{"id":189,"date":"2014-11-17T06:00:25","date_gmt":"2014-11-17T06:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abuffalobus.kleinmartin.com\/?p=189"},"modified":"2014-11-17T00:42:27","modified_gmt":"2014-11-17T00:42:27","slug":"air-part-ii-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abuffalobus.kleinmartin.com\/?p=189","title":{"rendered":"Air (Part II)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Now, to run this from the tank below the floor up through the bus body and out to the horns needed some other bits to work correctly.\u00a0 First was to put in a pressure regulator, which by adjusting the dial could throttle the pressure to any desired between zero and 200 psi, or however much was in the system.<\/p>\n

\"Pressure<\/a>
Pressure Regulator<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This was an important consideration that many of the \u2018air horn kits\u2019 that I found on-line lacked, as it allows you to quiet your air horns\/chimes while you\u2019re in an area with people out and about, rather than a highway with people in vehicles.\u00a0 While there are people who seem to delight in scaring people with a sudden blast of sound from an air horn at maximum pressure, this is horribly irresponsible and potentially dangerous.<\/p>\n

As the regulator had not only a 1\/2\u201c through port, but also two 1\/4\u201c regulated out ports, I decided to use one of these to run to a pressure gauge that I could mount on the control panel.\u00a0 For this I used mainly a \u2018soft\u2019 line of a tough plastic with a 3\/8\u201c interior dimension (but was marketed as a 1\/2\u201c air line), which was not great at turning corners, kinking easily, and causing me to use hard 90 degree elbows to make corners.\u00a0 This was a great way to check what the pressure is in the auxiliary tank, but had the drawback in that when you dial back the regulator to quiet the horn\/chime, you only see the regulated pressure, not the whole tank pressure.\u00a0 However, as the regulator dial is mounted behind the driver\u2019s seat, this regulated gauge allows you to change the pressure without looking back for too long while driving.\u00a0 The gauge itself had threads that were just<\/em> the size of a removed switch cap on the control panel, so the installation was relatively easy, despite having to route the line between all the other lights and switches on the panel.<\/p>\n

\"'Soft'<\/a>
‘Soft’ air lines, 1\/2″ ID in the box and the 3\/8″ ID around the outside …<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The next step after this was to install control valves to actually work the horns.\u00a0 While some people on-line suggested using simple ball valves for natural gas\/LP lines, these don\u2019t automatically close, which poses an additional distraction while driving, as opposed to spring-loaded, normally closed valves.\u00a0 I got two non-stepped valves, which are amazingly heavy-duty.\u00a0 Stepped valves have three settings (closed, partly open, and full open), while non-stepped run from closed to full open and all the range in-between depending on how hard you pull on the handle.<\/p>\n

\"Non-stepped<\/a>
Non-stepped control valves<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To counter the possible torque of pulling on one of the handles energetically during a tense moment, I ended up deciding to use hard\u00a0lines from the regulator to the valves, which made things a bit easier as I needed to split the air line to get to both of the valves.<\/p>\n

The lines for the air horns was 1\/2\u201d (ID) line to supply the volume of air needed to sound the horn, which can drain the 20 gallon tank fairly quickly, and the hard line was constructed from \u2018black\u2019 pipe and brass fittings, and used Teflon tape to seal the threads.<\/p>\n

\"Showing<\/a>
Showing the hard lines from the pressure regulator to the valves mounted on the shelf to the port side of the captain’s chair.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These were attached to the shelf that I ended up constructing just above the captain\u2019s chair on the port side, giving easy access to the valve handles, while also not blocking the view.\u00a0 I had expected to put a couple of hanging lines on the handles (like the old truckers had), but the valves ended up being so low and handy that I decided against it.<\/p>\n

\"Another<\/a>
Another view of the hard lines and valves without so much backlighting.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While I went with hard lines from the pressure regulator to the valves, most all of the rest of the line was \u2018soft\u2019, a thick, durable air brake line of woven fiber and rubber that could be bent into tight angles without crimping or binding.\u00a0 This allowed for some flexibility of where to run the lines and to easily get the air to a horn along the curved roof.\u00a0 However, it did pose one problem; that of how to run the soft line through the flooring, which was a 20 gauge steel sheet.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The nice bright dot (of the bright driveway) is where the air line will come up<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I got around this by using a short \u2018hard\u2019 pipe through the floor with flared barbs at each end to attach the pipe and the \u2018soft\u2019 line.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A brass barb fitting on a black iron pipe to go through the floor<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\"A<\/a>
A dark photo of the connection between the tank and the ‘through-the-floor’ fitting<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The first air sounding unit I put in was the air chime<\/a>.\u00a0 Nicely finished with brass, I wanted to install it with the pipes pointing up, but due to the construction of the lower \u2018bell\u2019 housing not having any drainage hole for rainwater, if I had, the air line down to the valve would fill with water and a winter freeze would have been disastrous.\u00a0 So, it got mounted sideways, which still isn\u2019t bad.\u00a0 I ran the holes through one of the plates that I put over the school bus flashers, and piped a hard, brass air line in through the steel.\u00a0 The mounting for this was simple, as the chime had three threaded holes to secure it, so once the exterior of the holes had been ringed with butyl sealant, it went together easily and securely.<\/p>\n

\"\"
4 Note Air Chime, Brass (From raneystruckparts.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That said, a word of advice to people who might be considering doing something like this \u2013 be careful with your bolts after getting things in place.\u00a0 The butyl sticks to everything, including bolt threads, and can make it tough to get things aligned.<\/p>\n

But it certainly can be worth it, as shown by the finished chime, in place:<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The air chime in place above the driver’s eyebrow<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To be continued (in Part III) …<\/p>\n

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Now, to run this from the tank below the floor up through the bus body and out to the horns needed some other bits to work correctly.\u00a0 First was to put in a pressure regulator, which by adjusting the dial could throttle the pressure to any desired between zero and 200 psi, or however much … Continue reading Air (Part II)<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"amazonpipp_noncename":"","amazon-product-isactive":"","amazon-product-single-asin":"","amazon-product-content-location":"","amazon-product-content-hook-override":"","amazon-product-excerpt-hook-override":"","amazon-product-singular-only":"","amazon-product-amazon-desc":"","amazon-product-show-gallery":"","amazon-product-show-features":"","amazon-product-newwindow":"","amazon-product-show-list-price":"","amazon-product-show-used-price":"","amazon-product-show-saved-amt":"","amazon-product-timestamp":"","amazon-product-new-title":"","amazon-product-use-cartURL":"","amazon_featured_post_meta_key":"","_amazon_featured_alt":"","amazon-product-template":"","rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,10,3],"tags":[33,32,31,112,9,113,117],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-school-bus","category-school-bus-rv-2","category-skoolie","tag-air-chime","tag-air-horn","tag-compressed-air-system","tag-school-bus","tag-school-bus-rv","tag-skoolie","tag-woodwork"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5ieo5-33","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abuffalobus.kleinmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abuffalobus.kleinmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abuffalobus.kleinmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abuffalobus.kleinmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abuffalobus.kleinmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/abuffalobus.kleinmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":208,"href":"https:\/\/abuffalobus.kleinmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions\/208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abuffalobus.kleinmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abuffalobus.kleinmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abuffalobus.kleinmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}