25/5/2025

Painted the new front O/S wing, using etch primer I bought for the roof, evil smelling stuff which I don’t think I will use on the roof.  Coo Var has some water-based all-metals primer, grey in colour, which seems a better choice.  Next job was to paint the final coats on the battery trays, using chassis silver.  While they were drying, I looked out the battery cables and measured out what I need, 4m from the nearside battery to the cab, 2m linking the batteries and 2m from offside to the cab.  I also removed the remaining original battery cable from under the bus.   A poor start on Thursday saw me using the wrong (water-based) primer over the etch primer on the new front O/S wing.   Attempts to remove it when it was dry proved fruitless so I coated i with chassis silver in the hope that sealing it would fix the problem.  Things impproved with the removal of the rotted conduit from the recovered battery cables, I found I had enough good cable to wire the new arrangement of  batteries although some of it will need new insulation, which is on order.  I had to make a minor adjustment to the floor aperture for the offside battery tray, as I had made the tray slightly too big.  This job took pretty much all of Friday, but the result was worthwhile and neat in the end.  I decided next  to clean the paint and rust off the control box side panel, ready for painting.  Final job of the week was to apply a coat of wood primer to the enlargded aperture for the battery tray, and the top of the chassis on the offside, which was exposed when the old tray was removed.