Sunday, May 4, 2014

Toward the end of last Sept 2013 I should have made a post here about having an issue with the purge valve on the air dryer sticking open.  This issue made it impossible to air up the bus and if you can't air up the bus you can't unlock the brakes and move it.  I removed the air dryer completely, which is not necessary just to remove the purge valve but I wanted to inspect the complete air dryer as I had no idea what shape it was in.

The air dryer was in good condition.  I ordered a repair kit for the purge valve.  It took several weeks to get the kit and by that time I was too busy with work for several weeks to get back to working on the air dryer.  After that the weather would not cooperate.  Either it was raining or just too cold.  This lasted until May with one of the worse winters we have had on over 10 years.  I am limited to the weekend to really do much work on the bus normally and with my tax prep business I was swamped with work from Jan through the end of April anyway.  So just lots of reasons I could not work on the bus again until May. 
Finally warm weather is here to stay and today I attempted to install the purge valve kit, new internal 'dryer bed' canister and then install the complete air dryer back on the bus.  The assembly sits just forward of the front axle in the center and you have to jack up the front of the bus to have room to get in there to work.  It is an ordeal just to properly jack up and block up the bus safely.  

At any rate, the dryer is back on but the purge valve still leaks.  It has also been so long since I took it all apart, I honestly can't remember for sure how the bottom of the canister is fastened on.  I again removed the bottom assembly of the canister and will take it to Charlie at Bluegrass Tours tomorrow for his kind instruction and hopefully he can tell me what I have done wrong.  

Once again, it's one step forward and two back.

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