| Author | Message | ||
| Don/TX
Rating: N/A |
If you enjoy the tales of people buying a new bus, and their exciting adventures and hardships of overcoming challenges in getting the brute home, Gary Stadler will have a thriller for you soon. He is enroute back home now in a rental car! That is all I will reveal, he can tell you "the rest of the story". After reading this one Ron, you just might want to keep the old buffalo and let the MCI go :-) | ||
| Cliff (Floridacracker)
Rating: N/A |
Thanks Don, I was actually planning on getting some work done today, but now I will be checking for updates all day long.  Cliff | ||
| Don/TX
Rating: N/A |
OK Cliff, 'fess up. How come you can make a yellow smiley face, and mine look like a typo? | ||
| Cliff (Floridacracker)
Rating: N/A |
Don, Leave the nose off of your smiley symbols and the "smiley face" will show up. Look under DOCUMENTATION, FORMATTING, SPECIAL CHARACTERS on the left for a complete list. Cliff | ||
| Don/TX
Rating: N/A |
I never read that stuff! K | ||
| jimmci9 #2 Rating: N/A |
senior moment????? | ||
| ChuckMC9 (Chucks)
Rating: N/A |
Ya know, Don, you really should have taken him by to meet his sparring partner while he was down there. Then we would have had a *real* thriller. ;) | ||
| Don/TX
Rating: N/A |
Well, as soon as I picked him up I relayed a message from Two Dogs that he did not have to come and see him! Two Dogs said today that if I had brought him down there to Los Indios, I would STILL be filling out paperwork. Probably best I left them apart. Two Dogs did have some very happy moments when he heard of the difficulties Gary had getting back home. Comments Gary? | ||
| Gary Stadler (Boogiethecat)
Rating: N/A |
the report: DISASTER ! Well, maybe not such a disaster... First I have to say that DonTx is one of the nicest guys I've ever met, and certainly changed my attitude about (some) Texans!! He and his lovely wife Geneda picked me up at the airport, ran me all over town and helped out an amazingly nice bit. It's RARE that I encounter that kind of hospitaltiy in California!!! THANK YOU DON So.... the report.... First.... It was a bit disappointing showing up and finding the owner under the hood not able to get it to start. He'd evidently changed all the fuel filters and lost prime on the injector pump, then killed the batteries trying to get it to go. So Don shuttled me to a local Pep Boys, where I bought a little electric fuel pump, installed it, and made prime. Finally running after roughly three hours of screwing with it, the guy told me "oh yeah, I have to replace a brake line before you can go"... evidently one line was rusted to the point it had burst. So he replaced it, and upon bleeding the system, ALL of the brake lines started popping one by one, due to rust (hydraulic/disc). By then poor Geneda was probably bored to distraction so I said she and Don had certainly done more than I'd ever have asked for, and they oughta go and get a good nights sleep. So after she and Don went home, we spent another three hours mickey-mousing line after line (all the owner had on hand was 6' pieces where we mostly needed 6" pieces..)- all in all, every steel line on the bus needed replacing. Finally done with that, we went thru a gallon of brake fluid and eventually got the air out of all the lines, and took it for a test drive. It seemed Ok, so I decided to get on the road. Finally at 2am we drove off and had many hours of uneveventful driving up thru Texas and eventually to San Antonio, at which point we slept (kept the bus running) and headed out the next day to El Paso. The only thing that annoyed me was that the owner swore it would easily go 65 but the fastest I ever got it to was 60 going down a hill. Mostly it maxed out at 57. It was gonna be a long trip to California.... The next morning almost exactly 60 miles out of San Antonio, I noticed a funny smell from the truck in front of me. But I though, Hmmm... asked my buddie Bryce to look out the window and see if anything was amiss, and sure enough it was us... White smoke and LOTs of it. Steam actually. As usual in situations like this, the temp gauge showed normal and everything sounded "fine" so I quickly slowed to 20mph and took the next off ramp which was luckily only a few hundred feet away. Stopped 'er at the corner gas station and "Old Faithful" took off. Stopped the motor and opened the hood, steam and antifreeze fluid coming from everywhere... ....bottom line was, 4 hours later and two new batteries, got finally it started again and it ran um....sounded different... but seemed good enough to go home with. Fortunately