A new year and work contiunes on GSC 659X. This was on of my fav. pics from last year.

We have started to work on the lower deck getting it ready for panelling. We have decided to paint the lower deck frame after cleaning; as it was pretty scabby and showed signs of corrosion so protection has been applied.

We have removed the seized exit doors. Due to years of disuse the door pins had solid in the bottom of each door. The doors have been removed for overhaul and it also allows us to clean the two bulkheads.

Paint removal is underway on the rear exit door bulkhead and door surround. All the rotten door brushes have been removed and will be replaced.

Work has been completed on the nearside lower deck structure. Small wooden fillers have to be added behind the wheel arch and panel dampers are required before the panels can be fitted. I also still have to finish cutting holes in a few of the lower deck panels.

The rear bulkhead is almost paint free and ready for etching primer. The rusty bolts which hold on the exit doorstep will be replaced with shiny stainless steel ones to improve the appearance of the step.

Most of the paint has been scrapped from the front bulkhead and with some paint stripped it should soon be ready for paint as well. Again I hope to replace those ugly rusty bolts.

While I work on getting the exit doors my father is working on repairing the framework under the emergency door. Once of the alloy frame sections was so badly corroded it has been removed and a new section fitted. During this repair it was found that many of the huck bolts had sheered off. So a small repair has quickly snowballed into loads of work.

After removing the paint it was necessary to remove the underlying etching primer to avoid the new etching primer reacting with the old stuff. Here you can see the rear bulkhead had been sanded to remove the last traces of paint.

This is the front bulkhead ready for etching. You can spot the old bolts have been all but removed only two hold the step in place here. Also the door bump stop has been cleaned, protected, and re-fitted to the bulkhead prior to paint.

Here is the rear bulkhead just prior to etching. You can see all the marks where the old stickers on the used ticket box have been completely removed so they so not shine though the re-finished bulkhead.

My first attempt at etching on 659. The Acid 8 worked well and has adhered to the prepped alloy very well.

Looking great. I will be flatting the finish prior to undercoat but the finish very good.

You can see in this picture in addtion to the bulkheads I have also painted all the top of the door area. This means the whole area is ready for undercoat.

The new lights for 659 arrived lastweek, big thanks to Ray Trigg. I already have new headlamps from Lucas and original pattern fog lamps from E-bay.

The side number screen has been waiting for new rubber from Bains. This has now arrived and I set about installing the glass. Also new screens are being made for both the side and rear screens, as the originals were lost in the Blaze.

Plenty of finger prints on that new panel. The new rubber was harder to fit due to the tight curves but after a bit of work I got the glass in and the securing lace installed in the rubber.

I have started the exit door overhaul by scraping off all the old paint on all four Exit door leaves. The doors will now be sanded prior to etching.

I took the opportunity to remove all the mechanism from the doors to clean it off rust and paint them up. Originally the parts were bare metal with zinc plating. This has long since corroded off and it has been decided to red lead them to protect them and paint them silver to try and match them look a bit better.

While I am working on the Exit doors my father and Graham have been contiuing work on getting the lower deck ready for panels. We noticed over a year ago that a number of the rivets holding the seat rails on had sheered. Its now clear that its not a few but most of them have sheered. Here you can see my father knocking out the sheered rivets and installing the new machine screws and bolting them up.

Here you can see work on the O/S is almost complete all of the seat frames had to be unbolted and slid out of they way to gain access to the seat rail so Graham could fit the new machine screws through the saloon side wall. Hopefully this will mean all us fatties can safely sit on the seat without ripping them from the bus.

To remove the fibreglass fuel filler cover the interior covers had to be removed to gain access to the securing clamp.

The first of 8 leaves is now ready for paint. Seen here after scraping, sanding, panel wiped, and masked ready for paint.

U-POL Acid etch was then applied to both sides of the door, one at time obviously allowing each side to dry and cure before handling.