I had hoped to finish writing about our trip by now, but things have been hectic. The last post was about Panoche Hill, CA. I've yet to tell the story of our time in LA, Yosemite, and Vegas. This all happened last November, and then we took I-40 from end to end in four days so that I could return home for my second knee surgery. We spent Thanksgiving day stopping at every casino on I-40 to earn ten bucks at a time, which was a fun way to spend the holiday. Two days before Christmas I had my knee surgery, and shortly after that Dan and I went to work on my friend's free-range hog farm. In February I took Dan back to New York so that he could make better money at his old restaurant job, and I continued working on the farm. A month and a half later I couldn't stand being still any more. I needed to travel, and the pop-up was just too tiny and took too much work for all we needed it to be. So we decided to save more money and get a larger something!
I took the animals and went back to my home in Statesville with my parents. There's a friend in Statesville who needed help building a wooden kayak for his wife's anniversary present, so I made some cash by the hour for the hundred hours or more it took to build the boat. I also sell items on eBay to save money and fund adventures. Dan and I shopped around, trying to decide what kind of RV to get. Definitely not a travel trailer, because then I'd have to have another larger tow vehicle to pull it. Big, old Rv's can be had cheaply, but the older they are the more likely they are to have water damage, and if the engine is gasoline it might be pretty worn out from lugging a giant thing around. We came across a Toyota Dolphin, which I had been interested in previously during my search for the pop-up. It's a small (about 15 feet) RV mounted on a small Toyota truck chassis. Gets 20+ mpg. They tend to have axle problems because the weight of the RV is too much for the factory chassis, but after a certain year they fixed that problem. I went to test drive one. It was very squeaky, flimsy, and top heavy. It was also too small.
Another idea I had been toying with was converting a school bus into an RV. The idea kept gnawing at me. A bus would be massive and unwieldy, yes, but sturdy and customize-able. Plus it would have plenty of space and a good diesel engine. Dan and I were each going to split the cost of whatever we decided on, and were willing to spend about $8000 on an RV. After test driving that Dolphin I decided for sure that I wanted to go the school bus route.
I shopped around on Craigslist for a while, but buses on there are worn out and overpriced, so I decided to go straight to the source for used buses. When a school bus reaches so many years or miles, the school system buys a new one and sells the old one to the public. It's a good way for the school to raise money. Some of them are bought by churches, or scout groups. Most of them are bought by people from Mexico who come once a year to purchase every available bus they can find to use as paid public transportation units in Mexico. North Carolina is a great place to buy a bus because it won't have much rust like Northern buses. I found a website that listed all the available buses for sale from every school district in NC, and I visited four garages around the state to find the bus I wanted. In Alamance county I bought a 1993 International Navistar DT360. It's full size at 32 feet long with ten windows, has an inline six cylinder turbo boosted engine, great tires (which are important at $300 a pop), and full 60 gallon tank of diesel. $3000 and my dad and I drove it home that day. Don't tell the police about that part. We don't have CDL's.
On the drive home we noticed the steering box was super loose and had a couple inches of play. I started reading the three-page long file of previous records that I kept asking for and was finally given at the last second, and saw that the oil analysis showed coolant in the oil. My heart dropped. That is NOT a good problem to have. It's a potentially expensive one. When we got it home we saw milky oil on the dipstick. Another sign of coolant in the oil. But we drained the oil pan and saw no water in it, and did a pressure test which told us there was no leak. We thought maybe the milky oil was just vapor condensation on the stick which can happen if you start the bus without getting up to temp. So we said "whew, close call!" and went on with the conversion.
I worked on it slowly for a couple months while working on the kayak for cash. My friends helped pull the seats out and paint the inside. I put down maple laminate flooring for the living room and bedroom, and black and white checkers for the bathroom and kitchen.
We planned to convert the bus to run on veggie oil, so I bought tanks and all the large items for the rest of the build. I picked Dan up from Long Island in June and we began building the interior together. We put up three walls with windows and doors in them, installed a window AC, put in a clawfoot bathtub, and large cast iron kitchen sink, made a couch and memory foam bunks, all while living in the bus with the cats because they're not allowed in my parents' house.
We got the bus inspected by the DMV and had our title changed to "House Car," which is NC's designation for converted RV's. Then we hit a big speed bump. Couldn't find insurance. No company likes to insure these things because they say they're top heavy and dangerous. They're not top heavy, but I could understand how a DIY project could be a risk if not done properly. Even National General, a company that actually DOES insure Skoolies (the name for a bus conversion), said the only state they won't insure in is NC.
South Dakota allows non-residents to register vehicles there. Lots of full-time RV-ers register there because there's no income tax and you don't even have to ever go there to be considered a resident. You have to step foot there for one day to receive a driver's license, but it's not necessary to get a license there if you don't want to. We decided to register the bus in SD so we could use National General, but we had to wait three weeks for the title to come back. It finally came in the mail, and I decided one last time to try and find insurance in NC first. SD may not have income tax, but it does charge registration fees by weight. They love RV's because each RV-er will pay over $300 a year in registration fees. Then the insurance on top of that. I talked to Farm Bureau here in Statesville and to my surprise they were able to get us liability coverage. $222 a year, and we were legal to drive! We went two miles down my road to get an inspection. $13 for a safety inspection since old diesels don't require emissions testing. Woo! On our way back home, alarms began to sound and the oil-coolant light flashed. Uh-Oh.
