Bus Log

 

While we had our sailboat in the Sea of Cortez, we bought an old black Dodge van that we that we kept in Puerto Escondido. In our travels up and down Highway 1 in Baja we observed more than one RV broken down on the side of the road. Broken axels is what the locals said was a big source of breakdowns for commercially manufactured motor homes. The light truck chassis they use just are not up to the monster chuck holes in the Baja. When we crewed to Australia the old black van was left with friends near Santa Maria in Central California. I spent much of a day picking the brains of two guys who were renting bay space from our friends to convert motor coaches into motor homes. I began to realize that we never saw any of the truly ancient Eagle buses the Mexicans used in Baja along the side of the road. A commercial motor coach is built to handle whatever the roads hand out. MCI, for example, designs their coaches for 30 years and 3 million miles. The the Mexicans get them to run another 3 million. Mexican mechanics are very good at keeping vehicles running long after they have been officially pronounced dead.

 

One of my complaints about our sailboat was the truly idiotic ways they had built some of the systems in the boat. I also had cause to complain, more than once, about the quality of repair work done on the boat. These complaints forced me into a steep learning curve so that I could do the repairs myself and bring Diver Down to a seaworthy condition that would allow us to cruise in open ocean. Having observed what the bus converters and boat maintenance people did convinced me that I could do at least as good a job as they did, certainly no worse than some of them. If I succeeded in converting a bus, I would have a seriously better product than I could afford to buy off an RV lot.

 

Clyde the bus was named after a camel in a song about Ahab the Arab and his camel named Clyde. Camels kneel so that you can mount them and Clyde kneels so the first step up is not so high you need a portable step. Silly? Yeah, probably but its better than "the bus". We got lucky. Clyde is the first year Detroit Diesel computerized their engines. We hire a Greyhound mechanic from Seattle to do the overhaul but after adjusting the breaks and changing all the fluids and filters he measured the crankcase pressure at 1/2 pound. "When it gets to 4 pounds, think about an overhaul," he told us. Chances are we won't live long enough to put the 4-6 hundred thousand miles on it that will take and we can save the remainder of the $15K we had bugeted for the overhaul. So far we are into this for:

• Bus                         $17K including tax and license

• Overhaul                 $1K includes initial inspection/maintenance, corrosion removal and minor repairs

• Diesel Generator     $4300

• Water System         $1K tankage, shower, toilet, pumps, fixtures, etc.

• HVAC                    $2300

• Refrigerator            $1200

• Microwave             $600 also a convection oven

• Propane System      $500

• White Oak              $1800 there will be more

• Tools                       $2K

• Flooring                   $500

There will be a lot of incidentals like TV, Stereo, Satellite Dish, Curtains, etc. but the original budget was $53K so it looks like we are on target to come in under budget.

 

So meet Clyde:

 

Model: MCI-9

Year: 1987

VIN: 1M89CM7A1HP041374

Purchase Date: 8/30/2005

 

History:

Original owner was New Jersey Transit. Sold to RAZ in Portland, OR 2001. Purchased through Northwest Bus Sales 8/30/05

Original Photos taken on the NW Bus lot

10/01/05

Removed all seats over the last two weeks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10/04/05

Butch (Greyhound Seattle mechanic) out to begin overhaul. Ran maintenance on HVAC and Brake systems. Adjusted brakes. Bus air and heating working correctly. DD 6V92T showed ½ lb. crank case pressure. NO OVERHAUL NEEDED!!!!!

I am removing and disassembling the luggage racks. Will salvage lighting and sound parts.

 

10/08/05

$140 worth of steel to weld up 4 jack stands. That is what I did all weekend. Still working on the luggage racks but also got some of the railing and Lexan behind the driver’s seat removed. Will have to remove the seat eventually. Went to RV show at T-Dome Thurs. Whirlpool makes the best looking refrigerators but we mostly didn’t like the rest of what the manufacturers are using.

