Buses
Back when Flora and I first got together, more than 10 years ago at this point, we decided that we needed to do some serious research before we picked a spot to live for the next few years. We packed up our possessions and put them in storage, bought an old motorhome, and hit the road. We spent 6 months making a big circle around the US and Canada and then lived in that motorhome for six more months after moving to Chapel Hill. In retrospect I realize that it was not a very good machine to trust out lives to. By their nature motorhomes are pretty top heavy and prone to rollovers and I have since seen pictures of these machines (mostly constructed of plywood and 2x2's on top of a truck frame) after a rollover and the result is pretty much a pile of kindling.
Our coach was not very fast, not very reliable, not very big, and the big 454 Chevy engine sucked down a lot of fuel; we were lucky to get 8 MPG. It was only 26' long and with two big Rottweilers in there with us there was not much space. We started our trip in Florida and about a week and a half later we were in Nova Scotia, where we spent the next three weeks. Our next destination was Denver where we wanted to visit my folks before heading for the west coast. We were camping in Kentucky one evening and I heard the low rumble of a diesel engine. When I looked up I saw my first bus-conversion pulling into the space next to ours. I had never considered that such a thing even existed.
Oh sure there were skoolies: school buses that had been converted into some kind of camper after their life of transporting kids was over; didn't the Partridge Family have one of those? But this was not one of those. Skoolies are not really built for the open road nor are they meant to travel a million miles or last for 50 years. I think of them as being slow, underpowered, and cumbersome, and are mostly built out of steel, which eventually rusts away. No, this was a GM PD 4104 intercity bus, probably an ex-Greyhound, built out of aluminum with a big 2 stroke Detroit Diesel engine. Theses buses were built to run several million miles in relative safety and comfort. The fact that once retired, these old buses were sometimes converted into motor-coaches had never entered into my consciousness. I remember thinking how big those tires looked compared to mine and it occurred to me that bigger tires turn at lower RPMs meaning less heat and longer life. Combined with a beefy engine that had lots of torque at low RPMs probably made a much more reliable drivetrain than what I had. From that point forward it was hard to avoid the thought that someday I wanted one of those!
Fast forward ten years. We were now planning for retirement in the next few years and had decided that we found the snowbird life very appealing. Spending the summers in Nova Scotia and then returning to Chapel Hill when the weather started getting nasty seemed like a perfect way to live for a few years. The big question was how to afford it. At the time I was designing a timberframe house in North Carolina and thought that I would build a second one on the 4-acre site I had purchased in Meteghan NS. The issue of course was how to make mortgage payments on two houses on a fixed income. When I was laid off from my job in March 2009 I quickly realized that we would have to make other plans. That is when the idea of a converted bus came up one more time. If we could keep the modest double-wide where we are living now (which is paid for) and buy a nice bus, we could drive that to Nova Scotia each summer and have a place to stay while we were there. With the addition of a small support building containing maybe a kitchen, bathroom, laundry facilities, and a deck and we would be all set. The price of already-converted buses had been driven down by the economy and the high price of fuel so I saw no reason to wait and started researching buses.
How the heck do I decide what bus to get?
I looked at my first bus conversion last October. It was an MCI-5C and seemed to have just about everything I wanted in a bus, and maybe it would have been better if I had just bought it right then and there. It was $30K, a price that I could afford, and would probably have satisfied all of my needs in replacing my ancient (at least it seemed ancient until I started looking at 1950’s buses) broken down, falling apart motorhome (as I later learned, it would affectionately be known as a stick and staple job). But at that point I knew little about Detroit Diesel 2 strokes and all of the other mechanicals of a bus, so I figured I would do a bit more research, refine my tastes, and eventually figure out exactly which motorcoach was right for me.
I signed up for every bus-related Yahoo group and busnut bulletin board that I could find and started spending all of my evenings (just ask my wife Flora, who has since become a bus-widow) reading about buses. I spent every spare hour reading about air brakes, power steering upgrades, which buses are notorious rust buckets, the finer points of tank building, pure sine wave inverters, gas vs diesel gensets and how to size ones generator requirements, and the thousand of other technical issues that are related to bus conversions. In those few months I learned a lot but I also realized there is always a lot more to know.
