Living in a bus can certainly sound very fun and adventurous, and yes it can be; but behind the scenes there are a lot of balls in the air – whether it’s planning trips by bus or car or bus, vehicle, boat or bicycle maintenance, or parts to buy….you get the picture.
Todd had mentioned to me a few times over the last year that we should “look at the bus brakes, bearings, shocks, bushings, air bags” to see if they needed to be replaced before we have any issues. As with most bus planning, our discussions usually start 6-9 months ahead to determine what we are doing and where we are going. If we need to get the fixes done, we should do it sooner rather than later and we were planning a long spring trip next year.
So I am back tracking a bit…. our August long weekend at the lake was cut short by a day, due too surprise surprise…..the weather sucked for boating. So we headed back to the family land a day early and Todd thought this would be a good time to look at the brakes. In order for him to do that, he had to remove a tire. In order to remove a tire, he has to jack the bus up (with 2 jacks), then put some kind of heavy-duty blocking underneath. This all sounds OK, but when he is a one-man mechanic with a 46,000 lb bus…. its not that easy. Regardless, he persevered and got the 1 front passenger tire off and soon found out that:
- The brake shoes needed replacing
- As did the brake drums
- As did the shocks
- And the airbags
- luckily the bearings and bushings are in great shape
Well…. that was quite the find for the first tire…. only meant now that he had to keep going with the rest of the remaining 7 tires. Over the next couple days, somehow, he made that happen. I have no idea how one person can suspend a bus on blocking one tire at a time without major injury to himself or the bus. For the next 3-ish weeks we continued to live in the bus, on a somewhat obscure angle at any point in time while Todd was under there doing mechanic’s stuff. He seemed to discover something new everyday; for example, all the brake pads (front, rear and tag axle) were different sizes, as were the brake drums. Surprisingly the shocks were all the same size, and the airbags were a mix of matching and not matching. The other kicker was that Ruby is 36 years old, so finding parts for her vintage was not easy. In the end I think we had over 11 different places (between Sundre and Calgary) that Todd sourced parts from and as he slowly installed them one at a time, there always seemed to be yet another different something that had to be sourced or a part that was supposed to fit but was the wrong size. With the removal of old brakes and shocks was well….. let me tell you there was a lot of grinding, cutting, torching and hammering with only one injury, a squished finger with a blackened finger nail. Ouch! He was happy to report that the air bags came out quite easy.
This is not where the story ends though, Todd took a week off and headed up to Terrace, BC with Logan in Jane the Jeep. After he arrived, the Jeep broke down – he ordered parts and installed them but on the way home, the Jeep broke down again, 3 hours away from home. I couldn’t go pick them up in Missy the Mercedes because she was also broken and in the shop. I had to use Logan’s car to go get the men and bring them home. We then took Todd’s truck Ziggy the next day to tow Jane home – a 7 hour round trip. A few days later we had Jane towed to the shop…. where she remains today. In the meantime, Ziggy was our main get around vehicle when, a mere 3 days later, Ziggy’s water pump and serpentine belt broke. Todd got the parts in and installed the next day. Over the Sept long weekend, Todd went to Bella Coola for a week with his buddy to go fishing and they took Missy for the trip. On the way there, they had to order more parts for her and hoped she would make it all the way back home before he had to install them – luckily this is what happened.
From start to finish the bus brakes, bags and shocks took 27 days total BUT Todd was also dealing with all the broken-down vehicles on an almost daily basis – where none of the breakdowns were repeat issues, it was always a new issue.
The month of August and part of Sept have been an absolute mechanical meltdown for Todd who continues to amaze me with his (somewhat redneckery) mechanic skills on the bus and ability to handle all this insanity without really losing his shit (too much!).Bus-brakes.html
So, sadly that took the wind out of our touring sales for the remainder of the summer season. But when you are wondering what we are up too, when we aren’t touring around…. this is it! This is the life.