Woke up, went back to Goody's Cafe and had a great breakfast while we jotted down things we'd thought of over the last 36 hours - over and above all the inspection lists we'd prepared before the journey. Then we headed off to inspect the coach with the seller. We began with the details of all the bays (the areas that used to be the luggage bays,) and the RV systems that were now housed in the bays. The desert sun was shining brightly; the temperature quickly rose to about 107 F. We were all in hats and sunglasses, and drinking water by the quart. We had to wear gloves in the heat, though, because the metal parts of the coach were burning to the touch.
This bay originally held equipment for the passenger compartment heating and cooling system - there's more of this hardware behind a little door you can make out in the back right. The system was pretty intact...when we get manuals for the bus, we'll go through the whole system and see if we can easily and cheaply get this system working again - it would be great to use this system to heat the bus with engine heat when driving. Now, this bay houses the coach (house) batteries (removed for this picture.) The charging system consists of a normal home battery charger (red) and a "battery minder" (blue) - you just plug either charger into the outlets in the upper left hand corner. We used this setup a few times on the way home. It is functional, though we plan to put in more typical RV - battery charging and monitoring systems.
The bay with generator - it uses propane for fuel. The quietest type of RV generator you can buy, and no pollution - only emits water vapor, which campground neighbors appreciate. Not a great picture - it looks brand new and has very few run hours on it.
The bay on the right holds the propane bottles, then. Look a little messy in the picture, though we straightened it out after filling the bottles at the end of the test drive. Now there are two bottles on either side, and a fifth bottle in the middle. There are two schools of thought on storing the propane: a single huge tank, or multiple smaller bottles - both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. We're fine with this approach, so we'll stay with the individual bottles. One of our first "upgrades" will be to replace all the regulators and hoses in the systems - like all RVers we are rabidly paranoid about propane. We'll have a regulator with auto-changeover feature for each pair of bottles, and leave the fifth bottle unconnected in the middle of everything as a spare.
The bay to the left is a clean bay for storing personal items. I removed the shelf - now we can lay three standard suitcases side by side in there, with room on top and towards the bay door for more storage.
Here is the bay just to the right of the bay with the generator - you can see the generator sticks into this one a little bit. The object hanging from the bay ceiling is the water heater. It runs off both propane and shore power. This is a step up for us - the one in our previous RV only ran off propane. This WH also has a bigger capacity than the one in our last RV. The fresh water tank fill connection is to the left of the WH.
Engine battery bay on the right. The red-top batteries were 6-7 years old, so the seller replaced them with two new large engine starting batteries. Engine batteries for RVs is a passionately argument-starting and divisive issue, so I won't say anymore here about it, except that we had no issues with the engine-starting batteries he installed during the trip so far.
The bay to the left contains the fresh water, gray water and black water tanks. The gray water (for shower and sink drains) tank shows, the fresh water tank is behind it, the black water tank is behind the battery compartment. The hose in the picture vents the tank to a rooftop vent. The white fiberglass tub protruding through the coach floor is the bottom of the shower, so really tall people can use the shower comfortably. It's bigger than it looks in the picture - about 2 feet by 3 feet (6 square feet.)
The big general storage bay- almost 150 cubic feet of through storage. This is pretty much untouched as the main location where suitcases went, when this was a passenger bus. Looking through the bay to the far side: that's the inside of the bay door on the other side of the coach. The owner before the seller installed spare parts bins across the forward wall - all full of spare parts for the bus.
Then Kathy, the seller's girlfriend, and Bear - the white dog you'll see in some of the pictures - climbed aboard, and we set out on a comprehensive test drive. Headed out of town, into the foothills of the mountains, and eventually up the steep mountain passes. The main thing we were looking for in this coach was engine power (for mountain-climbing ability) and this coach performed superbly - at one point we passed (on the right!) a late-model Mercedes sedan!
We stopped in for a late lunch in Pioneer Town - a site famous as the setting for hundreds of cowboy movies. Took a little time after lunch to look around a little, then headed back towards town.
On the way back to town, we stopped in an abandoned parking lot, and both Lone and I drove around and practiced turning through the tight lanes, trying not to scrape the curbs with the wheels. It was very hard to grasp the concept of the front wheels being behind you when you are trying to figure out when and how much to turn.
I drove the bus for much of the way back to the compound, stopping at a gas station to replace the diesel we'd used for the test drive. This same station had a propane service, so the seller topped off all the propane bottles while we were there. Back at the compound, we parked the bus in the garage, so that it would be in place for the next morning's inspection. We plugged into shore power in the garage, so we could run the AC, lights, etc., while spending a second night in the coach.