But the bottom line is that not only is spring coming and I want a bus, but I have always prided myself on my ability to make quick decisions and have always laughed those who research every little detail, sign up for consumer reports, ask a million pointless questions, and take months to make even the simplest of decisions. That’s not me – look up the word impetuous in the dictionary and you will see my picture! So as these months went by I developed a plan, figured out what was important to me, investigated which makes and models best fit my needs, rated the features I wanted in order of importance, and tried to get a handle on a situation that was never ever apples and apples.
One of the big issues is that you can’t just go down the local Busmart and browse through the offerings. These things are located all over the country and are often very far from home or even from a reasonable airport. But given that, I was able to find a couple of GMC 4106’s that were in or near my price range that were only (“only” is a very relative term in the case of buses) a day’s drive away. So the wife and I scheduled a vacation day so that we would have a 3-day weekend, set up our appointments, and took our little trip. I was ecstatic to finally be able to look at and drive some buses and felt like I might finally be near to making a decision and driving one home!
The owner of the first bus that I wanted to see had volunteered to drive his bus a few hours to Lake City so that we didn’t have to add an extra 5-6 hours to an already long day’s drive. Getting up at 4:00 AM and driving 800 miles is not something I enjoy all that much. I am more of a 300 mile a day guy and night driving is not something I wish to do at all. We had taken a 6-month motorhome trip around the country in 1999 and most days I tried to limit the driving to 300 miles, but this time, with only a day to do one leg of the trip, I had little choice.
We met in the parking lot of a restaurant along the interstate. The outside of the bus was gorgeous. The classic styling of the 4106 is very nice to begin with and this one had a shiny coat of bluish Imron paint. I once had my old 240Z painted with Imron and it still looked like the paint was wet 5 years later! Since the owner was inside getting coffee I poked around; no dents, very few dings, no corrosion that I could find. The tires looked brand new with no checking. Soon we got to go inside; the inside was as nice as the outside, nicely decorated and ready to go. I could see that he had not scrimped on materials. We took a ride and there were no surprises. The Allison 730 shifted kind of hard but I understand that is pretty normal. It rode as smooth as glass; I love airbag suspension! Before we left we had opened every compartment and talked about every feature but we knew we had another few hours to drive (hopeful to arrive before dark) so we declined coffee and got back on the road.
Back in the truck, Flora and I discussed the bus. I had originally not really known how she felt about this whole bus adventure but she really liked this particular bus. Of course I was interested in the mechanicals (since I am the one who would have to maintain and repair them) and she was more interested in how the exterior and the furnishings looked. I admitted that it was all very pretty but was still not sure I wanted to lose a couple miles per gallon to an automatic.
The second bus, also a 4106, was much more of a plain Jane. The paint was pretty good but the interior would mostly have to be torn out and redone. The gennie was gas and at only 5K would run only a single AC unit, the tires were starting to crack, there was some corrosion around the rear cap that would have to be dealt with soon, and there were no maintenance records at all. On the other hand, it had the 4 speed that I had been looking for, the engine ran fine and stopped smoking after a minute or so, and the $20,000 difference in price would pay for a lot of tires, carpeting, and furniture. It was the first time I had had to double clutch in 40 years and it is not like riding a bike; indeed I ground the gears a bit. Undaunted, I still preferred its standard transmission to the Allison.
So after all this, the big problem was that I was maybe even farther from making a decision than I had been before. The $30,000 bus was really nice but had a transmission that would get me only 6.5 mpg. If I am going to get that kind of mileage then what is the point of getting a 35’ lightweight bus; I had just as well get a 40’ MCI. The $10,000 bus needed a lot of work and with 2 jobs already how was I going to fit that into my schedule? So now I am back at the drawing board and I have a feeling that deciding which bus to get might take a while.
Stay tuned for part two, Buying the Bus.