 

11/13/05

I now have something like 10 hours into this project. Port side luggage rack is out and stripped for parts. Starboard luggage rack outside rail is off and salvaged. Butch will return on Tuesday to finish the fuel gauge and other tidying up that is left on the overhaul. I think we are incredibly lucky at the very good condition the bus is in.

 

12/02/05 Luggage racks are out and ceiling down. Removed fiberglass panel from rear of inside and removed insulation.

 

        

 

05/27/09

Obviously I haven’t kept up the log very well. One of the problems has been that in winter I cannot heat the shop enough to get much work done. I installed a wood stove but it barely gets the shop to 40F if it is freezing outside. My hope is that when the bus interior is insulated I will be much better able to heat it. The other problem was a full time job. In March I retired so that excuse has gone away. Flying still interferes but I have no intention whatsoever of allowing anything to interfere with flying.

In 2007, the corrosion on the rear fiberglass shell bracing was removed and some sheet metal bracing welded in place. I filled the empty tubing with foam spray but it is not as fire retardant as the E84 stuff so will surround the area with E84.

The coach heat water valve was damaged while removing the floor boards and was replaced with a rebuilt unit from Luke at U.S. Coach.

Over the 2008-2009 winter, the kneeling system died and refused to rise on command. After much troubleshooting and an incorrect diagnosis I followed the recommendation of the MCI bus list and removed all three of the kneeling air valves. They have now been replaced by 3 DOT hoses, a manual pressure valve and two dump valves. The regulator and dump valves are located in the dash board with the hoses run down through the floor and over the top of the spare tire well back to the copper tubing going to the air bags and the air source.

 As of today the bus is completely stripped inside and some 1/8” plywood installed at the top of the baggage bays to act as a sub floor onto which I will spray foam insulation. As much of the corrosion as possible has been mechanically removed and bare steel acid etched. Vicky scrubbed as much of the remaining grunge as she could get to with a strong degreaser. Yesterday a coat of anti-rust primer (Rustoleum for rusty metal) was applied.

Finally, for this update, the E84 foam has arrived, $1200 and the new Sleep Comfort bed, $740.

6/10/09

Floorboards are cut and fitted but will remove them today in preparation for spraying the insulation. Finished internal wall framing and the initial framing for the safe base and bed. Also finished cleaning the walls and window latches. Gave the window rubber a coat of Armorall.

06/14/09

The toilet arrived UPS Friday. Vicki remarked that it was the most important piece of equipment we needed. Coated all the rubber seals and metal framing of the unused windows with petroleum jelly, then painted the insides of the unused windows flat black. Set a shop light outside shining in and painted until I couldn’t see any light through the windows. On Sat., we took a trip to the Harbor Freight parking lot sale ($138 which included 4 large heavy rubber wheel chocks wide enough for bus tires - $9.99ea) and then up to Camping World to see what they have. Got the fittings for the holding tank dump valves, a dump hose and canister to hold it. Sat. afternoon and Sun., Vicki primed the back and edges of the side floor boards and I finished shipping away the last of the old mastic. Also did a preliminary drawing of the freshwater supply system.

06/15/09

Blocked subflooring in preparation for spray foam. Vacuumed a lot of the mess. Bought foam pipe insulation and replaced the crumbling pieces under the floor.

07/01/09

I painted the rubber seals around the middle windows with petroleum jelly. Then the middle windows were painted flat black. I set up a shop light outside facing in and painted until I could no longer see light. The hope is that if the need to use those windows ever returns, the hardest part of restoration will be scraping the paint off the glass. Insulation is finished. Photo above is the first pass. It took twice as much as the supplier’s calculator indicated and I would have added more if it weren’t so expensive. I eventually changed my mind and bought more foam spray. I learned some things from this very expensive learning curve:

• Spray the foam as close to the maximum 85F temperature as possible. The hotter the air temperature the greater the expansion rate. At 80 degrees I got approximately a 5 to 1 rise. Never did get the 6 to 1 promised by the vendors.

