It Lights

Frank writes...

Sunday was a day for more work on the 18. Many thanks to the folks who joined in - a lot got accomplished thanks to a whole crew working on the car! Many thanks to new volunteer Steven (not to be confused with "Bus Steven," who isn't that new of a volunteer anymore), who did a terrific job of cleaning the car out from end to end, a job that was long overdue. And a huge thank you to Nick and Zach, who spent much of the afternoon ringing out and testing the headlight circuit on the car. We received the correct headlight with the car when we got it in 2013, but the headlight didn't work when we tried it. After quite a bit of testing and a bit of wire splicing, plus some help from Greg and Richard who arrived in the later afternoon, voila!

So, that's pretty exciting! Of course, the car needs a lot more work before it's ready for prime time, but every bit of progress helps. I think the next big area of focus will be the windows - the car has several windows that are in bad shape, plus a couple more than are slightly too big and need to be rebuilt or cut down somehow so that they can be opened. And then there are the seats, and the doors, and the side sign boxes...there's always more to do! 

In other news, Bob triumphantly showed me his first DB-160 contactor for the 1565 to be "outshopped." The two replacement pins, which you can probably see here - a brass pin in the foreground and a steel pin further from the camera - were machined to very precise tolerances and replace two pins that were so badly worn, they were making the contactor malfunction. Bob said that before repair work started, it took 90V to lift this contactor; now it takes 36V. Besides this, Richard was moving buses around to open up space for the Bus Stop Shop, which will be open next weekend during Museum Showcase Weekend. Make sure you stop by and pick up some reading material or other items of interest! And Nathan and Mikey were working on the small forklift, which is mostly reassembled and almost ready to go back into service.