My work

One subject I haven't covered in this blog is my work. I just had to let my fans know about this exciting project we got involved in. This is a one year old bus belonging to a large bus operator in the Edinburgh and Lothian area, with a chassis supplied by a well known Swedish manufacturer and the body build by an increasingly successful Irish bus body builder.( Names omitted to protect the innocent)

The problem was the chassis had developed a crack running upward from a bolt hole in the nearside rear chassis module at the front where the chassis joins the bodybuilders sub chassis.

The solution was not so easy. Firstly the chassis manufacturer didn't have the facilities, nor I think the knowledge, to carry out this repair, that's why it came to us. At no time during this project did they offer any kind of procedure as to how it should be done, so it was left to us to devise a method of inspecting and repairing the crack to the manufacturers spec.

It was decided that the chassis should be propped in six places using the back chassis module as the level and levelling and propping the rest of the vehicle at a further 6 points. Four props were also welded in place on the floor and bolted on to the body to ensure that it stayed firmly in place. The next job was to remove all wiring, airpipe, power steering pipe and airtanks, before finally removing the massive joining piece between the rear module and the body sub chassis, effectively halving the vehicle in mid air to allow clear access to see, and then repair the crack.

The moral of this story is, I am a wee bit more capable than some people in the industry would give me credit for.