• E84 is extremely expensive. Anywhere you have a large cavity to fill, try to use something else that is cheap and won't burn or collect moisture. Examples are behind the rear seat and the wheel wells.

• I eventually removed all the foam trays on top of the baggage bays. It was a lot of wasted foam but I couldn't fill all of the space and I found some wall foam board at Home Depot that can be cut and fit as needed.

• I will never use spray foam on an overhead again. Huge mess and very difficult to control the applicator. I would have been hugely better off getting flexible closed cell foam and gluing it up instead.

Installed some thin crate plywood left over from the trike crates in the tops of the baggage bays. They are just 1 inch deep trays to hold the foam. Am now riveting and glassing the bottoms of the trays in to ensure they can’t vibrate loose.[1]

Water and holding tanks have arrived along with the pottie.

Rear baggage bay has been cleaned, sanded and a tube of 5200 marine sealant applied to all the holes and leaks that caused all the corrosion in the rear of the bay. Some idiot drilled holes in the wheel well and on the floor pan. Had to weld a couple of stainless panels into the bottom edge to have some stability for the sealant to cling to. Fortunately I think the main steel structural members only had surface rust. I treated that with a healthy coating of phosphoric acid before applying the sealant.

7/20/09

The most important item has been installed. Vicki’s pottie is mounted to the floor with strict instructions to not use it until further notice. Note: RV toilets do NOT use beeswax sealing rings. A store clerk told me to just bolt it to the floor but it used a plastic floor flange that was about 3/8” thick and it pressed the rubber seal down quite nicely into the molded cavity in the flange. If ever there is a leak, most of it would go into the tank rather than out on the floor.

Holding tank rack is assembled, painted and drilled. The tank depth is less at the rear so the rear legs of the rack are longer so that the top of the tank is level and the bottom draining on a down slope toward the outlet. Holding tank is now ready for installation. I will bolt two small tabs onto the front of the rack to hold it in place but it will easily slide out with the tabs removed. That meets the ANSI standard. A sliding bin will be installed under the rack. Yesterday, Vicki found a fitting for the dump valve that popped right into the 3” rubber connector.

 

Rear and middle baggage bays are painted and the decks coated with Duplicolor truck bed liner. It is not as durable as some of the other types but a lot cheaper. The rationalization is that we don’t expect to be dragging much around on it since everything will be either permanently mounted or in slide out bins. The hope is that it will provide a more durable seal than paint. For the record it took a full can to do about 90% of 2 coats. A single bay deck would reasonably require about 3 quarts. Oh yes, contrary to the instructions, it SHOULD be thinned with acetone. The spray gun needed more than 60psi to pump the goo without clogging and that much pressure created a nasty over spray area. Thin a gallon with a half pint of acetone and reduce pressure to around 45-50psi. Much less overspray. The wall paint is Hammerite, a very tough, corrosion resistant lacquer. It thins using the 4 second drip rule but be certain you have a fairly wide fanout or it will sag badly. You must also ensure good wetting and overlap or it orange peels more than you would like. It also comes in rattle cans for touch-up. Let it dry for at least a week before sanding, cutting or polishing.

07/24/09

Holding tank is in and connected. Final vent run still needs to go through roof but it should satisfy the highway patrol inspection now scheduled for 12 August.

Rear two baggage bays coated and painted. Only had to redo one painted panel due to extreme orange peel. The Duplicolor bed liner doesn’t do well on aluminum.[2] Fortunately little will ever directly touch it and the small touchup rattle cans will spot fix the dings.

Pulled the under floor insulation from above the holding tank as it became impossible to reach the floor flange nuts. Bought some duct blanked to insulate the floor and will use the trunk liner material to cover that. If too noisy or cold can always add cut sheets of closed cell foam.

