been having a busy few days attacking thigs on the bus…
I finally bit the bullet and got the grinder to the interior of the bus.

and managed to hack out a total of 18kg of skinning and reinforcement from the rear of the bus. The sliding door, the rear door and the rear load area.

I was hoping it was going to be much more, especially considering the effort but i haven’t touched any of the reinforcement and crash protection around the cab and haven’t cut the floor out. I think these two areas have lots of additional weight. As far as i’ve been able to calculate 3mm mild steel is 25kg per m2 so the floor in the back of the bus is about 75kg. if I could afford the aluminium sheet to replace it with as ali sheet is only about 8kg per m2 – ie if i cut the floor out and replaced witth aluminium sheet i could save about 50kg in one go. If i attacked the engine bed and rear wheel arches i could save even more….

The sliding door is now a little bit comedy… I eventually cut out all the internal braces. When it’s closed it’s still stiff because of the shape of the panels and the swage line but when it’s open it wobbles like a jelly…

I alos found out how to get around the tired gas struts that hold the back door up when you open it…. Cut the whole interior of the door out and the gas struts now open the door quicker than a quick thing!

Ollie came over on saturday and started installing the clocks and gauges… now it’s starting to look right 🙂