I bought a bus!

[luvrbus]

You done the home work but before parting with the cash check for the rust area at the rear it is not a pretty sight when the air bags go through the floor and the engine cradle slides are rotten 

[6805eagleguy]

12.7 is truly one of my favorite engines. Hopefully it becomes one of your favorites also 😁

[luvrbus]

12.7 is truly one of my favorite engines. Hopefully it becomes one of your favorites also 😁

Was mine too Mason till I got the ISX 15 Cummins

[Jim Blackwood]

Think carefully about your floor plan. It is good that you have several weeks to plan before you jump in and start ripping out the interior. The big question is, where is the toilet going to go? Everything else revolves around that choice.
These buses were fitted out very nicely and there is a lot you can use almost as-is. So some questions:
Does it have the aux heater? If so you can use that, probably by doing no more than adding one valve in the plumbing and a little rewiring.

Does it run r134 refrigerant? If so it is fairly simple to retain the system and turn it into a selectable zone mini-split type system. I'm working on a source for 18Kbtu compressors for that.

How good are you with structural fabrication? I can show you how to convert semi landing gear into leveling jacks.

The seats should come out easily. Was the lavatory never installed? If so that's a plus. In that case the main air ducts should run all the way to the rear and the linoleum should be continuous all the way back. They can be shortened/modified easily enough. There is a return duct in the bottom of the rear sections. Do not damage the temp sensor on the driver's side. It sits behind a small cover plate.

The floor is likely to be in pretty good shape. I've found one small soft spot inside the duct behind the driver's seat which doesn't affect anything and otherwise it is solid. The linoleum floor covering is durable and attractive, and I've found the embedded seat tracks to be very useful for anchoring items down. The list so far includes my partition walls, master bed pedestal, twin wardrobes, and will include kitchen cabinetry, desks, and furniture. This all leaves little of the tracks exposed to view and those sections will get embedded LED accent lighting eventually.

I find the overhead bins to be very well designed and extremely functional so I kept the ones forward of the partition walls and they add a ton of storage plus AC distribution and lighting. Not much in the way either. New gas struts are cheap and available. Makes sense to keep them if you can.

Jim

[chessie4905]

Uhh oh. "Wimpy girls hands". Everybody run for cover!

[belfert]

I wish I had a 12.7 instead of the 11.1, but the 11.1 gets me there.  I suspect the 12.7 would get me a little better MPG, but it would only make sense to go to a 12.7 if my 11.1 ever dies.

[Tedsoldbus]

Way to go Seb!
Life is not a rehearsal buddy. Jump in and have fun with it. These guys will help a bunch. Sometimes they disagree, but nothing like a homeowners association meeting. Some like me are not mechanics and can offer little help mechanically. We quietly watch the answers to things that have not come up for us, but certainly might!
I do all the work on my lawn mower and boat motors but I found a mechanic for much of the big stuff on our bus. On a big Detroit engine I am just not that good, don't have big tools, and at age 64 I find I get vertigo very quickly when I get under the bus on my back just trying to grease it. At age 25-30  I flew jets for the Marine Corps but was told by a flight surgeon that as you age the little bones in your ears get harder and balance fades. If you have the curse of hardening inner ears like mine, do your head upside down conversion stuff before you get old, And I hope you are handier than me with big tools as it will save many "Benjamins". If not, and you are footloose and traveling, this is a great forum to help you find help. If you are in Dallas, Denver or Detroit, and something big goes stinky, park, stay calm, and fire up the computer. A strength of this group is they live all over the place. Including Canada! These guys can help, or probably get you in touch with somebody close.
Best regards and remember to have fun with it! I think many have enjoyed all your questions and enthusiasm and I share with others in smiling that you have joined the madness of really getting a bus!
Ted

[dtcerrato]

LOL I'm 70, got bad vertigo and work on the bus all the time starting in 1979 converting the in service 4104 we still have now including an in-frame rebuild less than 13,000 miles ago...but the pit makes it much easier! now...
Sorry, couldn't resist...
Oh & never attended a rally, forum, club membership of any kind until 2015!
Ditto on these forums - a great bunch of knowledge and common ground... 
Welcome to an incurable disease

[luvrbus]

64 and 70 years old lol you guys are puppies 

[Glennman]

Hey Seb, I am so excited to hear that you have made such a bold purchase. Besides making a first aid kit your first purchase, make your second one an AED so that you can get your heart going again.

In all reality, you will have a lot of fun doing this if you enjoy fabricating and making things work. When I go to a hardware store, I never ask for help because I am always looking for something to fabricate away from it's originally intended purpose. You might want to pick up a cheap welder from Harbor Freight (unless you are a professional and otherwise have such equipment). Never weld on the bus until you have gone through all the computer systems and unplugged them (there are things you can find online that tell you how to approach that, but I haven't had to weld on mine yet). Make sure you devise a good floor plan that you can live with early on, as you will need to refer to it often, for even the most mundane tasks. As Jim Blackwood said, everything centers around the toilet, since it will need to pretty much drop straight down into the holding tank. I pretty much just completed my floorplan yesterday, but have yet to lay out the actual floor of the bus. I'll be doing that after I pull all the plastic down from spraying foam in the ceiling. I think your '97 is a good year, as it is probably hard wired (no multi-plex system?), so that will be a great thing. I have the 12.7 Series 60 and it is rated at 425 hp (if I recall correctly), but I do not have the retarder. The MCI site has all that information. I also did not have a restroom, so that helps. I could go on and on...

[Tedsoldbus]

Yes gentleman,
Dtcerrato and I are puppies. Ever notice how puppies walk a little sideways? Sometimes the back legs trying to pass the front legs? Tilt their head a lot because almost nothing makes sense? The good news: We have opened a shop and happy to work on ANY bus,,,,as long as it never needs to go down the road again. Call now to schedule an appointment! Vertigo sucks. Usually makes me try twist a wrench the wrong way when I am upside down. But this is about Seb. GO SEB!

[Sebulba]

Hello all,

I'm sorry I abandoned this thread.  We have been soooo, busy.

We flew to Denver, spent a couple of days getting our hands on a car.  Then drove to South Dakota to get our drivers licenses renewed.  Then drove to Albuquerque, NM and put the car in storage to get on Amtrak to Syracuse, NY where we picked up our bus on November 15th.

Then it was a short drive to Bennington, VT where we transferred the title and registered the bus as an RV.  After that we spent about a week with a friend in Walden, NY where I got started on tearing out the seats and basically explored the bus.

Then we were on our way to Daytona Beach, FL where we had several boxes of our earthly belonging shipped from Europe.  Another friend there had a place where I changed the oil and did other maintenance items as well as tore out all of the seats.  Got over $100 for the steel in the seats!

Now we are on the road again in Arkansas at a rest area.  I have half the overheads out and will start on the other side tomorrow.

That's the real fast and dirty rundown of our activities over the last 6 weeks or so.

It's been a real adventure so far -- even an odyssey. 

Thanks for all of your support, advice and general camaraderie.   

Yes, I have questions about many things on the bus, but that will be for future threads.

Thanks again,

Seb

[windtrader]

My goodness - that's more than I did in the last decade! Glad you are rolling along with your new bus. keep us posted

[buswarrior]

Excellent report!

Great motivator to keep working, when there's no distractions or a warm bed and a kitchen somewhere to slow you down...

Happy coaching!
Buswarrior

[Sebulba]

Excellent report!

Great motivator to keep working, when there's no distractions or a warm bed and a kitchen somewhere to slow you down...

Happy coaching!
Buswarrior

Thanks for your support

Seb