there was an excellent diesel shop one block away, and once running I took it up there to get some new hoses, antifreeze, a decent temperature gauge, etc. One block later on the way to the shop, it was again boiling over... Don Fairchild and I had been talking on the phone over all this... he and I almost hooked up at El Paso but I missed him due to the problems... He was very helpful in helping me figure out what I should or should not be doing with all this mess. So between his help and the guys at the diesel shop, and after a few more hours of screwing with it there were still bubbles coming out the radiator water overflow... so the guys at the shop and I determined that it either blew some gaskets or busted a head or two (Diesel V8), and we all decided that it was the end of this particular trip. Basically pretty disappointed and quite ready to put the pinkslip on the window at this point and walk away, and to make a long, long story a bit shorter: Amazingly the guy who owned the diesel shop had an almost identical bus sitting in his yard, for sale, in EXCELLENT condition that he'd just gotten from a local school district along with all service records; we horsetraded- Bus #1 is now his and I own the one in his yard!!! Here's how it fell together: Basically for less than it would have cost me to have him pull the heads and mess with mine, he sold me his with mine as a trade-in.... Bus #2 is: (1) in MUCH better overall condition than #1 (2) Roof is already raised and painted white- #1 was orange (3) #2 HAS a turbo (#1 did not) which I would have added to #1 anyway because of my high-altitude driving (4) #2 has a 6 cyl inline diesel in much better shape than #1s P.O.S V8 was, and evidently it has a lot more horsepower as well. It started with less than one revolution after reportedly sitting for three months... good sign.... (5) Since #2 was texas bus as opposed to #1 which was a chicago bus originally, NO RUST... (6) #2's fuel tank is 80 gallons instead of the 30 0f #1, something I would have also had to change (7) #2's tires are in Much better condition So all in all, I think I ended up with a much better bus, and overall I'll spend less than I would have getting #1 up to snuff. Weird how that works out... even weirder that the damned thing would have chosen that exact spot in a really big state to break down... So I a rented car and headed back to San Antonio, as the local rental place wouldn't allow one-way rentals... dropped it off at the airport and rented a Hertz one-way car, and headed home. Just got back, totally pooped. I'll redo the paperwork, come back in January and try again. The next time, I'll drive a toad and tow it home behind the bus...much safer gamble that I'll make it this time.... This trip has been a lesson, a pain in the ass, a giant hassle, depressing, stressful, costly, and tiresome. BUT in the end, the bus I'll be pulling up to my house with in a month or so is a LOT better bus, much closer to my ideal wishlist, and the way I look at it is, a few bucks more notwithstanding, this whole mess was a path to the new-new bus. In the end, I'm quite excited.... all the hassles I'm going thru now will be more than made up for by "not" having to paint the roof white, stick a turbo on, raise the roof, and mess with the engine. Yup, it never ends.. And Two Dogs, Yesterday I had this thought.... much as you and I disagree on a lot of (maybe most) things, I had to hand it to you as I sat with old faithful steaming away, embarrasing the hell out of me in front of all you Texans.... at that point you had a big leg up on me... ...at least you own a bus that runs.... CHeerio guys. | ||
| Tom Caffrey (Pvcces)
Rating: N/A |
Gary, you know the saying "All's well that ends well", don't you? It sounds a lot like that's what happened in this case. And in spite of all the other stuff, you got to meet some real nice people, Don and Geneda. That's got to be worth a bunch. I wish you the best of luck with your new adventure. Tom Caffrey PD4106-2576 Suncatcher Ketchikan, Alaska | ||
| Jim Stewart (H3jim)
Rating: N/A |
Gary, great adventure, although I bet it didn't seem so at the time. Sounds like you did luck out and get a much better bus after all. Some Californians would help as much, there are not aways chances though... I do have a questions though, how come you didn't just drive bus # 2 back home? | ||
| ChuckMC9 (Chucks)
Rating: N/A |
Gary, by your post you already blew rule #1 - what happens in Texas stays in Texas. Glad you made it out with only that little misadventure. | ||
| Gary Stadler (Boogiethecat)
Rating: N/A |
