Five years into building our dream Schoolie, what have we learned?
Our first bus was a 1985 Carpenter built on a P30 Chassis. While it's not a full size bus it's pretty big. We jumped into this with both feet since we plan to travel and live in our bus year round we added insulation to the roof, walls and floor, Swivel Captains chairs with seat belts, A shower - wet bath, Countertop, with sink and stove etc, The layout and feel was amazing so what went wrong?
TEST DRIVE YOUR BUS BEFORE YOU BUILD!
The first mistake was not test-driving our new bus before we did all this work. We drove it down to my parents (about a 70 mile trip).
ITS SOOO SLOW!
The trip down was slow with a 1985 Chevy 350 and three speed transmission coupled to a 5:23 rearend top speed pedal to the metal, downhill with the wind behind us was 60 MPH! Ok so it's not a thruway cruiser... expectations adjusted.... so it will be primarily a local camping trip rig.
OLD = UNRELIABLE
The second mistake was underestimating the impact of age.
FUEL PUMP DIES
On the way home from our first trip our fuel pump gave out... we were somewhat lucky that we had gotten off the freeway to get gas. However we ended up stalled blocking a shopping center entrance for a couple of hours... the police showed up about ten minutes after I went to get a new pump, my partner Francie, called me saying the cops are telling her "you have to move this now". Under close scrutiny from the officers, I wired up an electric fuel pump inline to get us back on the road. You can imagine our relief when she started up and got us into the parking lot.
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