A Bus Story

This is the best picture I have of our church bus. Isn't it beautiful {sarcasm}? We hope to get it repainted and get the church name updated sometime this year. Anyway, thought I'd share with you "A Bus Story".

Once upon a time (this past Sunday), one of the CDL licenced drivers of the church told me the bus had a bad leak in the radiator. Since I am in charge of keeping the bus running for the church, that meant just one thing...take it to the shop on Monday. I can do many things, but auto mechanics does not even show up on the radar of things I can do well/correctly. On Monday, I checked and sure enough, the radiator was bone dry. I filled it with water and prepared to take it into the shop. I drove to church, turned it off, went to my office to get the paperwork from last time we had the radiator worked on and then started the bus back up to go to the shop. It started, then it died. I tried to restart it, but the bus would have none of that. GREAT! Now the bus not only has to be repaired, but it also has to get to the shop (on the other side of town) without running. Since I was trying to get it fixed for the youth department, and since I knew our youth pastor (Shaun) knew quite a bit about auto mechanics, I gave him a call. He came, looked at it and said he would work on it. Bless his heart...I don't think he had a clue what a time commitment he was making! Here's a brief overview of our week:

• Monday
• A call to another mechanic in our church helped me determine that the no-start problem was fuel related and not electrical.
  
• Called Shaun.

• Tuesday
• Went to AutoZone and bought front fuel pump.
• Shaun installed fuel pump. Bus does not start. Shaun determines to install new rear fuel pump inside fuel tank.
• Shuan found source of leak in radiator. I went to AutoZone again to get part. AutoZone does not carry it.
• Went to O'Reilly Auto Parts and got part of fix problem. Shuan installed it and radiator leak was fixed.
  

• Wednesday
• Went to AutoZone to get rear fuel pump. They do not have it in stock at that store, so I drove 40 miles round trip to get it from a store that had it in stock.
• Wrong fuel pump! Shaun and I researched and believed we found the correct pump.
  
• I went back to AutoZone. Could not order fuel pump we need...out of stock with vendor. Returned old one.
  
• Went to O'Reilly Auto Parts and order rear fuel pump.

• Thursday
• Picked up fuel pump from O'Reilly's. Wrong pump again!
• Shuan returned pump, talked to guys at shop and orders once again. Part will be in Friday.

• Friday
• Yea! Correct fuel pump this time. Shaun picked it up and installed it (this included dropping the fuel tank!)
• Bus wouldn't start.
• Shaun replace spark plugs. Bus started!!
• Shaun turned off bus, cleaned up and tried to start bus to park it...it would not start. Drained battery trying to start it.
• Shaun called me and I went over with jumper cables. Bus would not start. Then bus door would not close (electrical problem).
• Shaun fixed door issue (just a looses plug). Bus still would not start.

• Saturday
• Who knows what is going to happen. Shuan is going to look look through the manual he bought and see if he can find something else to check.
• I have spent several hours researching {the wrong} parts and going to pick up parts {both right and wrong parts!}. Shaun has spent double that time actually working on the bus.
  

To be continued...