Thread: 55 Wagon Progress

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The bus is old so the paint has faded quite a bit. we've had 5 year old buses that matched fairly well but this one is over 7 years old IIRC. maybe the bright finish will deflect away the trees...

Originally Posted by MP&C

The bus is old so the paint has faded quite a bit. we've had 5 year old buses that matched fairly well but this one is over 7 years old IIRC. maybe the bright finish will deflect away the trees...

It'll just get hit, scratched, scraped again later. So I wouldn't worry about that too much.

Only the school basketball players will notice.

Good One Charlie!

Looks good, I think that one would be pretty tough to blend.

All done with the school bus! To recap, Before:









After:








Now we can go back to our regularly scheduled program!

Excellent work

Nice work! I have a curse of looking in the background of pics, I noticed that you have a 5 gal bucket that you tip over for the " I think I have one of those in here " moments. I believe I have 3 of those buckets under my bench

That was the bus owner's stash. haha


With the 55's rear seat bottom narrowed to fit the wheel tubs.....





....time to do the same for the seat back. First to blow it apart....





This had a multiple fold down, arm rest in the middle, non 55 looking arrangement. The arm rest will be first to go, and we'll attach the fold down sections together..


The frame is sectioned in the middle, a tube driven inside, and TIG welded around the perimeter..








Then the seat innards are trimmed accordingly to make a one piece back..








Then some 14 gauge strips are cut out to join the two sections together..





























That should work, tomorrow we'll work on the new pivot brackets..

In removing the section of foam on the seat back we find the cushion has a wire around the arm rest void. As we are removing the arm rest altogether (when it gets reupholstered) we removed the wire..














The previous pivot for the seats had a tapered pin hex bolt that secured into a hex nut that was welded onto the pivot bracket, which can be seen here:





Due to our width constraints, we need to remove all that excess hardware.. So we chose to put the "securing nut" inside the seat, and use a simple pan head allen screw through the 12 gauge bracket.. Here's our Pivot "axle" inside the seat back..








Here's the test fit of our 12 gauge steel pivot bracket. Radius was used on the bends to match the tube. The tube was originally round, and the side uprights were flattened out using the MH19 hammer to buy us some more clearance between wheel tubs..





The bead shown on the bracket was done on the Lennox Nibbler.
This should give us a bit of clearance on the edges to help prevent binding of the upholstery.




Bead turned out pretty well for 12 gauge steel! Some TIG welding to put the parts together:











Video of it in operation:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCcpqbF1jUU


One part down, next we'll tackle the brackets to the floor.

Nice work, as always, Robert! Just curious if you considered leaving the seat back "split" so you could carry a long item while still having a backseat passenger? Although, I'm guessing this car won't be used for many trips to Home Depot!

Thanks Randy, we're going to make the seat back fold down in one piece. Plans are for a void behind the seat for sub and amp. So it will be closed to the back side, and the fold down seat will permit the access to the amp.

Originally Posted by MP&C

Thanks Randy, we're going to make the seat back fold down in one piece. Plans are for a void behind the seat for sub and amp. So it will be closed to the back side, and the fold down seat will permit the access to the amp.

I knew you had a good reason!

Back in the shop this evening, time to make some bolting brackets to hold the seat back frame to the floor..




Locating...








Brackets TIG welded on....





This shows it in place, we have about 1/4" clearance at the tight spots....


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB5qRfP7IxY


The cleco's were removed and 1/4-20 AVK rivet nuts installed in the floor... Missed that picture...








Next will be the top support....

More great work! Those brackets are very nice. I don't think I can do that with my vice.