Still haven’t fitted the wood screws through the reinforcing plates on the outer pillar, must do that tomorrow!
I fitted up the inner pillar today, this really took all day as I had to make several trial fittings with the boot doors in place, This necessitated drilling the hinge mounting holes clear for 2BA temporary screws, then rehanging the doors. Hopefully a good fit will be the final result.
I made up a couple of blocks of Iroko as distance pieces and to repair a missing piece of the perimeter rail before screwing and gluing the pillar into place. I need to make up another distance piece tomorrow but otherwise the next step is to make the small pieces of wood that the door abuts on the pillar.
First job was to fit and bolt up the steel plates that I prepared and painted yesterday. I realise I forgot to put in the wood screws on the outer one, so that’s a little job for tomorrow morning.
I spent the rest of today freeing up the brass hinges on the boot doors, as I need and I want to trial fit them to check everything is in the right place before I finally fix the repair section for the boot door frame. I also spent some time considering how best to rehang the boot doors. They were just screwed to the timber frame with wood screws which turned to oxide probably a good few years ago. So I have decide to drill through the original fixing holes and mount steel plates with captive nuts inside the doors and inside the frame. To that end I ordered the required fasteners at the end of the day.
I have also just realised I passed my driving test 45 years ago today.
Work continued today on the two corner uprights at the RH side of the boot door opening. I used a coach bolt right through the perimeter rail in order to fasten the bottom of the outer pillar to the rail.
Next I made up some steel plates to reinforce the join in the outer pillar, three in all, one above the curved corner rail, one below it and one longer one for the inner face of the pillar. I drilled the pillar for the 1/4″ bolts then drilled the plates to match. I also drilled both the two outer plates for a wood screw to add an additional fixing to the pillar as they are not continuous like the inner one.
Final job of the day was to paint both with a coat of blue hammerite smooth enamel. As the plates were made from Zintec, I felt it was not worth the trouble of etch priming them especially as they are well protected in their positions.
Restoration diary of a 70-year old AEC single-deck bus and the trials, tribulations and adventures of our 1966 Bristol bus.
