1935 Chevy school bus

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ol trunt
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Re: 1935 Chevy school bus

Post by ol trunt »

Hello All. I got crankin early this morning --I'd really like something more than a "tin tent" for next year's Yosemite trip. I got the parts I made up yesterday installed on the RF fender. I also had some exhaust tubing bent so I could take advantage of its compound curves where I chopped off the back of the front fender to make clearance for the entry door. I plan to do the same thing to the LF fender. Jack

My effort at recentering the wheel well opening. Image

Tail pipe bend being used to mark fender for cut. Image

Bend welded in.Image
tango
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Re: 1935 Chevy school bus

Post by tango »

Jack --- I don't know how the "steel" is on yours, but I have to dial my MIG way, way down or it just evaporates. Seems some strange alloy was used on the bus body portion (Leadnesium?), while the Chevy parts are a very different (and much better) metal.

Lookin' good, bud!
ol trunt
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Re: 1935 Chevy school bus

Post by ol trunt »

Thanks Tango. I'm welding the body parts with my Lincoln Pro-Mig 140, CO2 shielding gas, .023 wire and at the highest temp setting with a fairly fast wire speed. So far I don't seem to be having a blow out problem on either the GM parts or the Superior bus body. There have been several spots where I have removed the lead to get a good clean weld but it is more fun just to feed the wire into the lead and watch the lead drip away.

The metal on my 78 year old bus is quite thick and probably accounts for the ease of welding. Your bus being built after the war probably sports metalurgy developed during the war effort--hence thinner but stronger steel. Jack
tango
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Re: 1935 Chevy school bus

Post by tango »

Hey Jack --- mine is a little Miller 140 dual voltage (110/220) gas shielded mig and I typically run the same wire (.023) for sheet metal. Usually fine at whatever setting is appropriate for a given thickness except for the danged Wayne bus body. It has given me fits. It is about 16 gauge but has very little tensile strength and blows out easily. Like I said...Leadnesium.

BTW...I love the dual voltage range on this rig. I had to run some pretty intense beads, very quickly on some schedule 40, 8" pipe, and on 220v, this puppy put down some very impressive single pass metal. Looked more like something you'd see come off a 240 rather than a 140. On the other end of the range, I have actually welded 26 gauge, galvanized stucco lath onto a 12" steel beam so I know it's not the mig. As you noted, the '46's were still "war production" models and my guess is that anything meant for non-militay use was still getting whatever was left over in the pot as far as alloys go.
ol trunt
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Re: 1935 Chevy school bus

Post by ol trunt »

Hello All. A special week this week--the youngest child of a close friend from work (way back when) and I share birthdays around the Fourth Of July. She two days prior and I two days after. She turned two and I -- well lets just leave it at that. The BAR-B-Q was AWSOME! Despite all the anticipation leading up to the party, I did manage to get a little work done on the bus. I made up and installed the brackets necessary to mount the front fenders on the moving portion of the tilt hood mechanism. The fenders are large and heavy and I could see that they would be flapping like Dumbo's ears if they didn't have some sort of pin to make them stable. The local used industrial parts store had a box full of appliance "feet" and I selected two with a rigid rubber head and two with a all metal swivel head. I welded a "bell" to the latter and then mounted the pairs to the frame of the bus and the frame of the tilt mechanism respectively. Once installed, the feet worked fine to center and support the mechanism--until I installed the Dumbo ears--way too much leverage on the tilt frame once the pins were separated. I burned many hours trying to solve this problem when I remembered the large pot metal headlamp mounts that reach from the fender to the radiator housing---and support the fenders. Once I stretched wire between the fenders to model the mounts, the system began to operate properly and Dumbo's ears stopped flapping. Needless to say, I can't use the pot metal mounts the way they were designed (who'd of thunk?) so while I'll still use them I have no idea how. Jack

Tilt partly open to show posts and bell pins. Image

Mechanism approaching the closed position. The bells sort of self align due to their swivel. Image

Pin and bells mated. This stops the movement of the fenders. Image

View of the pin and bell in closed position.Image
tango
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Re: 1935 Chevy school bus

Post by tango »

Mighty clever rigging Jack! --- Love the way they "self-adjust". Looks like something the boys at NASA might have come up with. I'm going to have to come up with something that requires alignment just so I can steal the idea!
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somewhereinusa
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Re: 1935 Chevy school bus

Post by somewhereinusa »

I'm going to have to come up with something that requires alignment just so I can steal the idea!
I was thinking the same thing,
but for the life of me I can't imagine what it would be. :)
ol trunt
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Re: 1935 Chevy school bus

Post by ol trunt »

Hello All. Bit by bit I am slowly moving towards the front of the tilt hood. I have been trying for quite a while to figure out how to stretch the little pointy Chevy front sheet metal over the very wide Isuzu engine and frame. I've tried cutting holes for stuff to poke through and bent and twisted panels hoping to get the front end to fit--it didn't. I decided to start anew. I welded the cut out sections back in and straightened the twisted sheet metal back to its original shape. Besides the width of the Isuzu stuff, the Isuzu engine sits off center to the passenger (right) side. I came to the conclusion that I was going to have to widen the top of the hood on the right half to get the extra width I needed. I cut the hood starting from the front and passing to the rear (cowl) to about an inch from the cowl. Next I spread the cut open 2 inches or so at the front and welded in a pie shaped piece of sheet metal in the void. This turned into a 10 hour job as I had to roll a bend into the filler and then weld it in without warping the hood. This was tedious work but I am happy with the results--the hood is now wide enough to cover the motor and the body lines to the original radiator shroud are much better. I was afraid that the extra 2" of width on the right side would make the hood center hinge look off center. Funny how the paradigm works. Even though I know there is 2" difference in the sides, since the center hinge still lines up with the center of the radiator shroud and the body lines line up with the side of the radiator shroud--I can't see it, it looks right. I have no doubt burned up 100 hours getting to a 10 hour fix but it has been fun.

