The cost so far

As costs come along, I'll publish them.

So far, the bus has cost me a trip to Augusta from West Columbia - around 90 miles in each direction or $30 just to look at it. Then a further trip with somebody else who drove me up and then returned behind us. That was $50 for their gas, $20 for a spare tire for their car and lunch for everybody at $50.

The bus itself cost $4200, registering it and transferring the title was $249. It desperately needed new plates as the old plate said Louisiana and it had been in Georgia for 11 months before I bought it. It now has a nice South Carolina plate. The tag fee was $23.72 and insurance for the bus was $217.

Today I bought some tools to remove the back shelf, namely an angle grinder and some disks, a big adjustable spanner and a pair of goggles. Total $35.26.

E&OE the total spent so far is $4874.98.

Tomorrow I might need to buy some wood to support the back shelf as I'm lopping it off. After that I might be able to sell some of the fixtures such as the hot water tank and the plumbing stuff that are already installed. The plan is to strip the inside out before rebuilding the inside to my specifications but with non-contaminated wood.

Future expenditure - definitely bulbs for indicators and headlamps etc. I'd have replaced them already but was daft enough to leave the bus manual in the bus.

On a highly positive note, one of the people that does business with the company I work for is a commercial vehicle mechanic and is quite interested in my bus. Apparently the transmission is an easy one to work on and so is the engine. He is of the opinion that I got a great deal.

Say hello to Mr. Grinder

One of the many priorities with the bus is to make it roadworthy and safe. To this end, the ludicrous green-painted back shelf has to come off. If I can almost walk into it without seeing it, think how road users see it! Thus, in order to achieve this goal, an angle grinder was purchased. As it was a $15 grinder, I don't expect much but fortunately there's not much to grind.

Clearly the back shelf needs to be supported while it's being removed. That had me foxed for a while as I dreamed up all kinds of elaborate supports to keep it steady so that when it dropped, it would not harm the bus parts. Then I realized just propping it on all 4 corners would achieve all my goals. The props can be just chunks of wood roughly hewn into supporting columns. The presence of the bus will stop the structure from falling forward or to either side. Falling back is welcomed as that will be the final removal stage.

The windows are probably going to be that thin sardine can metal from Lowe's glued over plywood then screwed from the outside with torx screws unless a better idea comes up.

First use of the bus

It wasn't all that exciting but I did take the bus out on a 30 mile round trip a couple of days ago. There are some lights that need attention namely an indicator and a headlamp. One of the back tyres looks in rougher shape than I'd first thought. The tread looks in danger of delaminating. Fortunately that's just one tyre.

The trip was simply helping my friend move house. Her niece declared "I know I'm a redneck but moving house with a schoolbus is more redneck than I am". Now that was amusing.

In other news, the rear shelf has two broken welds and is secured to the bus via an I beam that runs halfway down the length of the bus. It's bolted to the back bumper. The i beam is welded to the bottom of the back bumper and there are two square section tubes welded to each side of the bus. Basically, it's going to take a few hours with an angle grinder to remove that mess. Once that is removed I have to get the rest of the I girder off.

The interior remodeling will take a while to remove also. This is a bigger project than I had initially anticipated. My original plans involved using the cupboards down the one side. Since they're all contaminated with rodent filth, they're best gone. Plywood is cheap enough and doing it myself will guarantee a certain level of insulation.

I'm going over various ideas for the windows and the cheapest seems to be plywood faced with resin then painted over. It is probably not ideal though. The decider on that will be the availability of waterproof rivets. If the rivets and some decent 1.5 - 2mm thick steel are not available or not available at a price I'm willing to pay then the answer could well be plywood and Torx screws.

The first purchase will be a headlamp bulb and an indicator lamp bulb together with an angle grinder. The bus horn does not appear to work so replacing it with the one left in a drawer in the bus is a quick job to do. That's probably going to be my first set of completed tasks.

While I dislike the rear shelf intensely, it makes more sense to get the interior of the bus livable first in order that I can move into it sooner. Of course, that depends largely on the inside of the bus being emptied of items transported in it while helping my friend move house.

Street legal

My bus is now street legal. Not having a clue how to register a secondhand vehicle, on Monday I went to the DMV and enquired, registration form in hand. Apparently I had to visit the tax office (conveniently half a mile away). Not having time, I left it for another day. Tuesday being Election day, there was no point in attempting as government offices were most likely closed - not to mention it was my early day at work. Wednesday was pretty much of a washout so it ended up being today.