07/26/09

Finished welding and painting bracing for fresh and gray tanks. Riveted two of the braces onto the bay floor and did final touch up of the the bed liner. Began wall board for city water inlet. It was well over 80 degrees in the shop and the Bondo cooked off in about 3 minutes flat. Bloody mess. The design starts with a back flow device at the inlet (which is mounted above the top of the tank) then to a pressure regulator (with gauge ‘cause I had one lying around). From there to a ball valve and a 2 stage filter that will mount on the bay wall. A second ball valve will be installed just before the tank outlet so that the tank can be drained but the filters left full of water as the manufacturer recommends.[3]

08/01/08

Fresh water system is in along with the pump. The expensive city water input fitting fell off the first time a hose was connected and the water turned on. Local hardware store had an exact replacement for cheap. No leaks now. Original plan was to install a wall board and construct a manifold for the piping but decided that was just another expense that wasn’t needed. Keeping it as simple as possible is the better idea. Had to move the filters because there is no such thing as a garden hose elbow that would do. Will have to redo the filter installation. I determined that I would not use a permanently connected, pressurized city water hose. May change my mind but with 155gal. I don’t think it will be needed. Pretty sure I have solved the shower height problem. Will have to fabricate a stall and pan but found a very nice bifold door that is only 65 inches high and 24 inches wide. Now I can make the shower fit the space rather than the other way around. Installed all the floor boards and will finish preparations for the inspection. 3 replacement running light fixtures arrived so will do them as well.

8/12/09

Major milestone achieved. Today the bus became a motor home. WA requires a Highway Patrol inspection to ensure the bus won’t be use to haul passengers for hire and then you can register it as a standard motor home at the motor home license rate and use an ordinary driver license to operate the vehicle. It took 25 minutes to get the bus to the inspection site and back home and about 15 minutes to have the inspection done. Another 15 minutes with DOL and the title is now changed to motor home and the license is current. The only bad news is that the captain’s chairs are delayed due to material shortages so can’t take anyone but the driver.

Progress to date: Fresh water and holding tank systems are finished. Basic bed frame cut and tacked in place. Began taping floor layout of kitchen but Vicki changed her mind the first time she stood in front of it, “This won’t work!” Cleaned the shop floor while the bus was out and pressure washed the bus. Found two small H20 leaks in the roof that appear easily repaired.

Drilled the hole in the bowl for the bathroom sink drain. Will use a Myrtle wood bowl sealed with a tiny amount of vinyl resin mixed very thinly in acetone and heavily laced with catalyst. Worked well but take care to use very small amounts of resin and lots of catalyst or it will never cure. Set up an experiment to dribble finish resin down the sides of the bowl to make a thicker and more permanent seal. If it doesn’t cloud, it should look something like acrylic. If it does cloud, I will use acrylic.

8/16/09

On Friday I took the bus to RV Hitches in Olympia. Over the phone they said they had done them but when the guy crawled under the bus he shook his head and said no way. Yesterday we took the bus out for its first road trip down to Woodland to pick up the new Flexsteel seats. Curiously, none of the truck stops had air stations. One said their repair shop could do it but they were closed on weekends. Off to Schwabb on Mon. 8/25/09

The seats have arrived and 2 of the captain’s chairs installed. A temporary stand is made for the air bed and we are off on our first outing. Went to Montana for my 45^th high school reunion in Bozeman. Made stops in Roundup where my mother was born, found the land records for the ranch my Grandfather owned and camped out behind the Busy Bee Café with truckers coming in and out. Spent 3 glorious days at my cousin’s summer place on Rosebud Creek in the very tiny town of Fishtail. There is a reason Montana is called the Big Sky Country!!! Labor Day weekend saw us in Bozeman for the reunion and pig roast. The photo of the bus is from the window of our Holiday Inn room with the Bridger Mountains in the background. Look closely and you will see a big M on the side of the mountain. Montana State University is in Bozeman and I have climbed to the M many times.

 

04/01/2010

Over the winter, the temporary bed was removed, along with the seats. A shower stall and pan are now roughed in and the trailer hitch is installed. The original bumper bracket cross member was totally corroded and broken on one end. It is a good thing it was removed before it fell off going down the road.

