Bodywork Finished

Well it's finally done. The bodywork is finished. No really. It might look like nothing has been done, which is what my daughter Bella said when I showed her a photo of the bus, lol. But the rust is now gone, new metal has been added where needed and panels recycled wherever possible. It's ready for reassembly. (well nearly)

Big shout out to Cooper Pratt for undertaking the work. He's done an awesome job of straightening the bus out and trying to retain as much of the orignal patina as possible. He even managed to source a pre-loved OG dove blue nose, as mine was just that bit too far gone to save. 

As well as fixing the tin-worm he laid down a coat of panel protector underneath and covered everything that needed paint with some dove blue. Which just leaves a little blending and ageing to blend in the new with the old.

I still have a lot of work to do removing the additional paint jobs laid over the top of the original paint by the past owner, but it's kinda cool that the 'new' nose pretty much matches the old paint job on the rest of the bus with some nice white stripes painted on the nose. I'm probably going to leave it for now and concentrate on getting the bus back together and running, but at some point I'm going to invest some shares in oven cleaner and get back down to the original dove blue underneath.

So It's been pretty epic really. Looking back at this build page, its been 10 years since I originally purchased the bus. In my past life I would have done this work myself, but work, kids, a pretty serious accident and then a house build meant that it just made more sense to pay someone else to do it. But it's cool that it's now done and I'm looking forwards to getting it back together.

Next on the agenda is to get my spindles flipped so that I can build up the Skinned knuckles beam and tear the straight axle setup out of the 15 window so that I can get it in the panel and get it rolling. Then I'll get it back here and finish it off.

Still a lot of work to do until it will turn a wheel, but definitely a milestone reached