Started the week by cleaning down the areas stripped of paint last week, followed by applying a coat of aluminium primer to the underneath of the canopy and some white etch primer around the front destination screen. I won’t use that again, though. I continued painting, rescuing some undercoat from the remains in the Johnstones tin and used it for the front destination box around the screen and for some of the waist rail. I noticed some main damage to the N/S waist rail beading, which needs attending to, so I left that section for now. At this point in the week, illness struck so work was temporarily halted.
4/10/2026
A good start to the week, with all of the underside of the front canopy almost ready for paint. A minor diversion was the repair of one of the route number box bulb holders, the contact spring for the bulb having broken. I found this when I went to install the correct size 12W bulbs. Once the underside of the canopy and the area around the cab emergency window had been stripped, I cleaned the surfaces thoroughly and cleaned up the paint shavings. Next I applied a coat of no.1 rust beater to all the steelwork, then primed the exposed wood work. Whilst that dried, the last job of the week was to treat the rusty steelwork of the rear route number box with ACF50, it being impossible to access it to replace it, without dismantling the whole of the rear dome. This was the last job of the week.
27/9/2026
Work continues this week under the front canopy, finishing the stripped surface ready for primer. A difficult job due to the awkward position one must adopt to reach the ceiling. I sprayed the drivers emergency window release with several coats of gloss black, along with the mirror mount. By the end of the week the paint stripping job was largely complete, with the removal of the flap seal from below the cab window over the engine.