In the evening, the seller and I tested and groomed all the lights, turn signals, parking lights, hi and lo beams, etc. No reverse lights (1961!) Lone and I plan to install LED reverse lights and a back-up warning beeper, later.
This bay originally held equipment for the passenger compartment heating and cooling system - there's more of this hardware behind a little door you can make out in the back right. The system was pretty intact...when we get manuals for the bus, we'll go through the whole system and see if we can easily and cheaply get this system working again - it would be great to use this system to heat the bus with engine heat when driving. Now, this bay houses the coach (house) batteries (removed for this picture.) The charging system consists of a normal home battery charger (red) and a "battery minder" (blue) - you just plug either charger into the outlets in the upper left hand corner. We used this setup a few times on the way home. It is functional, though we plan to put in more typical RV - battery charging and monitoring systems.
The bay with generator - it uses propane for fuel. The quietest type of RV generator you can buy, and no pollution - only emits water vapor, which campground neighbors appreciate. Not a great picture - it looks brand new and has very few run hours on it.
The bay on the right holds the propane bottles, then. Look a little messy in the picture, though we straightened it out after filling the bottles at the end of the test drive. Now there are two bottles on either side, and a fifth bottle in the middle. There are two schools of thought on storing the propane: a single huge tank, or multiple smaller bottles - both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. We're fine with this approach, so we'll stay with the individual bottles. One of our first "upgrades" will be to replace all the regulators and hoses in the systems - like all RVers we are rabidly paranoid about propane. We'll have a regulator with auto-changeover feature for each pair of bottles, and leave the fifth bottle unconnected in the middle of everything as a spare.
The bay to the left is a clean bay for storing personal items. I removed the shelf - now we can lay three standard suitcases side by side in there, with room on top and towards the bay door for more storage.
Here is the bay just to the right of the bay with the generator - you can see the generator sticks into this one a little bit. The object hanging from the bay ceiling is the water heater. It runs off both propane and shore power. This is a step up for us - the one in our previous RV only ran off propane. This WH also has a bigger capacity than the one in our last RV. The fresh water tank fill connection is to the left of the WH.
Engine battery bay on the right. The red-top batteries were 6-7 years old, so the seller replaced them with two new large engine starting batteries. Engine batteries for RVs is a passionately argument-starting and divisive issue, so I won't say anymore here about it, except that we had no issues with the engine-starting batteries he installed during the trip so far.
The bay to the left contains the fresh water, gray water and black water tanks. The gray water (for shower and sink drains) tank shows, the fresh water tank is behind it, the black water tank is behind the battery compartment. The hose in the picture vents the tank to a rooftop vent. The white fiberglass tub protruding through the coach floor is the bottom of the shower, so really tall people can use the shower comfortably. It's bigger than it looks in the picture - about 2 feet by 3 feet (6 square feet.)
The big general storage bay- almost 150 cubic feet of through storage. This is pretty much untouched as the main location where suitcases went, when this was a passenger bus. Looking through the bay to the far side: that's the inside of the bay door on the other side of the coach. The owner before the seller installed spare parts bins across the forward wall - all full of spare parts for the bus.
Then Kathy, the seller's girlfriend, and Bear - the white dog you'll see in some of the pictures - climbed aboard, and we set out on a comprehensive test drive. Headed out of town, into the foothills of the mountains, and eventually up the steep mountain passes. The main thing we were looking for in this coach was engine power (for mountain-climbing ability) and this coach performed superbly - at one point we passed (on the right!) a late-model Mercedes sedan!
We stopped in for a late lunch in Pioneer Town - a site famous as the setting for hundreds of cowboy movies. Took a little time after lunch to look around a little, then headed back towards town.
On the way back to town, we stopped in an abandoned parking lot, and both Lone and I drove around and practiced turning through the tight lanes, trying not to scrape the curbs with the wheels. It was very hard to grasp the concept of the front wheels being behind you when you are trying to figure out when and how much to turn.
I drove the bus for much of the way back to the compound, stopping at a gas station to replace the diesel we'd used for the test drive. This same station had a propane service, so the seller topped off all the propane bottles while we were there. Back at the compound, we parked the bus in the garage, so that it would be in place for the next morning's inspection. We plugged into shore power in the garage, so we could run the AC, lights, etc., while spending a second night in the coach.
In the evening, the seller and I tested and groomed all the lights, turn signals, parking lights, hi and lo beams, etc. No reverse lights (1961!) Lone and I plan to install LED reverse lights and a back-up warning beeper, later.
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