 

 

Two ¼” steel plates were flame cut to fit behind the bumper brackets. The bottom of the two plates had ¼” x 1” tubing mig welded to the front and back with a standard receiver welded to the tubing. Cross bracing was tig welded in place and a top rail fabricated from 1.5” x 1/8” angle cut to the shape of the original cross member. The door bracket is bolted to the new cross member.

06/30/2010

The water closet plumbing is finished and the shower entirely finished. Most of the shower was uneventful other than having to grind the cement in the pan because my eyeball troweling was really poor. After much grinding and a liberal application of floor patch (with straight edge), it would actually drain and the tile lay down without strange hills and valleys.

I did have one problem. The Marey instant hot water heater did absolutely nothing the first time I tried to use it. I was mentally cursing myself for cheaping out on this Ebay item but it seemed like a good idea at the time. After much head scratching and rechecking of connections and labels, I called Marey. They are in Puerto Rico and my Spanish is good enough to get me in great trouble. But when the nice lady answered the phone I asked, “Habla Ingles?” She immediately asked me, in excellent English what she could do for me. Nelson, in the service department, directed me to a micro switch that turned on the ignitors. I had already observed that the switch did not move at all so back in the bus I manually moved it and the ignitors and gas solenoid immediately fired. Alas the burner did not light and no gas was flowing. No amount of poking and prodding would turn on the gas. Armed with Nelson’s hints, I started reverse engineering the hookup. It quickly became obvious that the water input and output connections had to be reversed. I had them connected according to the labels on the case but a quick peek at the manual and sure enough, the labels were incorrectly applied. Connections were switched and before I could get the 5 steps from turning on a hot water faucet to the heater it was burning propane and heating water.  The shower now awaits Vicki who will christen it with her first shower in the bus.

7/2/2010

Spent the last 4 days installing locks on the bi-fold doors. Looked a several ideas, took the bus down to Dan Dan The Locksmith Man who took one look, shook his head and said he had nothing that would work. Back on the Internet, I saw a garage door dead bolt arrangement that looked promising. Back down to Dan Dan The Locksmith Man and bought two of them but had the tumblers exchanged for stainless steel. Had to cut a space in the aluminum molding that holds the inside rubber door seal on each side and cut rectangular holes in the door jams on each side for the bolts. Everything looked good on the aft door jam but the door closes at a slightly different angel on the forward side so had to mill the edge of the inside dead bolt housing at a 45 degree angle to get it to clear. A brass plate from another dead bolt system fit perfectly. The last piece was a custom plate for the aft dead bolt. Tried stainless but my mill made a mess of it so redid it in aluminum. Of course, there wasn’t quite enough clearance so had to mill the dead bolt housing as well. Now it goes click, snick and the key turns the locks perfectly. At some point I will make a backing plate for each of the dead bolt housings and cover them with the same material the inside of the door will be covered in. They are just mild steel painted a fake brass color. Strong enough but ugly as sin. Will be taking a week off for the Arlington Fly-in as I have an ultralight engine being displayed. Back to the forward baggage bay prep after Arlington.

09/17/2010

Front baggage bay is cleaned, prepped and painted. Installed the slides and tray for the generator. Generator is now installed and running. Remote control wiring was a cluster. Drawing that came with the remote was in error and the instructions spent a lot of time talking about cutting and splicing wires. The owner installation manual for the generator was correct but neglected to point out that the signal wires for oil pressure and water temperature were taped off and buried under the plastic cable protectors. All the wires were very well labeled which really helped when trying to trace the wiring. There were two sensors on the oil pressure pipe, one with two wires which looked very much like a sensor for the gauge. No joy, one sensor was a normally closed switch and the other normally open. Turns out there is circuitry in the control unit that can shut the engine off for high water temperature, high oil pressure and low oil pressure. I had to buy new sensors for the remote gauges and some piping pieces to get them to work. More time wasted.