So, bright and bushy tailed I headed off to the tax office where I discovered that there was a transfer tax of $24 and some change. Armed with a tax paid slip, I headed to the DMV (for readers unfamiliar with the abbreviation, DMV means Department of Motor Vehicles). There I discovered to my dismay that I had to pay tax on a private purchase at 5%. That and the license plate ended up at $240 or thereabouts.

The good news is that the 27,500 GVRW is the gross weight including passengers. Apparently 26,000lbs empty is the limit before I'd need a class C license. As 50 children would probably weigh at 100lbs each around 5,000lbs we reckoned we were under so a figure of 24,000lbs was plucked from the air and entered. Once the shelf is off and the contaminated woodwork removed, I'll take the bus to get it weighed for peace of mind. Of course I have no objection at all to getting a class C license.

The insurance company came through with a price of $214 given 1,000 miles a year of driving. Thus, taxing and insuring my $4,200 bus came to around $465. Now comes all the fun of working on it. Of course, everybody wants to see it which will add quite a few miles if I showed it to people.

The first thing to be done after putting the license plate on will be to remove the rear shelf which must have been made to carry an ATV. It just makes turning the bus into a nightmare. The back already juts out far enough to be a hazard without 6 feet of extra length bolted on!

Round the mulberry bush

The bus is parked on private land. Now come the problems.

SC DMV won't issue a tag without tax being paid (on a private purchase).

The tax office won't take my money unless I produce insurance.

The insurance company fellow fainted when he heard it was a BUS that was a MOTORHOME and not actually a bus any more. He then wanted to know what the bus cost new. That was 19 years ago and the company went bust, 12 years ago! Heaven help anybody that wants to insure a Model T!

Development plans

As the bus was full of rodent excrement, clear rodent urine stains and had a possible rodent nest in one of the drawers, it seems prudent to  condemn the interior woodwork and definitely the mattresses. Two of the windows have been jerry-rigged with plexiglass instead of the original windows. That's OK though as most of the windows will be blocked off anyway. It did afford me a way to examine the windows without removing any. Thus far it seems a pretty straightforward caulk and rivet task with sheetmetal.

The bus drives pretty well. The speedometer might not be as accurate as it could be though as the highest speed I attained was 65mph downhill yet apparently the chase car clocked me at 70. I'll have to check the GPS for actual ground speed. Thereby hangs a minor problem - there is no 12v socket to plug the GPS into.

Faults discovered so far: One of the two fans that keep the driver cool needs to be replaced and that entails opening a panel that a previous owner has bolted a 110v cable across. Two windows are plexiglass bodge jobs. The indicator won't stay locked up for right-hand turns. Clearly it needs a little adjustment or a replacement. Given that the manufacturer went out of business in 2001 and it's now 2014, that could be interesting to find.

Step one will be to gut the bus completely. Step two will be to replace the windows. Those might sell since they're specific to Carpenter busses. Step three will be to put in the new interior. To the left of the back door will be a shower. To the right will be a toilet. There will be a partition wall between the cockpit and the living quarters in order to retain the temperature within the living quarters. immediately behind the partition will be the eating, dining and living area. The beds will be to the left and right of the walkway as bunks with overhead storage. There will be storage the entire way along from floor to ceiling, mostly drawers and all with locks so they don't open in transit.

Under the bus there is already a compartment put in by a previous owner. That might have to be reworked but looks an excellent place to put deep-cycle batteries. There might be solar panels on the roof or a low profile wind generator. I've not made my mind up on that one, suffice to say that wind generates more power than solar. There will also be a storage space for my bicycle and at the back, a tow hook so I can tow a car.

Needless to say, outside the bus there's a lot of work that needs to be done. There are screws to be removed and the holes filled from where a fold down table was installed and where there was an awning. The rear shelf needs to be removed. There's a fair bit of work involved but the good news is, it's all work I can do by myself.

Plumbing is going to be an adventure. It's probably best to have a grey and a black tank but they're going to have to be situated forward of the rear wheels for stability. When it's all done, I'll get the bus weighed so I'll know how heavy it is. As a private bus, I don't need a special license but might get a class A just for the heck of it.

Bought her

Today, my girlfriend, her sister and her sister's boyfriend and I all piled into her sister's car and drove 90 miles from West Columbia, South Carolina to Augusta, Georgia. There, I met the fellow who was selling a bus advertised on Craigslist. Pretty well straight after paying for the bus and signing the transfer documents, I got behind the wheel and started to drive back.

Driving was challenging as there is almost no accelleration, rather a gradual increase in speed. It turns out to be more a case of mashing the accelerator to the floor and praying until it reaches its maximum speed of 55mph.

Inside the bus will have to be redone totaly, which was entirely expected. It's not livable as it is as there are rat droppings everywhere.  The daft rear shelf needs to be cut off as it seems a road hazard.