bus retrieval jigs

[nichteinboobie]

Lately I have found a couple of wayward busses that have needed rescue after years of sitting in the bush. The problem is that they either have seized drums, no transaxels, no front beams, or some combination of the above. I have access to a flat bed trailer, but winching a bus carcass onto a trailer seems to be more than the wimpy princess auto winch can handle. And then there is the matter of getting the busses off of the trailer again. Getting the busses rolling on wheels seems to be the only answer.

On the swivel seat kombi for instance, one front wheel is rolling, the other front drum is seized, and the rear drums are also seized.

I think I can unseized the front drum by removing the axle bolts, bolting some bar stock under a couple of the wheel bolts so that it overlaps the drum, and whacking it from behind to remove the drum. I tried this on the front drums of the 23 window, and it worked OK. After cleaning, regreasing, removal of old shoes, and reassembly, they spun freely. Its a pain to do in the middle of the woods, but probably the best solution.

Now, I could perform a similar procedure on the rear drums, but the axle nuts look quite rusty, and were not protected by grease an dust caps like the front nuts.

If I can not remove the rear axle nuts, I think I will need some sort of jig to bolt to the rear of the bus to get it rolling.

Any ideas?

[commercialair]

Getting them home is sometimes more work than you imagine. I've been lucky so far with getting them on the flat deck. But, I've thought that a pneumatic wheeled cart would be nice to have for extracting old buses. I built one to take the DC to the media blaster and it worked well. You can just jack up the bus, set it on the cart, and winch it on the trailer. Big wheels is the key. Certainly bigger than the ones I used.

[riffraff]

One concept that comes to mind is to have a dolly for each wheel.
Imagine the spare wheel tub in a walk thru bus. Fab a hollow crescent like that, say only about two inches deep. Now weld a short axle front and rear of the tub. Attach two 8" or so pneumatic wheels to each axle, offset just enough that they clear the tub.
If required, a guy could make the axles long enough that the wheels could turn as well.
All you would have to do is jack up the wheel far enough to slide the tub under it and you have a rolling wheel. The offeding wheel would not even have to be inflated.
If a guy had four, he would be set for any bus. If only one wheel is seized, thet should be low enough profile that you would only HAVE to use them on the seized wheels.
They would be small enough to be easy to transport and store and a guy could do extractions by himself if need be.

The other idea that comes to mind is to build a set of dollies like the tow truck guys use to haul cars with the park brakes on.

[karmann57]

riffraff said:

The other idea that comes to mind is to build a set of dollies like the tow truck guys use to haul cars with the park brakes on.

These work really well (I had a personal demonstration recently...) once they are lined up it's just a pull on a long bar so they mate up and away you go. I'd imagine that a set like AMA uses can't be cheap though.


Shane

[hotvw1]

Those are fine but like he said what if it doesn't have the wheels (ie. beam or trans is gone) and needs to be drug out of the bush. I have been thinking the same thing myself. For the rear I was going to get a 4x4 piece of angle iron and long enough to go to the trans mount holes. And weld 2 uprights with 2x2 box iron and mount 2 bigger rubber tires on it so then you have rear tires and it doesn't take a lot of room(storage and carrying with you). For the front beam I was going to get 2 pieces of plate steel and drill the same bolt pattern as the side mounting points for the beam. Then weld a 2x2 box iron between them for support then do the same as the back and weld 2 uprights with 2x2 box iron and put 2 bigger rubber tires and then you have a home made front beam. Anyway that was my idea someone might have a better idea or a way to modify this one to be better.

And if you put swiveling tires on it would be very handy for resto work as well (moving it around in the shop)