It’s been about three months since the last time that I gave you an update on former CARTA bus 3426, which Elyse and I call “Biscuit”, and considering that I had mentioned in the previous entry that she did not attend the show in New Jersey because she’s in another shop, it seems like it’s time to share a update on the state of her restoration.
After that initial adventure around Frederick, I started working on various restoration tasks while I had the bus in my possession, taking care of tires, wheels, and more work on removing that Planet Fitness wrap. I was spending a lot of time up in Frederick, simply driving Biscuit around doing whatever errands I needed to do, and continuing to verify her performance. I’m talking grocery shopping, Home Depot runs, you name it – the bus was my chariot in Frederick. I would go to the storage lot, get the bus out, put the HR-V in the parking space, and then I would go out in the bus. I also got lots of photos of Biscuit doing her thing, out and about in various places.
The first thing of importance that I took care of was tires. I took her over to Rice Tire in Frederick, where I finally got the tires that she had when she left CARTA replaced. Those tires were clearly at end of life. Take a look at the left front tire, and you will see that it was practically a racing slick. I tended to describe those old CARTA tires as, “Tread? What’s that?”
Biscuit is in the shop at Rice Tire, getting a new set of Michelins.
Fresh out of the tire shop, now sporting tires that actually have tread on them.
Another issue that I needed to make some headway on was the air conditioning system. The shop in South Carolina, General Diesel, had done a recharge on the air conditioning unit, however, when we picked it up last September, we found out that the air conditioning system didn’t work. That was beyond the scope of General Diesel’s expertise, so we tabled it at that time. Now, we had made contact with Thermo King, which made the unit, and we were doing some pre-work in order to get the air conditioning unit in good working order again.
Looking around on the air conditioner unit for a serial number in order to get repairs started. As it would turn out, the serial number that I was looking for was on the inside of the bus (and it took a long time to find because it was covered with a thick layer of dust), but I didn’t know that at the time.
I also did that double-header with the Honda dealer and the tire shop, putting Biscuit in the shop for tires, and the HR-V in the shop for her routine maintenance. Rice Tire finished their work before the Honda people did (they were the first dropoff, so they got a head start), so I brought the bus to the dealership.
Biscuit waits at the Honda dealership in Frederick while the HR-V gets serviced. The trick there was to leave enough room for people to get by, and not to block any cars that have license plates. Cars that were clearly for sale, I didn’t care too much about blocking.
I really wasn’t kidding when I said that I took the bus to the Honda dealership. Here it is again, viewed from the spot where I was waiting. When the HR-V was done, I left the car at the dealership, did a few more things with the bus, and then booked a ride from the storage lot back to the dealership to pick up the car after I put the bus away.
Biscuit is parked at the Home Depot store in Frederick while we grabbed a few odds and ends.
On the evening of July 17, I took Biscuit over to Tuscarora Elementary School, which was about five minutes away from the storage lot, in order to do some cleaning work in their parking lot (the storage facility allows no maintenance of any kind to be performed on their property). The way that I figured, it was a public elementary school, school was out, and nobody would bother me there. I was right about this, as people just minded their own business while I worked.
Here is a photo of one of the front tires with the wheel on it before any cleaning work had been done. This what years of Charleston grime looks like.
In-progress shot of the cleaning. What little had already been cleaned was like night and day, as those rims were cleaner than they had been in likely quite some time.
I also focused on wrap removal on this outing, getting up on a ladder and removing all of the wrap from the left side and front of the bus. The bus originally wore two wraps: the Planet Fitness wrap that we found it in, and a Church’s Chicken wrap underneath it. When removing the wrap, the idea is to get underneath the bottom layer, i.e. the Church’s Chicken wrap, and then start peeling. The Church’s wrap is still quite pliable (the Planet Fitness wrap is crusty), and it peels right off. It’s also extremely satisfying to remove.
Removing the wrap from around one of the windows.
The wrap around the roof and the windows is completely removed on the left side from the front to the middle clearance light.
And that’s that. All of the wrap, save for a tiny little sliver in a crevice around the window that I couldn’t reach with my hands (but can get with use of tools), is gone from the left side. I then moved around to the front and attacked the remaining wrap around the sign.
Parked at the Walmart on Guilford Drive in Frederick after finishing the wrap removal work. Note the clear front. I suspect that even though there is still a lot of work to do, she hasn’t looked this good in many years.
