MASH BUS Blog

DALLAS, TX  -  We maintain the MASH Bus at a commercial manufacturing facility in a suburb of Dallas, Texas.  The manufacturing facility has been the victim of burglars three times this year since January.  Well you might ask, what do the MASH Bus and Burglaries have in common?  Read on we will explain. 

The most recent burglary attempt was this last weekend.  We had the bus stored inside the manufacturing facility for some medium duty maintianance over the next few weekends.  The thieves decided it would be a good thing to ram their pickup truck though a roll up bay door.  Well while in concept this might be a good plan but  . . . I do not think it worked out so well for the burglars. 

You see directly behind the roll up door was the MASH Bus –weighing in at 16,000 lb.  The 1971 International Harvester bus sports a blue bird body and a massive forward facing all steel bumper.   The MASH Bus has a split rear end with deep low end gears.  When I park the MASH Bus I always put the bus in gear in low one.  These gears are so deep most tractor owners are envious.  When engaged these gears make the bus one serious monument of steel, it would take a fleet of monster trucks to move the bus when it is in low one, if it could be moved at all.  I mean when driving in low one top speed does not even register on the speedometer, now that is some deep gears !!!!!! 

All this talk about 16,000 lbs., burglaries, deep gears, steel and such, you can guess what happened – yep;  the burglars rammed the roll up door only to slam right into the front of the parked bus. 

The MASH Bus did not budge – NOT one inch!

Once again the old bus – has served us well.

 Unfortunately I do not have any photos as the burglars stole my camera but honestly I think you can envision exactly what I am telling you.

Now I am told that I cannot legally encourage violence – but I can tell you that I have a stake dinner for anyone that might thwart any further burglary attempts and if in the process of preventing the burglary a criminal got hurt or killed on the property we can assure as the property owners we would not prosecute.

And for all of you that do not believe in an armed response to criminal activity I will leave you with this.  Click on PHOTO to see full sized.

We Do not subscribe to the UnArmed citizen repsonse, in fact we ENCOURAGE an ARMED RESPONSE !!!!  If you bring your guns we will supply the Iced Tea, BBQ and AMMO.

CASH – $1000.00 – CASH REWARD FOR RETURN OF STOLEN COMPUTER.

Computer was stolen 05-01-2010.
Computer is Dell Precision Workstation 390.

We are currently offering a $1000.00 CASH REWARD
NO QUESTIONS ASKED
REWARD is dependent upon the return of the workstation IF the hard drive is intact and has NOT been altered or damaged and CAD/CAM software can be accessed.

SERVICE TAGS are as follows:

Dell Precision WorkStation 390 – JLDY3D1

If you find the computer with the correct service tags please email us through craigslist and we will make arraignments to verify the integrity of the hard drives and data on hard drives and for reward details.

Service Tags can be located in two places. One is a tag on the case on the top of the machine, this tag will be black with white or silver lettering and it will list the Service tag number and express service code. The other location will be a paper tag on the rear of the machine near the top by the power supply and it will be a white tag with black lettering that will have the service tag number printed on it.

Computer had proprietary CAD (Computer Aided Design) software and CAM (Computer Aided Manufacturing) software installed on the hard drives.

Machine had a floppy drive installed. Machine had a media card reader installed.

See photograph to identify what the computer should look like.

Why did we decide to replace the Marker and Clearance lights?  Well just look at these photos.  The OEM lights just gave out after 39 years of faithful service.

The old lights used incandesent lamps and constantly required maintinance and repair to keep them functioning correctly.

The foam gaskets have all dried out and cracked, many of them just crumble and disentergrate when touched.  The lamp sockets are worn out and the springs and contacts just don’t work anymore.  The metal bases have started to rust and the paint is flaking off.

The lense on the OEM lights were so faded, cracked and broken that the lights barely worked.

I do not know about where you live but here in Texas one sure fire way to get stopped and hassled by the cops is to have a mounted light not functioning.  If there is a light out, you will get stopped or at the least you give law enforcement probable cause to stop you.

