King Alfred Panther 419 has had its roof stripped to reveal the cause of water ingress and body movement. To put it simply, most of the timber joints are either snapped or rotten and few timbers are connected to anything else - only the aluminium exterior and plastic interior panels seemed to have been holding the structure together. There are some steel supports to the roof coving but now the exterior panelling has been removed the roof structure is very delicate.It is particularly surprising how little 'structure' there is to the roof of a Plaxton Derwent and how much of the structure is timber. Now the job of the BusWorks is to completely rebuild the roof structure and we are proposing to increase the strength of the structure to increase the robustness of this 36ft. long Panther.
