Finished Painting

[dolson]

Here is a link to some pictures of our recent bus painting.  Took longer than I expected but this was my first bus.  Still have lots of buffing to do
www.dwolson.com

[Lonnie time to go]

Looking good .  Real nice job
Lonnie

[John316]

Dolson,

Do you have a body shop? you looked pretty set up. Great progress! I gathered that you did you own painting correct?

God bless,

John

[dolson]

John

No I do not have a body shop,  I have a pretty good size cabinet shop where I do commercial casework.  Yes did the painting myself along with a couple of employees.  This our first attempt at painting a vehicle(probably the last also).  The base coat went on pretty good but the clear coat proved more challanging and thats when the blemished  started to show up, but overall turned out ok.

[Dreamscape]

Looking Great! Wonder why you say it's probably your last paint job! These beasts are darn big huh!

Paul

[John316]

Dolson,

That looks great! We should have brought our bus up to you .

Looking good!

God bless,

John

[JohnEd]

Doug,

Fantastic job!  Did you find even a single fleck of dust in the vert surfaces of the bus after shooting it?  I did my old RV in the dirt road in front of an old barn.  Anything would have been an improvement but surprisingly it came out really nice with no flaws.  My expectations were substantially lower than what I achieved.

Can you give me an approx. of the cost of materials?  OK if that is private but I thought I might ask.  I think your's looks like one of those $20-25K Marathon jobs that people buy every day.  Again, really nice work.

John

[dolson]

John

I was concerned about dust being in a cabinet shop.  Before we started I cleaned the shop really good and did not run any machinery troughout the whole precess and dust was not an issue at all.  Heat was the biggest problem, we were having a heat wave here in Oklahoma for the last couple of weeks and getting the speed of the reducer slow enough and the proper mix took some experimenting.

As far as the cost of the materials, I got them at a automotive paint supply and I don't have the info in front of me but the final cost was between $1700 and $1900.
We used about 14 gallons of material including base, clear and reducer, about 100 rolls of 1" green tape, 12 rolls of 1/4" blue fine line tape and a couple of cases masking paper.

Thanks for the complement about the job, If you could see it up close you could see a few issues with the body and prep work but they were not noticeable before I painted. I am sure that the folks at Marathon would take exception to the comparison.

I did the cabinets for a friend of mine with a MCI 9, he is friends with the owner of Newell just up the road from here. He got them to paint his coach from the stainless up, and it cost him close to 20K. I just wasn't looking to spend even more than that for a complete smooth side so I decided to do it myself, I figured the worst that could happen is that I would have to sand it down and start over.   Overall I am pretty happy with the results

[Dallas]

Lookin' good Doug!

Now that you have some practice on one of those nasty MCI's, you can start on a real bus. I'll volunteer my GMC!.

Yeah, I know, no need to thank me, it's all part of the service.

Actually, I'm really impressed. Did Brandon help stripe it or was this all your design? It really does look professional from this distance. Do you have any interior in it yet? Ya gotta hurry and get it usable so you can come down here and visit.... we'll even let you use the pool!

[dolson]

Hey Dallas

The shop is empty so wheel the ole GMC on in!  Brady and I were just talking about you a couple of days ago as we were looking at all of our big oil and grease stains on the shop floor, those were some good times .  As for the paint design, Brandy and I just merged several ideas we found in magazines and on-line and drew it in cad and then used the CNC to cut laminate templates for the big curved parts.  Then we taped the templates to the bus and taped the perimeter with the fine line tape and then removed the templates and reused them on the other side.  on the long sweeping lines we just freehanded those.  No not much progress on the interior yet although now that the generator is in and working and all of my conduit and wire is in the cable tray I have started to put down the floor so I should be able to move pretty quick on the inside now.  I am hoping to finish it for a trip in December and the shop is not too busy right now so we'll see.

[alltech]

Doug

The floor on my MCI 103 C3 slopes from the back down to the front almost 4" did you or are you planning on leveling the floor?

I am just about to level the floor on mine and I am look for better Ideas than I have.

Regards,

Ross

[Dallas]

Doug, are you guys going to be able to make it to TBR? It would be great to see all of you guys again. Tin tenting is better than no tenting anyday!

[dolson]

Ross

No I am not going to level the floor, I do not think that I have 4" of slope I am thinking more like 2.5" but I am not positive.  I have raised my roof 8"  and I like the extra headroom towards the front.  I just plan on making the adjustment for the sloping floor in the walls and cabinet toe kicks, the windows and the ceiling is "level" so the slope in the floor will not be very noticeable.

Dallas
I am about 99.8% sure that we will not make the TBR in the bus but I would like to try and come down for a day and stay in a hotel, I have never been able to attend one of the bus get together and I would really like to meet some more great people and learn from the other bus guys.  Will let you know more as the date gets closer.

[Dallas]

Cool Doug! If your gonna try and come, we might try harder to make it too. Even if we have to bring the "Mudflap."

Also, remember... there's a rally over in Missouri around the same time, not far from Joplin.

http://www.busconversions.com/bbs/index.php?topic=11921.0

[DaveG]

Wow, is this the same bus we saw on the internet a while back that the roof was being raised on? This project has come a long way...may an article is in the works here for the new magazine?