{"id":39,"date":"2014-01-28T04:35:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-28T04:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abuffalobus.kleinmartin.com\/?p=39"},"modified":"2014-11-03T20:50:16","modified_gmt":"2014-11-03T20:50:16","slug":"first-things-first-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abuffalobus.kleinmartin.com\/?p=39","title":{"rendered":"First Things First"},"content":{"rendered":"
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So, finally the bus arrived on September 19th of 2008. \u00a0The dealer we bought it from (Don Brown Bus Sales<\/a>) not only delivered it for free, but also filled the tank before it left Herkimer to get to us. \u00a0They also replaced the starter since it wouldn’t get the bus going to make the trip.<\/p>\n

The trip for the driver and the chase car was uneventful until they got to Buffalo and ended up on the West Side, down by the Peace Bridge. \u00a0Being that we were in the University Heights area, I had to talk them through the afternoon traffic and all the streets on the way over (which of course just built up my anticipation) until it arrived.<\/p>\n

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And here is #267 happily parked in our driveway.<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n
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The first view of the interior. (And the gearshift!)<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n
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And lots and lots of seats. \u00a0But look at the windows!<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n

When you get a bus in New York State (at least) you have 14 days to make it not look like a School Bus. \u00a0Removing the flashing lights is relatively easy, but the swing-out sign is a bit harder. \u00a0Both leave holes in the steel ‘skin’ of the bus. \u00a0The next thing is, of course, the paint.<\/p>\n

Now, I could have just done a very quick, single color paint job. But I didn’t. \u00a0We’d been talking about Steampunk stuff, and we had looked at lots of Pierce Arrows and Thomas Flyers (What, you don’t know about the Buffalo company that made the car that won the 1908 ‘Round The World’ race<\/a>?), so we were going for something like this:<\/p>\n

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A prime example of a Thomas Flyer. Even in our color scheme.<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n
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\u00a0 Now, if you’re painting a bus, you need to realize that there’s a whole LOT of outside. And that if you choose a really cool, dark color (like, oh, say … Black!) you’ll absolutely roast from the solar insulation. \u00a0So, in order to keep summertime temperatures down, we sent with Rustoleum Almond for the roof (it looks kind of like canvas), with the added benefit of\u00a0HY-TECH Ceramic Insulating Paint Additive<\/a> (as used by NASA!) to help cool things down in there. \u00a0And I have to admit, the ceramic ‘bubbles’ made a dramatic difference in lowering the interior temperature after I applied it.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0 How do you paint the roof of a bus, you ask? \u00a0I used a roller with a long handle. And, of course, I wiped down as much of the exterior as I could with a big dust-mop that I soaked in mineral spirits to try and get rid of a lot of road grime.<\/div>\n
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And here’s rather flattering picture of the painting of the roof.<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n
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If you ever find yourself painting the rest of a bus, buy plenty of extra painter’s tape. \u00a0There are LOTS of things to mask off. \u00a0For instance, I went with painting the ‘rub rails’ brass, some between them and along the window rails a nice ‘Hammered Brown’, and the rest a nice ‘Hunter Green’.<\/p>\n

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And there are stages, and you have to keep it dry, all on a deadline …<\/i><\/div>\n

Of course, that’s a lot of roller-time, and clean-up and fighting with the huge blue roof to keep the rain off. \u00a0But the end result came out well.<\/p>\n

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Pretty close to that Thomas Flyer, huh? (Don’t mind the holes, though.)<\/i><\/div>\n

And that set up the basic paint for the outside. \u00a0I’d like to say that it still looks as good. \u00a0The Rustoleum has held up pretty well overall, but now, five years later, it definitely needs some touching up. \u00a0We’ll get to that in a later post when there’s warmer weather.<\/p>\n

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So, finally the bus arrived on September 19th of 2008. \u00a0The dealer we bought it from (Don Brown Bus Sales) not only delivered it for free, but also filled the tank before it left Herkimer to get to us. \u00a0They also replaced the starter since it wouldn’t get the bus going to make the trip. … Continue reading First Things First<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":105,"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":[1],"tags":[6,5,7,112,9,113,8],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-hy-tech-paint-additive","tag-painting","tag-pierce-arrow","tag-school-bus","tag-school-bus-rv","tag-skoolie","tag-thomas-flyer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5ieo5-D","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/abuffalobus.kleinmartin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/100_8199.jpg?fit=1024%2C768&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abuffalobus.kleinmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","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=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abuffalobus.kleinmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114,"href":"https:\/\/abuffalobus.kleinmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions\/114"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abuffalobus.kleinmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abuffalobus.kleinmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abuffalobus.kleinmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abuffalobus.kleinmartin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}