It seems some time since any work was recorded and quite a lot of work has been done. Firstly, both boot doors have been skinned in aluminium. This took a couple of days to complete. Next, applying filler to the boot doors to eradicate hammer marks and minor distortion and starting the sanding process. A couple of days were spent spring-cleaning the railway shed and I decided it was about time to cut the lino for the floor by the entrance steps and for the entrance steps themselves as it had been hanging around in the shed for a while. The floor section has been glued in place and undercoated with copper red floor paint. The nosings for the top of the steps and the second step have been cut but the front flange remains to be trimmed. The lino for the second step has been cut and awaits fitting which will happen after the step bay metalwork has been top-coated.
Yesterday I finished fitting the steelwork to the boot doors and today I finished painting over it with grey to provide an extra barrier for the aluminium skin. The right-hand door was finished yesterday so I started to fit the skin. I found that it could be formed quite easily after heating with a paint-stripping gun. Some distortion occurred when folding the flange around the flared section at the bottom RH corner because I didn’t clamp the top surface securely enough with a shaped wooden block. I will improve that method for the other corner tomorrow.
The last few days were spent painting the interior of the boot the correct shade of ochre brown and preparing the boot door frames for reskinning. This included making and painting the new steel parts for the L/H boot door. Today I fitted the metalwork to the R/H boot door and the top corner plate to the L/H door then rehung them to allow me to line up the bottom edge steel strips.
Restoration diary of a 70-year old AEC single-deck bus and the trials, tribulations and adventures of our 1966 Bristol bus.