I pulled in the driveway and stopped. Checked the coolant. There was none. Checked the oil. Chocolate milk. Houston, we have a problem. A big problem. It seems that there was a leak after all, which turned into a big big leak after sitting for a couple months.
We drove the bus to the garage and started taking the engine apart to diagnose it. Four possibilities: broken oil cooler, leaky cylinder O-rings, busted head gasket, or corroded cylinder sleeves. Not the oil cooler, since there was no oil in the coolant, only coolant in the oil. We completely pulled the head off the engine and there was no problem with the head gasket. Then we pulled the sleeves. There were no holes in the sleeves but there was minor erosion. The O-rings were hard-baked from a frequently overheated engine, and lots of them were completely cracked. Found the problem. O-rings are cheap, luckily. So we needed to replace those and put on a new gasket set, which has to be done anyway any time you remove a gasket. That's about $200 worth of parts. Good. Not $1200 for a whole rebuild kit. Two of the cylinder sleeves had more corrosion than the rest, so my dad wanted to get us replacements for those at $125 a piece. I searched for parts online and saw a list of parts with no prices from a company in Nevada. I called them and they told me they were a distributor and didn't generally deal with the public but that they would make an exception for me. Here's the reason auto parts stores stay in business; the same parts that would have cost me $450 at a retailer online cost less than $100 from the wholesaler. An older engine can also have worn out bearings, so for those kind of prices we added extra parts to our order such as oil control rings, a third replacement cylinder sleeve, main bearings, and rod bearings. Our total order was about $350. The same order would have cost $1000 or more from a retailer.
A week later our parts and in an we spent a few days rebuilding the engine. One of the last steps is to torque the bolts to specifications. The book said 130 ft. lbs. on the connecting rod bolts, which seemed a bit ridiculous, but OK. Started to tighten them and they stretched, so we stopped after the first one. Looked it up online and the manual was wrong. It was supposed to be 80 ft. lbs.! Yikes. I called about fifty diesel shops and the International dealership trying to find two connecting rod bolts, but the ones for this engine were discontinued. My dad found some that his mechanic friend could order and get shipped within three days. $75 for two bolts and nuts. Ew. But we had to do it. When we finally got it back together and turned the key, it started right up! My dad has worked on cars his whole life, but never a diesel engine. We bought the maintenance manual and followed the instructions, and Dan and I did most of the work. He's even less experienced with cars than I am, but it wasn't hard. We took the unfinished bus on its maiden voyage to Asheville on Labor day weekend to visit my friend and camp on the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was also a nice break-in period for the engine to seat the new O-rings, and gave me plenty for driving practice with curves, steep grades, and stop lights. Dan got the practice driving on the interstate.
After the weekend we kept working on the bus. There's a beet harvest in North Dakota and Montana every year that pays $1200 a week for a month. They mostly hire RV-ers, and pay for a campsite and electricity if you work there. We applied and were told to be in Drayton, North Dakota on September 25. For the last two weeks we've been working non-stop to finish so we can get on the road. We put in two backup cameras, added grey and black water tanks, plumbed the toilet, sink, and tub, my dad built a three-foot back deck complete with tail lights and turn signals to haul the generator, bikes, and hay bale, and he specially engineered a passenger seat for the front that folds up out of the way. We really could not have done this project without him and I am so grateful for his help. He's put so much time and work into this because he wants me to be safe and comfortable and accomplish my goals. I think he also thinks it's pretty awesome to tinker on a school bus.
Yesterday we built the goat pen in the back next to the chest freezer-turned refrigerator and mini-washer-dryer combo unit. Rosie will have her own 25 sq ft bedroom with a rinseable drained grate floor. It's on a 2-foot high platform with storage space uinderneath. She'll love riding high up in the air and not getting yelled at for pooping in the car. She has plenty of windows to look out, too!
We're all tired and sore from working so hard and long, and today is finally the day we leave. The goal was that yesterday would be our latest possible day, but the work just wasn't done. I still have to lug all the crap I packed into the bus and pick up the goat, and then we're outta here! 1500 miles from here to Drayton, and two and a half days to get there. We're hoping two twelve hour days for driving will get us there in time to sleep before meeting the beet boss at 10 am on Saturday.
My laptop screen died, and we won't have internet or time anyway, so I won't be able to add pictures to this post until later. I'm typing on my dad's laptop at the moment. If you'd like to see pictures and a detailed account of the bus conversion, take a look at the forum thread I've started on Skoolie.net. You can easily access it by typing in tinyurl.com/onenationundergoatbus or clicking on the link. Adios, folks, and wish us luck!
