Ball Family Bus

Friday evening, I started removing all of the now-unused parts of the ceiling wiring harness. This included wires for the flasher lights (both front and rear), speakers, dome lights, emergency exit sensors, and a button in the back of the bus that required the driver to walk all the way back and push it when shutting down. This was supposed to cause them to find any sleeping kiddos left on the bus.

Anyway, I spent a fair amount of time tracing out the ones I could remove and what I needed to leave (for tail lights, turn signals, marker lights, etc). I was enjoying myself because I knew things would look a lot better without all the extra dangling wires and I like getting the extra stuff out of the bus so as to have the simplest shell to start building on later.

Feeling good about the work I’d done, I decided to start up the engine for a few minutes to top off the air tanks. I turned the key and got nothing - just a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I immediately knew that the wiring for emergency exit sensors must have an interlock with the ignition to keep it from starting. I was frustrated because I should have remembered that or at least tested it as I took things apart. There had been a relay over the left side exit door that I was sure had been the culprit. I wasn’t sure which of the bundle of wires I had removed was the right one to connect though.

I went into the house, dug out all the photos that had been taken in the bus recently and starting looking through them to find any that might show the relay in question (it had been dangling for a while). I found a few but they were all taken pretty far away and all the enhancing and zooming I could do wasn’t really yielding anything useful.

Saturday morning I went out to have another go at it. I traced the wires back near the engine that I thought were the most likely to be involved. I looked through the electrical panel for clues.

In frustration I sat in the driver’s seat to contemplate my next move. I was thinking about how dumb it had been to take all that apart so carelessly. I absentmindedly wiped some dust from the speedometer and stared at the gear selector. It was in DRIVE! The bus won’t start with it in drive!!!!

The lesson I learned was that skills from different parts of life should not be kept in their silos - they should be applied more broadly. I troubleshoot computer software on a daily basis for work and would (almost) never fall into the trap of making such a quick assumption about cause and effect. The real difference is in my level of confidence. When writing code, I am much more confident that I understand the system I am working within than I am with the bus. I can feel when something isn’t a likely source of a problem when coding. My goal with the bus is to develop that level of involvement and confidence with it. I believe that will not only make owning a bus much easier but save a lot in mechanic costs eventually.

Meanwhile, I am calling Blue Bird on Monday to start tracking down manuals and schematics.