Sliding door works

I get so many emails with this: "my sliding door does not work. I need all the rollers." Bam! I just made a ton of money, right? No, I actually tell my customers "you know, consider that 40 years of sliding has been a pretty good thing. Now, your sliding door parts just need removed, cleaned, potential broken pieces replaced, relubricated, and reinstalled."  Crap, now I only made 10 bucks instead of 300. But, I sleep better. Here goes...

Here are the 3 rollers: the rear hinge/roller, the lower roller/s, and the upper roller. As you can see, they get dirty and need maintained. On the rear hinge/roller, the nylon guide breaks. This is the dirtiest piece above the wheel there- hard to see, I know.  The lower roller takes the brunt of the beatings because it is holding up the weight of the door. The upper roller is pretty much just there for stability. Let's clean these up and take care of them...

On the rear hinge/roller, the nylon guide is held on by a large rivet-type fastener. These are pretty hard to get and install so the recommended replacement is a simple cheese-head bolt with nut and wavy washer. This rivet gets drilled out.

Here's the new guide installed, with the assembly having been cleaned, the roller wheel free'd and cleared and all relubricated (with lithium here):

The lower roller cleaned and free'd. White lithium on the horizontal roller and Sil-Glide on the vertical:

Lower roller installed with its shims. The lower roller is the adjustment point for the door's "in and out" position from the bus. This will have to be re-adjusted when the new door seal is installed. Then, as the years go on and the new seal gets broken in, you adjust things IN.

Upper roller ready to rock:

Each of the three tracks that these rollers ride on must be cleaned and relubricated as well. Here's the lower track pre-cleanage. Eeewww.... And cleaning this one takes a while. No fun.

Rear track, post-cleaning and with door on, being lubricated (using roller to spread sil-glide). The new nylon guide is a bit tight but she'll break in. This is better than too loose! :-)

Door back on, sans sliding window. It works. Well. Even the rear catch and release works now, thanks to our thooper dooper captive nut repair. :-)
The rear track cover goes on after the new rear side window seal.

Other misc. things... the upper alternator adjust/heat exchanger bracket welded/repaired:

Here it was before, cracked. Always nice to save a part, especially when it's a part that is not reproduced and/or rare to find good  used.

New muffler's EGR feed was cut off and welded:

You can see it here before. Again, even if EGR were to be used on this bus in the future, this muffler could not be used with it because it can't be used with cat. converter so would not pass smog anyway:

My assistants for the day. May I present Mr. Owen and the lovely Ms. Kaya. They were going "to school." hint hint to us parents that they are ready for preschool!

Enjoy! More to come tomorrow...