Because of the 10" gap between the front end of the hood and the radiator shroud, there was no place to attach the inner end of the headlamp brackets. I fabricated a mount that passes from one front fender to the other and provides an inner attachment point for the head lamps. It also serves to support the Dumbo ears. I couldn't wait to see how the mount behaved when the hood was opend and to my dismay I was rewarded with a near disaster. The two additional bells and posts I installed (not the first pair) jambed and nearly bent the fenders. I should have waited until ALL the support brackets had been installed--Oh well. Jack

Cut in hood.Image

Pie shaped patch.Image]/b]

This is a very poor pic of the headlamp mount. Through the mount the L&R fenders support each other and are kept from moving left to right by a pair of bells and posts. Still a ways to go with this before I can call it done.Image
tango
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Re: 1935 Chevy school bus

Post by tango »

You're a better man than I am Gungha Jack.
Dusty
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Re: 1935 Chevy school bus

Post by Dusty »

As always , it's great to see your work in progress , thanks for sharing your adventure :mrgreen:
58 Bedford House
rlaggren
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Re: 1935 Chevy school bus

Post by rlaggren »

Can't recall if you clarified this before... Looks like you're skip welding the sheet metal, that's clear. Doesn't look like you hammered any of the welds but not sure I can really tell from the pics. Am I right to assume you're going to fill in the spots all along the seams? The hood looks like a lap or flange joint while the fender just below the bend (front to back) looks like a butt joint?

Decided on paint yet? Like Dusty - thanks for showing us a great job!

Rufus
ol trunt
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Re: 1935 Chevy school bus

Post by ol trunt »

Hey Rufis, thanks for the kind words. I know there are several philosophies when it comes to welding sheet metal and I wouldn't pretend to have all the answers. The way I have approached the sheet metal on the bus is different from what I woud do were I working on a late model car where the sheet metal is structural--there I only weld in complete panels. I tend to use overlays and stitch welds on almost all sheet metal work that isn't structural. I stitch both the inside and the outside alternating between the two sides as to location of the weld. I then grind back the welds on the outside just to the height of the original metal. I don't grind the inside. I base this approach on the way most vehicle sheet metal is spot welded in place. A second reason for not doing a continual weld on sheet metal is that in so doing it is almost imposible to avoid heat distortion. When I weld body pillars and such I do use the butt weld technique. In those cases I sleeve the inside of the welds as well. On frame welds I grind back both inner and outter edges to about 45 degrees and then apply a full continuous bead to both sides. I do not grind these welds (except as necessary to fit a bolt on sleeve). Going back to the sheet metal, after I gring I prime both sides and fill any voids with flexable seam sealer once the primer has dried. Then it is just a matter of using body filler to achieve the desired contours.

My bus is almost 80 years old and I wish I could be around 80 years from now to see If my weld philosophy is valid--Oh well, I sure hope I'm on the right track!

As to color, I sure wish I was somewhere near to painting! I plan to use the reverse of the color scheme I used on my TOAD (see page eight). Jack
rlaggren
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Re: 1935 Chevy school bus

Post by rlaggren »

Jack

Your method sounds plausible to me. Only issue might be the filler cracking over time if the joint flexes much. Should still hold fine but water might start to be a problem. But I don't know squat myself. I just ran across some _real_ psychos making their own body panels and spent time reading how they did their welds. The consensus seemed to be you could be PerfectoMan if you did each spot then immediately tapped it down a little while still hot - these were butt welds. I was willing admire greatly but not sure if I'd ever have the mania for that kind of work.

Rufus
ol trunt
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Re: 1935 Chevy school bus

Post by ol trunt »

Hello all. I've made some progress--mostly of the two steps forward and one step back nature. I wasn't satisfied with the rate the tilt hood opened so I tried to slow it down by adding pullies to it. I managed to reduce the speed first by i/2 and then 1/2 again. The problem was that a similar change was made in the power of the pull. While the hood moved nice and slow it was being bent and twisted by the extra force generated. Thankfully I was able to straighten out the damage without having to make new parts (a full day's work). During the repairs I was able to come up with a better routing for the cable and some better pullies so all was not lost. I'm back to the original speed but with smoother operation.

The hood is made up of 4 pieces, 2 top (flat) parts and 2 wings. I was having trouble getting the top to reach the sides. This turned out to be the fact that I had removed the center (top) hinge. Once that spacer was returned, I could progress. I had fully intended to weld the entire front end into a single piece until a friend pointed out that so doing would make repair to the various parts very hard. I've spent the last week reworking everything in front of the cowl so that individual components can be removed without the aid of a cutting torch. What a PITA! Oh Well.

I'm once again slowly moving forward from the front edge of the hood and towards the radiator shroud--again :banghead: :banghead: I've done yet another newspaper mock up and will now try to duplicate the mock up in steel. Jack

Pics of the final version of the cable system with parts installed.Image

Pic of hood sheet metal bolted to tilt frame.Image

News paper mock up.Image
ol trunt
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Re: 1935 Chevy school bus

Post by ol trunt »

Hello All. It was a long day today--I'm tired so for a change this will be short. I made a hood pattern out of heavy cardboard and cut out the parts from a sheet of 20 guage steel. I rolled just a little bend into the metal to give it some body (less chance of beer canning and weld warpage) and then welded the sheet metal to its frame and bolted it in place on the bus. I tack welded the outside and plug welded the inside. As my buddy Tango would say "Onward". Jack

Pattern and part.Image

Parts welded to original radiator shell.Image

Extendion bolted in place.Image
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