SanFord the Great! A 1956 Ford B-600 RV

In reply to golfduke:

I sold the Alaskan last spring. Sorry. They do pop up on craigslist on occasion. If you are looking at one give me a shout and I can point out some problem areas to look for.

Update on the paint. All the bubbles are gone and it looks perfect. I'm going to ignore it for now. ????

It's getting to be time for this thing to be road worthy. That means I need at least two tires. I have been dreading pulling the tires. I have heard all kinds of horror stories about pulling these wheels. They don't use a standard lug stud and nut. They use a stud, with another stud screwed on top of it. The screw on stud, holds the inner wheel on. Then there is a nut, that screws on the screw on stud, that holds the outer wheel on. 12 years, up north, I just knew the entire mess would be a fused mess of rust.

Let me just say, whoever installed these last deserves a great big bro-hug and a kiss on the cheek. Not to mention a case of beer. Everything was thoroughly coated in anti-seize. They were tight, but it all came apart. Nothing a 3/4 socket set and a long pipe couldn't handle.

This is the funky stud and nut that holds the whole thing together.

A closeup of the backyard blowout. The more I think about this, I'm pretty sure this tire went flat on the way down from WI. It may have been flat for the last 500 miles. That would have destroyed the sidewall for sure. It only blew out after I found it to be flat in the yard. The valve stem was leaking. I fixed it and aired it back up. Then it blew out.

I'll drop these two off in the morning for new tires. They'll end up on the front, and the existing front tires will move to the back.

I can rotate a set of tires on a car in 20 minutes.

Putting new tires on the front of the bus and moving the old fronts to the back? 2 hours.

Nothing happens fast when you can't pick up the tire.

New bobos on the front.

That makes it roadworthy. I might be headed to a campground before the end of the year.

Sweet! It's amazing how much long things take as the truck gets bigger.

I think you would have heard a blowout driving. I'm guessing your right with the flat tire while driving idea. I had a blowout, you wouldn't miss it...

With dark happening so early, there isn't much time to work on SanFord in the afternoons. I did manage to knock out a couple of small projects.

One was the kingpin in the front end that wouldn't take grease. When I put that front tire on the other day I didn't tighten it up so I could work on the kingpin. I also had the jacks out as well. Luckily, just taking the weight off the kingpin solved the issue. All the front grease fittings are now taking grease properly. One more step closer to a camping trip.

That trip might be happening on the 3rd of December. That's what I'm shooting for. It won't be even close to done, but a mattress is on the way for the bed.

With that in mind, I wanted to get the furnace running. With some tweaking and cleaning, I got the pilot lit, and the burner fired off. It seems to be working properly. I still need to get a 12 volt source to run the fan. Sunday it should be cold enough to see if it actually puts out enough heat to keep things warm.

More to come.

I'm pretty sure you're actually supposed to grease kingpins with the weight off, ensures grease flows out through the thrust surface that the truck normally sits on.

Well, I just put the red strip up one side of the hood.

I hate it.

Pretty sure all the red will be gone by the end of the day. It may get a tape stripe, but the painted strip just isn't working the way I would like it to.

In the pictures it looks fair, in person, not so much.

Maybe if I outline the red with a different color striping tape it would help.

I think part of the problem is the way it disappears when viewed from the side.

Maybe I should have left the line higher on the hood like I originally painted it.

A remask and repaint and I have this.

Better?

That looks way better. The stripe that goes around the front looks good.

Is there any way to easily remove the grille for painting? I'd remove the "V8" emblem and paint those silver to go back on whatever color you paint the grille (I'm still rooting for a cream color )

Front wrap around, in red, looks good.

What if you fatten the red stripe (follow the hood bottom edge) and continue down the side with a 2x wider stripe?

In reply to OHSCrifle:

He's following the body line of the bus, if he made it wider, it would look out of place.

In reply to SyntheticBlinkerFluid:

Yeah I see. If the red wraps down the arc of the fender (and didn't force alignment onto the side panel ribs) it might actually look great.

Right now the red at the sides of the hood looks like a forced straight horizontal line across complex shapes. Just looks odd. The red around front looks good because it holds the panel edges, and the hard crease where hood turns flat.. But then the red wanders off the panel edge and looks funny.

There are complex shapes where the cowl turns into a flat box. With a single color the shape doesn't matter, but with multiple colors the shape is highlighted. The challenge is to highlight it without amplifying it.

This is how it's going to stay for the foreseeable future. There is still some touch up to do, but good enough.

Still need to make a decision on the grill. It's probably going to be either the light color or a beige.

It's changed a little bit over the last 10 months.

I like it.

Beige didn't win.

Mostly because I had a couple of cans of semi-gloss white on the shelf.

I like the way it turned out.

Seeing the whole bus, the red stripe looks just fine. Amazing transformation.

Just my $.02, but the lower panel under the grille that the bumper slots into should be body color, that would make the white grille stand out a lot more.

Other than that, it looks awesome.

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: Just my $.02, but the lower panel under the grille that the bumper slots into should be body color, that would make the white grille stand out a lot more. Other than that, it looks awesome.

Thats my first thought too.

Agreed, lower grill section should be the dark green body color. Beige would look really odd with the white roof. Wheels need to be white as well

So idea.

that red stripe, pull into into the v8 symbol. I.e. make an arrow stripe out of it. with the pointer at the center of the symbol. Agreed on the lower bumper being body color (the darker one.)

That looks fantastic! I agree that the lower front section would look better with matching color, but really, it's quite good now. The wheels would look good matching the grill too.

That was a lucky stroke on the Bud wheel studs and nuts being never-seized, any time that I have to work on them on a machine that I've never worked on before I bring a torch, and usually wind up needing it. They make a special socket for them that is very helpful to have as well.

Are these the lugnuts you have? I've been trying to visualize and found this image once HappyAndy called them "Bud studs"

In reply to Mezzanine:

That's the ones.