First things first...

We can not keep the bus at our home. Period. After receiving a letter from the fine folks at the City of Mentor's Economic and Community Development office regarding the lengthy presence of the forlorn trailer, and another friendly letter regarding a decidedly dead tree looming over our neighbors roof...

...we have decided not to kick the gator and maintain a low profile with the bus. I'll bring it home to work on it, but it won't stay here. It and the forlorn trailer share a corner at a local storage lot.

But a lot got done on the first visit home...

Decals...

I'm not sure exactly what rule exists concerning this, but I'm pretty sure that you can't drive around the neighborhood advertising that you are a school bus when, in fact, you are not a school bus. So off come the decals.

This was a learning process. I found out that if you "Bake & Scrape", You get a sticky black mess.

HOWEVER... if you warm the decals with a heat gun for about 30 seconds and then LET IT COOL for about 30 seconds, they will peal right off. And very cleanly....

Yeah, I know...tacky and sexist. But I couldn't pass it up. The point is that they come off very easily if you warm and peal rather than bake and scrape.

The next project was to defeat or disconnect the incredibly loud buzzer connected to the rear door.

Inside of that square, steel box dwells the world's...NAY, the universe's most obnoxious buzzing device. If the red handle (that latches the door closed) is moved upward, one would hear a noise that could be compared to a drug-crazed beaver trying to take down a steel flagpole during a lake effect hail storm.

I can't decide if this contraption was designed to not be easily removed, or is was not designed to be easily removed. Point is...it was NOT easily removed.

First, the half-bench seat had to be dismantled. Unfortunately, it was a bit easier than I expected.

In each bench, regardless of length, two legs on the aisle side are mounted to the floor with 2 bolts each. The outer side is screwed to a rail along the wall. The wall bolts easily loosened with a 1/2" socket. But...two twists of a 3/8" on the leg bolts broke them in half with a rusted taper. Hmmm.

This photo is out of sequence, but I needed something to break-up the prose.

With the seat out of the way, I thought that I could easily disengage the killer buzzer from hell.

Yeah, right.

Most of the screws securing the box from hell came out easily. Except for one. I literally had to rip the box off of the last screw.

For 5 minutes solid, the beaver went nuts. and there was hail the size of meatballs.

Just THINKING about that...Whoa...I need a break.

Late update...It's going to be a long break. But, hey, Check back soon!