Slept in a little bit, had breakfast at the hotel, organized the stuff we had yanked out of the bus, then caught a ride down to Jefferson Bus to meet the staff when they got back from lunch.
One thing we haven't mentioned, though we'd always kept in mind since beginning to plan this trip: if we realized we wouldn't be able to make it back to DC in time, we'd store the RV in a town we were passing through, go home, get back to work for a while and regroup. Then, we'd go back and pick up the coach at a later time.
Given we've made it half way home, and have 1350 miles to go, and making less than 200 miles a day average...it does look like we need to punt: store the coach and race home by some faster method. Now, given we haven't had the coach looked at by professionals, yet, and we don't know of another garage with this level of knowledge and capabilities for this bus between OKC and a similar garage in New Jersey, we are seriously thinking of leaving the coach with Jefferson Bus for a few weeks for a thorough checkout and some maintenance based on what they find, instead of simply storing the coach in a storage facility.
After meeting with the Jeff Bus staff, we decided to act on this plan, leave the bus with them for a few weeks, and rent a car to drive back to DC with our personal items.
Here is the
list of some assessments and work we hoped for them to evaluate and price for
us. We hoped they would then help us to
prioritize and decide what work to do from such a list, to match our budget and
the length of time we were comfortable leaving the coach with them. This list consists mainly of examinations and
pre-trip work we had tried to get done in CA before buying the bus - then were
told over and over again that such capabilities weren't available anywhere
around the Palm Springs area.
1. Pre-sale type inspection of the coach, trying to find problems.
1. Pre-sale type inspection of the coach, trying to find problems.
2. Pre-trip
type inspection – like a service shop would do for you when you are planning a
cross-country trip.
3. Check and/or service all wheel, brake, bearings,
hub seals, axles, bushings, etc. All these things were checked and
serviced about a year ago by a brake shop in CA (though not near the Palm
Springs area.) I have the receipt for
the work – a comment on the receipt said all the brake shoes had a lot of
material left. So, we trusted these
components were in good shape, though it would be nice to have some independent
verification by Jeff. Bus.
4. Evaluate any reinforcement, build-up, etc. of
the firewall and other support structures in the rear/engine area. The earliest 4106 buses in the series had
firewall cracking problems that were quickly caught and corrected in the
production line, though 112 is a pretty low number, so we were worried ours was
in the “early” batch. On the other hand,
it seemed unlikely the bus would have run around for 50 years if it had this problem
and if it had not been fixed. Also, when
one of these particular buses is upgraded to a larger (heavier) engine, it is
considered good engineering practice to re-enforce the structures around the
engine. I had been told this had been
done, though I can’t find any sign of it, and wanted Jeff. Bus to check.
5. Work Jeff. Bus had identified Wednesday afternoon in a quick glance: replacing
U-joints and bolts.
6. Replacing some scratched and dented panels on
two of the rear left-side bay doors.
Hard to find any whole original bay doors anymore. However, these doors consist of several
aluminum panels simply riveted together, and most every shop seems to have
plenty of these individual panels. This
is really a glamor thing and doesn’t really need to be done right now – I just
wanted it to look even better when I bring it home – there’s a place in Florida
that sells the panels for $100 and only 2 or 3 of ours are scratched or
dented. I used to not be able to work
with the kind of rivets that are used on this bus, though now with the
compressed air systems used on the bus, I can get an air-powered riveter from
Harbor Freight Tools and do this work myself.
7. The frustrating steering assist ram gland-nut
packing leak. I have the tools and ability to do this at home, though I'd
rather Jeff. Bus does it so I don't have to leak PS fluid all the way back to
DC. Other than the aggravation of trying
to keep it from leaking, the steering is fine for weekend trips in the local
area for the near future. We intend to
scrap the whole steering system in the Spring and install true power
steering. Most of these buses that have
been converted to RVs have that done already – it’s a lot cheaper than it
sounds – we just didn’t get that lucky with this bus. However, Jeff. Bus claims there’s a dozen
adjustments that can be made and that
we’d be happy with the current system.
So, they want to check the whole steering system and make recommendations
about a plan ahead.
After
reviewing this work with the staff, we caught a ride to the airport, rented a
car for a one-way drive to Reagan National Airport in DC, and went back to
the hotel for Italian Night dinner. Then we used our rental car to go
downtown to "Bricktown" - kind of OKC's counterpart to the San Antonio's
canals and surrounding shopping and dining district. We liked Bricktown very much, and highly recommend spending some time there if you are in OKC.
