receiving dump truck loads of dirt and gravel. In all 18 truckloads of fill were brought in during this phase of the project. The area under the Rambler crypt had previously gotten two loads years before, so the total was now 20 loads, or about 180-200 cubic yards.

I installed an electric service panel to run power tools and then got to work removing the interior of the bus. All of this junk was either reused or recycled. Still working on getting rid of the last of the spray paint and lettering.

Close to being stripped to the exterior skin. I've cut the rear bench seat out and removed the rearmost section of flooring.

Well, I never said it couldn't be done, just that it shouldn't be done:

An archived copy of the Oregonian story (sans photos) is here.

The restless Kesey genes are up and running hot again. Zany Kesey is attempting to resurrect his fathers famous bus Further, which has been rotting away peacefully in a swamp for the last several decades. The eventual goal is to restore the bus, for what purpose remains unknown.

Anyone interested in being a part of this monumental and obviously historical event is invited to drop over to the Kesey farm (Pleasant Hill, Oregon) on Oct 24 &25 for the first steps of what will be a long process.

http://www.key-z.com

I think that they should leave it right where it sits. It takes a long time to grow a majestic mantle of moss like that, and a lot of small mammals and insects will lose their homes if the project goes through. That and I think that it would be just as useful and respectful to dig up Kesey himself and do a restoration job on him for exhibition in some future museum. The bus wasn't the trip, only the conveyance. It's job was done when the Pranksters got back to the West coast back in 1964.

Back in 1998, when I went down to Santa Cruz, I visited E.G.'s long-time friend Mike Leeds, and took a tour of both his unique home and his equally unique workshop. Among the many ongoing projects there was Bertha, a 1941 Seagraves fire truck that had been converted into a boat-tailed roadster.

This thing had a V-12 engine, but the most amazing part was that you didn't really realize how BIG it was until you stood next to it. A normal roadster would be waist- to chest-height, but you had to stand on tiptoes to see over the cowl of this thing!

On his visit this month, E.G. mentioned that Mike had put a lot of work into Bertha and was taking her to car shows. While I was aware that Mike was planning on cutting off the first version of the boat-tail backend of the 'car', I was very impressed today after Googling up the Blastolene web site and finding the [url=http://www.blastolene.com/Bertha/]end results of the newest modifications:

I am amazed, awed and envious, all at once!

While you are on the Blastolene web site, be sure to also check out the Blastolene Special, a ground-up fabrication powered by a M47 Patton Tank V12 engine putting out 1000 h.p. - 1500 ft. lbs. of torque!!! Woah!