Freakishly Happy

About a week ago we sent out an email to all our friends and family that we finally bought our school bus. I'm sure we'll write about the reasons and experience when we can, but for now let's get right down to the details:

We bought a 1996 Crown Carpenter. It was made in a factory that Crown bought that used to be a Ward factory, so this particular bus is well constructed. Unlike a normal bus whose body is built directly on a chassis, ours was fabricated, then lifted by crane onto it's chassis. Which means it has a lot of extra welding in order to allow it to be lifted. This means that unlike the normal bend and flex you'd get in a school bus, ours will stay fairly rigid. And it should hold up better in hairy situations. Although it was manufactured in 1996, it was manufactured in April, a few months before they started putting in computers and complex electronics into the engine. So it should be a lot easier to fix and diagnose.

You normally have to worry about getting a bus so new, as school districts tend to hang on to them forever. Thus if you see one so new you might think that something went horribly wrong with it and the school district is dumping it. However, in this particular case, the school bus simply was enlarging their fleet (purchasing 90 passenger busses) and therefore dumped there three oldest shorter (84 passenger) busses. Thus, it is not believed to have been dumped for any other wary reason.

84 passengers equals about 40 feet in length. It also has high ceilings (78 inches!) which means not only that I can stand upright in the bus without discomfort, but also that the windows are a bit taller as well, allowing a lot of natural light. Those tall windows really help to open the space up as well.

It is powered by a nice little 5.9 liter / 210 horsepower ISB Cummins engine. It should give us quite a bit of power and should get aroudn 10 miles/gallon unloaded. We'll have to see what our mileage actually is after the conversion. This particular engine is both turbocharged and aftercooled. The transmission is an allison automatic and it is equipped with not only air brakes but also an air ride suspension. It has relatively low mileage and engine hours.

The body has a built in belly-storage bin on the curb side (side of the doors / starboard) which will be nice both for the conversion (propane tanks? battery bay?) but also access to essentials (tire-chains, tire-blocks, emergency flares and cones...)

The bus is currently located in Lima, Ohio. We will probably have it delivered out to Vermont where we will do the actual conversion. The cost to have it delivered is about the same as gas there with a car and back with the bus and 1 night of hotel. Plus, it will hopefully give us more time with the seller to talk over how to take care of it, how to perform maintence, adjust air brakes, and other important aspects of both bus ownership and bus usage.

Here are some pictures (as always, click the link for the full-size image and any description / discussion about it.) They were taken by Greg, of http://www.floridachurch.bus/ to sold us the bus.

View from the starboard side - taken by Greg before we looked at the bus.

Quite a beautiful bus! And yes, the stop sign will go.

A nice view from the rear port-side.

A nice view from the rear starboard side.

A view through the doors and up the stairs.

A view of the driver's seat, wheel, switches and pedals.

A view of the engine. ISB Cummins 5.9 L 210 HP Turbocharged/Aftercooled.

A view down the middle, from the front toward the rear.

Well, that's it for now, leave lots of comments and check back regularly!