Sunday, December 15, 2013

Some photos......

A few photos taken around the Oakville yard (and other places)


During the recent bushfires which engulfed the Blue Mountains and surrounding areas, the Sydney Road Transport Museum needed to evacuate the mobile vehicles from a storage location and thus they ended up at Oakville for a while, here we have beside 2413 the first production mkI Leyland Leopard 3522 with a Pressed Metal Corporation body (same body builder that bodied 2413 as well as all my other Mercs) and behind it was 3350 a Leyland ERT 'worldmaster' with a Commonwealth Engineering body. 
These stayed at Oakville until the fire situation had been brought under control and have gone back to the other site

A few months earlier I conducted for the Sydney Bus Museum on their old rear platform double deckers at the Council of Motor Clubs , Shannon's Sydney Classic, which occurs every August at Eastern Creek (Sydney Motorsport Park), was a good day


Here we have the late comer mk4 Mercedes Benz O305 3037 alongside the Sydney Bus Museum's AEC Regal IV 3197 and the Museum's Holden taxi

3069
Has a bit of a lean.........




One of the front air bags failed on 3069, a trick the older ones have never pulled on me!
Unfortunately I haven't been able to get her out of the stack to fix it just yet - my plan is to get a hot washer, clean off 2413 before I start sanding her, while I am working on 2413's roof, get 3069 up and give it some TLC, there are a few gashes on the roofline that need rust treatment. Ultimately, 3069 will need reskinning, having spent two thirds of it's service life based at Waverley, that means sea air, down by the beaches etc. There's rust at the top of the wheel arches, a flaw in the PMC design is that while the arches look to have a flattened off top, they don't, they're rounded all the way around, the flattened off section is just the exterior panel with a small piece of framework - dirt finds a home in this ledge, dirt gets wet every time it rains or the bus goes through water, perfect for rust. The repair is a piece of aluminium sikerflexed to the panel
Also the panel between the centre door and the nearside quarter panel, rather than spray painted, it looks to have been painted with a roller, also lots of panel damage too

All in all she's solid, nothing major wrong with her