With all the problems of the OEM fixtures it was decided to go with new LED lights.  LED lights have an average life of between 50,000 and 100,000 hours before failure – this was a very attractive trate to us.  LED lights generally will run even if one of the LED’s is non-functioning.  LED lights use far less current than incandescent – which is a very important feature on “electrically starved” vehicles.  LEDs are generally weather resistant.

Repair and replacement of OEM fixtures had too many negatives and LED lighting seemed to have all the positives so we opted to go with LED lights on the old bus.

MARKER / CLEARANCE LIGHTS

Another chapter in our L.E.D. bus conversion was to change over the marker and clearance lights on the old MASH Bus.   We needed to replace 7 amber and 5 red light assemblies.  The original light assemblies were wedge shaped  

We elected to purchase all new marker/clearance lights from SUPERBRIGHTLEDS.com.  They had a fair price and offered replacement light assemblies that were as close to a direct bolt in replacement as anyone could offer.

MBC Series Cab Top
Marker/Clearance Lights
Clearance Marker Light with 24 Super RED or AMBER LEDs
measures 1.25h x 2.5w x 3.375 inches
Grounded mounting hole and 5″ long positive wire
Current Draw: 0.150Amp (150ma)@13.5 VDC – PC RATED
DOT SAE Approved

Price: $9.95 each

Link to SUPERBRIGHTLEDS.com

We ordered online and paid with a debit card.  The lights were shipped USPS direct to us.  Upon initial examination the lights appeared to be fine, a bit lighter weight than the original assemblies but that is due to the fact that the original lights had a steel base plate and the new lights were all plastic.

Upon further examination one of the amber lights was damaged.  It appeared the light was damaged in manufacturing and somehow got through the QC before shipment.  One phone call and I had a new light shipped to me next day no hassle no muss no fuss, SuperBrightLEDs just shipped without issue.  SuperBrightLEDs customer service was GREAT.  The only requirment was to put the damaged light into a supplied envelope that was postage paid and send it back.  The best thing was SuperBrightLEDs shipped me the new replacement BEFORE I had to return the damaged light.  By not waiting to ship me the new light it allowed me to move forward with the project with little to no down time.

Each light came with a die cut foam pad and mounting screws.  The light assemblies had two mounting holes each with brass grommets.  Only one of the mounting hole grommets was grounded to the light assembly.  The positive lead of the light came directly out of the back of the unit.  The positve leads were all ready stripped on the end for connection, this was a really nice feature and made installation a snap.

Wiring was easy just clip off the old light assembly near the base of the light and use a butt connector to hook up the wiring harness lead to the positive lead on the new SuperBrightLED clearance light.  They only issue was we had to make sure we did not let go of the wiring harness lead as it might fall back into the bus body.  Twice we let the wiring harness lead fall back into the bus body and we had to use a coat hanger to fish out the lead.

After mounting the new lights came the moment of truth.  Were these SuperBrightLED marker lights super bright?  Well – in short – YES, they were very bright.  The 24 LED’s are placed in such a manner that they really make these light shine.  The marker / clearance lights are much brighter and the colors are more rich than the OEM equipment we discarded.

In conclusion, the lights are bright and we are very pleased with the lights but the customer service of SuperBrightLEDs has won us over as a customer because they were so easy to work with.  We hope in the future to be able to review more of their products here.

MASH Bus will NOT be in attendance at the December 2009 First Saturday Sale.  Some team members have schedualing conflicts that preclude us from attending.

We are sorry to miss everyone but we will be there for January 2010.

MASH Bus
Staff

We at MASH Bus are very cost conscious and when it came time to replace the front fender mount turn/park signal fixtures we shopped out our purchase on the Internet.

What we needed to replace was the OEM 5″ square two post turn/park signals mounted on the front fenders.  Spacing on the two posts was 2″ on centers with the three wire lead dropping down in the middle between the posts.

We considered numerous brands before we settled on Heavy-Duty Lighting brand.  MASH Bus choose to use model number HD50118RY-L2 (left mount) and HD50118RY-R2 (right mount).

Heavy-Duty Lighting Web Site

OVERALL IMPRESSION . . .

Holy BRIGHT LIGHT – Batman !!!  These fixtures are by far the brightest of any brand we have tested.  They are so bright it is difficult to look straight at them for long periods of time.  We took a video with the cell phone, while the quality is not great I think you will get the idea.  Click on the link to see the video.