On July 24, we took Biscuit up to the Thermo King facility out in Elkridge in order to get her air conditioning unit repaired. That was her biggest road trip with us to date, traveling just under 50 miles from Frederick to Elkridge. She performed fairly well, though a couple of smaller mechanical issues that we thought that we had rectified earlier came back. But she safely made it to her destination under her own power. One thing that I was also reminded of on this trip was that this bus was used to the coastal plain (specifically the Lowcountry), as it slowed down a bit going up the hills on I-70 between Frederick and Ellicott City. My understanding is that’s pretty normal for a Detroit Diesel Series 50, but all the same, it should be interesting when I eventually bring her down to Augusta County and take her over the mountain.
Biscuit has arrived at Thermo King in order to get her air conditioning unit repaired.
Biscuit was at Thermo King for about four weeks, and had working air conditioning when they were done. I also got the sense that the guy who was doing the work had a bit of a soft spot for the bus, because he also, completely on his own, restored the little hole punch that was on a chain that was used for punching tickets of some kind, and he also fixed an access panel in the back inside of the bus, allowing it to be properly secured once again.
While the bus was laid up in the air conditioning shop to get that fixed, Elyse and I did some research on engine shops in the Baltimore area that would work well with an older bus. Thermo King recommended Johnson & Towers, so we made that contact and made arrangements to bring Biscuit up there in order to rectify the problems that came up on the way over to Thermo King. Elyse and I believe that the problems are related to oil pressure, as I had gotten “check engine” and “stop engine” indications at once when I would brake hard, particularly when the bus was on a downward slope. But then once the bus settled, the indications would go away. We passed all of this along to Johnson & Towers.
When Thermo King was done, I just took the bus from one shop to the other, going from Thermo King in Elkridge to Johnson & Towers in Middle River (just north of Baltimore). That was a rather stressful ride, in part because I wanted to make sure that the bus would make it with the lingering mechanical issues, and adjusting my driving accordingly in order to accommodate that, and in part because of the traffic. I was optimistic about the trip, because when I took the bus from Frederick to Elkridge, I had no issues at all on I-70 other than some slowness on the hills. All of the error indications came up on US 40 in Ellicott City, where there are a lot of traffic lights. As far as the traffic went, there’s nothing like sitting in rush hour traffic on I-895 while going through the Harbor Tunnel and then having to go pay a toll, all while in a bus that is only allowed to use one toll lane all the way to the right. The bus performed well enough on 895 and through the tunnel, but then as we got on the Baltimore Beltway, the bus started vibrating in a weird way. I pulled over on a very wide part of the shoulder, and a quick assessment revealed that we were done, as the bus was leaking out fluid.
Isn’t that fun: the bus dumped its transmission fluid.
Sitting on the shoulder with the engine hatch open, just like we’ve done before in Charleston. Only difference was that this time, the shoulder was so large that you could fit two buses side by side with room to spare, and so we didn’t snarl traffic with our breakdown.
With the determination that the drive was over, I called a tow truck to go the last six miles to Johnson & Towers.
Biscuit arrives at Johnson & Towers.
Biscuit has safely arrived at Johnson & Towers, where she will hopefully get all of her remaining mechanical issues addressed.
I felt good when I got her to Johnson & Towers. Seeing buses from all of the various local agencies, such as Metro, Ride On, DASH, MTA Maryland, Charm City Circulator, and so on parked on the property gave me a good feeling, i.e. that if the other transit agencies trusted them with their equipment, then we would be in good hands. Though I was a bit surprised when Johnson & Towers called me up telling me that they couldn’t get her to start, because in my experience, she always fired right up. So on the way up to New Jersey, I stopped in at Johnson & Towers and showed them how it was done, and she started right up.
Meanwhile, the issue that caused her to dump her transmission fluid was pretty simple: a bad seal on the transmission yoke. I figured that it wasn’t the mechanical issues that we already knew about that caused a premature end to our trip, but rather, it was something simple like a hose or something. Glad to know that I was right, though that tow was not cheap.
Now, I’m sitting here wondering how much this repair bill is going to be, but hopefully we’ll have a happy, healthy Biscuit when it’s all done that I can take down to Virginia to show my parents. The sense that I’ve gotten from dealing with 3426, as well as with sister vehicle 3424 at Commonwealth Coach & Trolley, is that CARTA deferred a lot of maintenance work, and now as the new owners, the museum and I are doing all of the work that CARTA didn’t do. The bus museum tends to use the term “CARTA clapped” to refer to the condition that we found the buses in, but slowly but surely, we’re nursing them to health. Though both buses have certainly given us their fair share of surprises. 3426 had just about everything wrong with it at first, but some issues have been quite persistent. Then 3424 threw its starter out. And I do mean that literally, as it ended up on the ground. Go figure.
So that’s where things stand now as far as the bus goes. I just have to remind myself that it’s not a sprint, but rather, a slow progression.