Jim, I certainly would have driven bus #2 home, but there was no way to get the one-way permit from the California DMV without going there first, and the owner told me I "absolutely" did not want to try getting one in Texas. Either way it wouldn't have happened until Monday and I had to get my buddy Bryce home by Saturday because he had a plane flight out to Kansas to see his family for Christmas. It would have been nice but the timing just wasn't right. To add to all that, the owner is going to give it a full service job for the price of the parts...change all fluids, hoses, drain the gas tank and clean it out"just for insurance", lube the joints and driveshaft, check the brakes... etc... His shop can't get to all of that until after Christmas. So my best insurance right now is to not be in a hurry...that's the path I chose... Cheerio Gary | ||
| Johnny Rating: N/A |
What kind of bus is this? | ||
| Gary Stadler (Boogiethecat)
Rating: N/A |
I won't tell Well, actually... it's a 29' skoolie dog nose. I am buying it for a very particular purpose and project...no I am not planning on becoming a hippie or living in it at all... it's going to get a 35kw genset built into it, about 200 gallons of diesel tank, a pottie, 150 gallons of water, a screw compressor, and a LOT of storage area. Basically it'll become my support vehicle for the Burning Man gathering that I participate in every year... | ||
| H3-40 Rating: N/A |
Sounds like drug running or alien transport to me! | ||
| Jim Bob Rating: N/A |
Will that be a metric or English screw compressor? How much do you compress the screws and what do you use them for once they are compressed? Jim-Bob | ||
| Richard Bowyer (Drivingmisslazy)
Rating: N/A |
You going to tow that behind your bus? Richard | ||
| Donald Lee Schwanke (Dontx)
Rating: N/A |
Jim Bob old chap, I believe it is a bloody Whitworth. | ||
| Jim Stewart (H3jim)
Rating: N/A |
Gary, Sounds like just the right vehicle for that project. What you do out there at Burning Man is pretty amazing, and seems really fun. The imagination you and yoru friends have, and to do those things just because you can is remarkable. Its good to know there are people like you around. | ||
| Gary Stadler (Boogiethecat)
Rating: N/A |
H3, NOT. I always wonder where people's heads are to come up with crap like that, thank you... JimBob... neither. Quite american. Sullair 100psi @ 25cfm. Damned nice machines... Richard... boy that'd be a sight!! I actually saw a good one in Tx on the way home- wish I had a camera... Dognose skoolie loaded to the gills and a roof rack too, towing a crappy looking Astro van, and behind THAT was a toad! Never seen a non-commercial three-tow. Quite a sight (and definitely looked like something to stay waaaay clear of) Donald, Nope I'm VERY glad it ain't whitworth!!! Jim, thanks again for the help and hand-holding~ I am getting the engine/tranny info in the next few days, I'll probably call you with a few questions. For all of you who wonder what it's all about... http://www.heartmagic.com/garylinks.html | ||
| H3-40 Rating: N/A |
Gary I was only kidding! Geez! Let someone make a joke and you guys can sure take it the wrong way! I guess you never noticed the smiley face AFTER the statement huh? It's no wonder you have a hard time dealing with people, let alone Texans! Frankly I could care less what the hell you use it for as long as it doesn't get abandoned somewhere down here. We have enough junk laying dormant! Have a great day and GOOD luck! Ace | ||
| Richard Bowyer (Drivingmisslazy)
Rating: N/A |
WOW! Thanks Gary for sharing. Very impressive I must say. Richard | ||
| airless in Jacksonville Rating: N/A |
I found it fairly funny esp after seeing the mind altering projects. Any type of drug transport or even participation is possible. That much creativity deserves to have a sense of humour also. | ||
| Gary Stadler (Boogiethecat)
Rating: N/A |
I guess I'm just sensitive about it, because that seems to be a conclusion many people jump to, and kinda like words you shouldn't mention even in jest on an airplane, I just don't appreciate the humour of going that particular direction. It puts bad images in people's minds, and there's plenty of other ways to create humour. Sorry Ace, I did see the smiley, but you hit a nerve. I do have a great time at Burning man though...it's a great way to alter your mind without taking a thing...except a very long drive thru a beautiful desert.... you guys should all come!!!! | ||
| DMDave Rating: N/A |
what are these men "burning"???? crazy stuff! I mean crazy inventive impressive stuff for sure! in agood way! LOL. |