- VIDEO -

We purchased the new fixtures off eBay for about $100.00 or $50.00 a fixture.  The lights had 118 L.E.D.’s per fixture, 6 diodes on the side marker, 64 front facing amber LED’s and 48 rear facing red diodes.  The lights were pre-wired and came with a thin gasket. 

We compared this brand against Grote, Truck-Lite and Dialight.

Heavy Duty Lighting Fender Mount Park/Turn Signals

QUESTIONS and CONFUSION . . .

One thing we did not like was we had to contact the factory to find out the spacing between the posts.  The post spacing was not published data by either the seller or the manufacturer.

Another point of confusion was the description of the posts themselves.  The seller and manufacturer described the posts as – “twin 5/16″ mounting studs.”  In actuality the lights came with two threaded posts but they were NOT 5/16″ thread.  I checked the posts with a thread gauge for 5/16-18 and 5/16-24.  Neither post was 5/16″ thread.  The posts were actually M8x1.25 - which is only about 0.0025″ difference but none-the-less they were not 5/16″ threads.

The fixtures did come with all mounting hardware, nuts, washers and lockwashers.  We elected to drop the supplied flat washer and use a larger fender washer along with the supplied nut and lock washer.

OVERALL IMPRESSION . . .

These Heavy-Duty Lights brand fender mount park/turn signals are an outstanding value and are by far the brightest of all turn signals we have tested.  We are very impressed and will now set our sights on longevity of the product.  The overall construction of the lights appears to be up to par with any other brands available, but the last word is being seen while in traffic and I can say without a doubt that these lights are the brightest I have seen thus far.  I have no concerns that other drivers will not notice when we activate these signals.

NOTE: The MASH Bus is an AMERICAN made 1971 IHC 1703 chassis with a Blue Bird body as such, everything on the bus is imperial in inches and this was the first use of metric hardware – I guess it is a sign of the times.

The MASH Bus is taking the leap to improve safety by converting existing incandescent lighting to L.E.D. lighting.

Soon we will be sporting new 7″ diameter LED tail lights, turn signal indicators and clearance lights.

The old incandescent lights are approaching 40 years of service and as such have surpassed their life.  The old lights are deteriorating at an alarming rate to such a degree that many of the fixtures are falling apart.  The colored plastic on the clearance lights is cracked and faded.  The lamp sockets are worn and loose.  Wiring on existing fixtures is beginning to wear, crack and deteriorate.

Originally we looked at replacement, new and new old stock incandescent fixtures but many of these lights are so old they are now reserved for restorations and the price many times is as much or more than new LED replacement fixtures.

Power is a premium on the bus as the electrical system usually works overtime to power all the existing incandescent lighting.  Converting to LED lighting only makes sense as the current requirments of LED lighting is a fraction of that needed for incandescent lighting.

Another bonus of LED lighting is the life of the L.E.D. components.  On average LED’s have an average 100,000 hour life as compared to a few hundred hours life for incandecent lamps.  The LED’s are also uneffected by shock, tempature as well as the elements and weather.

Keep watch for the MASH Bus as we will be sporting a new safer LED lighting sytem in the near future.

MASH Bus and the crew will NOT be in attendance at the November 2009 First Saturday sale.  We are sorry for any inconvenience this might cause but we will see everyone in December 2009.

Well we have finally finished securing litter/stretchers for the MASH Bus.  With the overhead racks we now have six litters that mount overhead.  These litters are to be used as additional tables for the bus when we are set up.

We have a Singer 111W Industrial sewing machine and we made our own straps using 1″ nylon web tubing.

Well everyone was in attendance this month at the sidewalk sale.  It was an interesting sale to say the least.  The MASH Bus did not make one sale, while the table that occupied Dale’s space was the main attraction.

We miss Dale but as he would want we move on and we continue to pray for his family.  Any and all leads that might help the police would be greatly appreciated.  The Reward is still in effect but to date has not yielded any results.

We at the MASH Bus are looking at all options and if sales continue to be non-existent we may have to suspend operations.  We will keep everyone posted.