Start of the New Year

So a Happy New Year to everyone!

Well its funny when you do projects like this there suddenly seems to be a point where things are moving quickly and you can sense a change in momentum and for some reason that seems to be the case now. Maybe its because engineers are also now working on the bus in servicing the last of the brakes and getting ready to put the engine in fairly shortly.

So a good place to start with a view of the offside rear stub as all the drums and pads are off as it is serviced and bought up to standard. Interestingly the guy working on this (Bernie) has worked on RT's for years and has never seen the same brakes or half shaft on any other RT, including even on RT8's nearside. Clearly they were updated to the latter post war type in their service life but the offside of RT8 remains as it was built. Fortunately everything is in good shape and the pads themselves are the same so for once one of the oddities is not going to cause us an issue.

The nearside was done sometime back and whilst the wheel has again been removed to assist in fitting the wheelarches as soon as the offside is done the wheels will go back on and she will come off axle stands and stand on her own 'feet' for the first time in a long while.

Looking in from the platform, the wheelarches and associated bench seats are now in place and fitted. The remaining floor boards are now going down which will complete all the flooring on RT8. It will then be treated again before the slats are laid but this will not be an imminent job, even though they are now all cut and ready to be fitted.

Looking at the nearside you can just see the inspection panel to get to the diff for topping up the oil level. Also you can see the seat frame which makes up part of this whole unit, which due to its weight and size is a fairly cumbersome part to fit. Another little known fact is that the seat frames on the 2RT2's were painted green, whilst on the post war variants they were brown. Interestingly this practice seemed to last through to the end for 2RT2's as all RT8's were green (if it looks brown its surface rust I'm afraid!) and a few other frames we acquired that also came from 2RT2's were also green and had never got even a light coat of brown.

This coming month will see the last of the floor boards laid, then the external panels around the wheelarches and the last remaining glazing done. The brakes will be finished and the wheels refitted and if all this is done and then being able to roll we may well move her into an engineering bay and get the engine fitted and run up to make sure all is OK in that department.

Of course to see how much we complete of that you will need to come back next month and see, sometime hopefully around the 7th should be the next update.

Cheers for now