28/4/2014 April / May 2014Firstly, apologies to anyone arriving at the East Kent Bus Festival looking forward to a ride on Nick's open top Leyland National, this was a little one off for 1st April... NPD145L is still in one piece and as far as I know hasn't become the Shanklin's Pony replacement bus!
Well with various shows and days down HQ, I have had quite a busy month. Sometimes I can't help think it would be easier to have the shows in the winter and spend the whole summer months working on the motors... well, the weather is better for starters. On 5th April we attended South East bus Festival and on 20th April we were out again at The Gears Of Change Classic Car Show at Sandwich. Both these were attended with Bernard's WKO137S and a full report and pictures will be available on The Southern Counties website. Work has started on another Maidstone & District bus, 5807 (PKE807M). Paul and myself spend an afternoon at HQ opening up the slats on the radiator. As stated previously on this site, they help keep the water temperature up during the depths of winter, but in summertime have to be fully opened to allow the radiator to work. 5807's had been painted shut and this could be the reason why she gets slower before stopping. Anyway, the damn things are open now and Paul has removed the spring which closes them so they can't shut by themselves and 5807 should enjoy a nice airflow through her grill. The next step is to wait for a very hot day and try her out... fingers crossed everyone. If it works, she will be sent up for MOT and be back on the road this year. It would be nice to have one of "Jake's Buses" back out there. This May, I will be getting Bernard's Bristol LH coach AFJ692T ready for MOT and don't forget that on Sunday 25th May, we're holding the 2014 Thanet Road Run. If you like to see local vehicles running along old routes, you will love this. No matter what the weather, it's a good day out with various photo stops and a lunch stop, it's a leisurely drive around the coast of the Isle of Thanet. Again, more details are available at the SCOC website. As part of the website upgrades, I will eventually be adding a "Jake's Taxis" page as I have both an FX4 Fairway and a Metrocab taxi. Although not buses (obviously!) when restored, they will attend various shows and events on behalf of SCOC. And finally (and cunningly placed at the bottom of the news spot!) , a new vehicle has joined the collection. Owned by myself but very much a Southern Counties vehicle there will be more on this later this month. 16/5/2013 May updates.Our sister site at Southern Counties Omnibus Collection has been updated with news and pictures of the recent work on Leyland National 1178. At the same time I decided to get our crew room on 5807 operational giving us somewhere to sit in the dry and have a hot drink or hot food. This now done but still needs completing. It's one of those jobs that isn't connect to keeping the buses on the road but still needs to be done.
30/11/2012 Organising 5807.As of late, we've been busy organising our store bus 5807. Due to a change of management at the former East Kent Heritage garage at Sandwich, all of our spare parts have now got to be moved - and that's quite a lot of spares! Paul Tripptree and myself removed the last few bits of exhibition units downstairs to create more room.
22/10/2012 Southern Counties updates.Just a reminder that today, our sister site has been updated with news on 3131, 7681, 5137 and 5807. Also a new YouTube video has been added, a link to which is below. 23/3/2012 5807 Fuel pump?Last year I was speculating that maybe some additional cooling grills in 5807's rear panel may help her out and stop her getting so hot and flustered. A chance conversation with a fitter friend of mine revealed that his firm had an Olympian with the same issue and it was the fuel pump. Apparently the Oly would get hot then slow down and grind to a halt too and, coupled to the fact that when I picked her up from Canterbury it was a cold January day and she drove back with no issues. The MOT was on a cool day in May but even then she would not restart at the test centre. Both days 5807 lost all power were hot summer days so maybe the cooling grills and / or even an additional electric cooling fan may not be a silly idea for now.
5/3/2012 Service work days.A big thanks to friend of the collection Nigel Carroll who I had the pleasure to meet in Canterbury. He emailed me some pictures from his collection of 5137, 5807 and 7980 in their service days. Over the next month, some will be used on the site so keep checking to see the updates.
29/1/2012 5807 latest.Despite being laid up for the last few years with mechanical problems and used as our storeshed, 5807 often performs circuits of the yard to keep her mobile. I'm hoping as time permits to have a play with 5807's gearbox / flywheel to see if that improves things. If successful it could result in her being returned to the road and restored to bus status depending on several factors such as availability of seats and internal fittings and what we can do with all the crap we've stored on her!
7/5/2011 5807With all the MOT work it would be easy to forget 5807, my Camperbus 1! Although she's not on the road at the moment she still get runs around the yard and moved about. I've also been looking at maybe trying to improve the engine cooling grills on the side panels as they seem smaller that the original series 2 grills and could be contributing to her getting hot and bothered. She also doesn't have the grills on the rear advert panel which I will put in too.
15/3/2011 2 Comments MOTs booked.Well I'm starting to grind back into life after a rather nasty cold winter and have booked the tests for 5137 and 7980. Both Bernard and me had assumed (wrongly) that 5137's MOT was in June, BUT we found out it ran out on the 27th March, whoopsy! She is now booked in for a class 5 on the 30th March meaning if she passes she will certainly be at the M&D event stated in a previous post. 7980 has her test booked for 15th April and I would really like to check her brakes before she goes up (they did smell rather warm in Hastings on the hills last year) but apart from that she should be ok.
Other little jobs that need doing involve all the fleet having a good clean out inside and out as well as: 7681: Swap F/N/S tyre. Install the opening front windows and tidy bodywork by August. 7980: Floors to be tidied and painted. Seats to be tidied. External bodywork carried out. Also start trying to source the front push out windows. 5137: T-Cut and wax bodywork for April 9th. Waterproof front screen area. Try to source a ticket machine for her. T553: Resolve stuck leveling valves. Uncover destination area. Start on bodywork. Maybe give her a service. 1178: Source O/S windscreen and fit. Service (oil change and lube). Check brakes. Smoke test. MOT. Both 5807 and DMS550 will be stored VOR (Vehicle Off Road). If you would like to lend a hand please get in touch HERE. We welcome help with everything from cleaning to other tasks important to keeping these ladies on the road. 27/10/2010 0 Comments New Pages added.More new pages have been added to the site, well two old ones and one new one to be honest! I've moved the Picture of the month archive and DMS survivor pages onto the main menu bar to help open the site up a bit. The new page added is 'So you want to own a bus...?' and is aimed at people who are maybe thinking about entering the world of bus preservation. As you will no doubt see from this site, bus preservation is not easy task especially when on a bit of a budget as we all are these days. You put so much into it and the real joy you get is seeing the vehicle turn heads as you drive along a street. If anyone does have any questions about bus preservation please get in touch, I'll always be happy to offer any advice I can. I will be adding a page with buses I have owned in the past on to the site soon.
I must say a huge thanks to Maurice Bean (7980's former owner) and Dave Atkins of Dover Transport Museum (5137's former owner). Thay have just relocated to a different parking site and cleared out the old one making a lot of Bristol VR spares available for us. We now have a good selection of ECW glass, some transfers to use as patterns, some internal trim and a spare wheel. All this is stored safely on 5807 locked in the bonded upstairs section along with the Titan glass and seats we got with Nu. |
Click here for the archive news pages dating back to 2008.JakeOwner of 5807, 5809, 5137, 7656, 7681, 7041 & 40301 All pictures and information contained within this website are the copyright of J Bamford, R Addison, P Tripptree, B Sealy & R Harrison 2008-2019. Any images or information supplied by individuals will be credited to that individual and will be copyright of that person/persons/website.
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