A good start to the week, with all the battery cables now recovered and ready to fit. A good find by Ian on eBay was three replacement toggle switches for the control box top panel. I wasted a bit of time playing with the ammeter and various shunts, then fitted the nearside battery box, after spending some time hoovering underneath the bus so I could work there. The offside battery box was next, but despite having trial fitted it before, opening in the floor needed relieving.
Tag Archives: battery boxes
8/6/2025
A reasonable start to the week, the main cover for the control box is primed with red oxide and needs a final rub down when its cured, then a coat of black. In the meantime I worked on the switches and found a broken connection between the “start” (i.e. power on”) switch and the main supply. I polished the engraved switch bezels ready for refitting. I managed to straighten the bent switch lever and released the stuck slider bearing on another. I also completed the second new brass slider, so now I have a full complement. I next cleaned the rust off the switch mounting plate and primed it with Jenolite red oxid, then sprayed the first topcoat onto the control box main cover. Whilst this was drying, I tested the starter button and found it unreliable, so looked out a new replacement. Then I affixed the switch bezels too the top panel. I painted the steel switch plate with matt black, something of a mistake as it went on like tar, then sprayed the final coat of gloss black on the main outer cover of the control box. Progress then slowed as I polished the starter bezel and blanking plug for the top panel, and also the ammeter bezel. I fitted the blanking plug and the bezel, the latter being a bit loose, but ran some superglue around the edge so hopefully it will be ok. The toggle switch bezels were also a bit a loose, so I glued those down too, hopefully they will stay in place now. I then discovered that the hole in the main cover was slightly too small for the ammeter and will require enlargeing, bah! I then changed my tack and made a press tool in Iroko to make cable clamps for the battery cables and possibly the speedo cable. Very satisfying to produce these items neatly and quickly in steel. I drilled these then reassembled the ammeter and the repaired toggle switch. I also sheathed the short link battery cable with heat shrink and started to sheath the long cable then decided to have a rest from that. I drilled, trimmed and primed and painted the U clamps next. Final job of the week was to fix the batery clamp uprights to the battery trieys, using twin-cable P-clips, rivetted to the base, to stop the uprights falling through. So, a good week for small jobs.
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.