Took time out to finish wiring the toad hitch. Had to run a 12 volt tap off the Vanner back to the rear junction box. All the terminals in the rear junction box were exactly as the MCI manual stated. Napa had the 24 volt relays and the schematic supplied by a member of the yahoo groups MCI Bus Nuts made the process as easy as working in a small confined space can be.

Next job is to run the exhaust and vent the baggage bay. There is a dent guard on the bay door that is easily removed. The area under it is ideal for a couple of 6”x12” marine engine compartment vents. Stainless mesh filters would be perfect in the space between the inner door liner and the outer skin, if I can find the filters. Exhaust is going to be run through flex tubes and out through the bus air condenser compartment with the muffler mounted under the bay. I wanted to run it up through the roof but a hot exhaust pipe, even insulated, running through the living area sounded dangerous and running it outside the bus looked really ugly. I also have a transmission cooler w/thermostat controlled fan that I will mount on the panel between the baggage bay and the AC evaporator bay. It will have generator radiator water going through it on a parallel loop.

10/13/2010

Installed wall boxes for receptacles and lights. Transfer switch and shore kit arrived so beginning to connect electrical system. Flexible “seal tight” conduit out of generator and bracketed to underside of floor w/enough length to allow slide out. Used a PVC conduit piece epoxied into the floor as a “through hull” Will seal it with 5200. Used the 4 wire #8 cable I had left over from the old inverter installation. Probably overkill but every amp counts and there should be enough to make an outside extension cord if it will fit the connectors.

10/16/2010

Transfer switch and inverter sub panel installed and wired. I am now installing the inverter behind the generator fuel tank. The inverter will run all the lights and receptacles. The loads are not that great so installed #14-3 wire to both input and output. Then I realized that the input would have to handle a bulk charging load on more than 400AH of battery. Input to the inverter now has #10-3 wire. I discovered an interesting feature in the Xantrex RS3000 inverter manual. Seems that the output AC has L1 and L2 wired together and in phase. That means only 120 volts is available from the output but on two separate wires. I just fed them into a sub panel load center box like they were 240 split phase. Bottom line is that smaller/cheaper Romex (now legal in motor homes) can be used because the load is split in half.

 

 

7/13/2011

All of the AC electrical system is now installed along with the generator and solar panels and regulator. The propane system is in and fully functional. We have hot and cold running water. Refrigerator is installed and $1800 worth of white oak now sits in the shop waiting to be installed.

 

An air conditioning duct is to be run from the bus air out floor duct (lower left) to the end of closet are. The visible part is to be white oak and the hidden part flexible vent ducting. Next project is to finish the refrigerator cabinet and then finish the mini split AC air conditioning system. One of the condensers will go where the reader board was and the other in the bedroom. Compressor will reside in the middle baggage bay if I can find a way to vent it. Otherwise, I will have to rethink the whole process.

10/25/2011

As you can see, the HVAC and refrigerator are fully installed. In addition, a backup video system and tire pressure monitor system were installed and the bed frame roughed out. The headboard became a problem. I wanted the grain to be vertical to mach the walls but there is no such thing as an 8 foot wide plywood board. So the decision was made to route the strips that have screws in them and cover the strips with 1/8” thick strips of Australian Blackwood. We didn’t think there was enough contrast so stained the trim strips a teak shade and finally ended up with American walnut stain to get enough contrast.

 

The house battery system is also installed. After considering longevity, cost and weight as the primary factors, I went with 4 12 volt Trojan batteries and a water fill system. We used the 6 volt Trojans on the boat along with hydro caps to keep the water from evaporating away. A 6 volt system will provide more capacity but is much more expensive. Since we also have a diesel generator that is relatively quiet, the need for higher capacity did not justify greater cost. We can always change our minds when it is time for new batteries.

 

 At this time construction has begun on the kitchen cabinetry and we will be taking Clyde out for a weekend at Pacific Beach over the Halloween weekend. In roughly December, Clyde goes into the shop for some much needed maintenance of the water and air systems.