My 1990 Ford E-350 Goshen Bus

[Stuff]

I have a 1990 Ford E-350 with a Goshen Coach bus body on it. Has a 7.3L non turbo. And surprisingly gets 25mpg empty! has 66,000 miles on it to!






Been working on getting her going nice and solid like lol. Gonna set it up for the front couple windows to be the passenger/ tables area and have the back part the kitchen/sleeping area.

Front part:


Back part:


So far we figured out how to turn on the fluorescent lights. Either a relay went bad or the switch in the dash. So i bypassed it with a 25 amp fuse. each light has its own switch so that helps! There is one at the front and the back of the bus. Not sure if i will keep them where they are, but I can easily move them.

My nice drivers compartment


A nice hatch on the back of the bus for a genset! W/ plug to go inside if I wish to wire it up!




My current problem is the bus doors! the header unit over the doors has some sort of problem. In the picture there is a black bar part. It seems to be a dampener bar and it has lost its spring. So I need some suggestions on what to do. I wanna try to fix it but if I can't maybe I will replace it with a large windowed RV door?

[sdwarf36]

Way cool Shortie! Wow-25 mpg? My Powerstroke gets 11. I'm betting you must have 3:55 gears in it.

I used a linier accuator for my doors. I just welded a tab to the cross bar that goes between botth doors--works great. Door opens from either a hidden switch outside-or from a switch either driver or passenger can reach. Door opens or closes in about 5 seconds.

[Stuff]

hmm i will have to see what i can do....


ya 1000 miles and about 300 bucks for diesel. it sure cruises nice on the highway but wont beat grandma off the line!

[jkindt]

Sweet bus. And you dont even 'have to' paint it or anything! That is amazing mileage!

[Stuff]

love your bus sdwarf! i went through your webshot album lol

[sdwarf36]

love your bus sdwarf! i went through your webshot album lol

Thank you. I got bus envy looking at yours.
The main reason I changed how the door opens so I could run a passenger seat + get rid of the regular door opening stuff.
1st place I would look at once you start tearing apart the interior is around the wheel arches-mine were all rotten.
I notice your bus has some windows "flipped over"-I actually did that to one of my windows-so the dog could stick her nose out.

[Stuff]

hmm well they are not really "flipped". there is 2 kinds of windows on there. not sure if they have been swapped order from front to back or what not. What I would love to do is to take the best sets of windows and move them to the front then take out the last 2 or 3 windows for the bedroom area!

on the passenger side the second last window is hinged at the bottom and latches inside at the top as an emergency window. oh yeah, all the writing for exits on the windows are right side up to.





so I take it your bus is a goshen to? did you leave the industrial flooring or did you strip yours out?

[sdwarf36]

No--mine is a Champion (Challenger? I think) It looks like your body is glass all the way to the bottom-mine has steel from the trim strip down. I have to fix the rot-where the wheel wells allowed water to build up on the outside tin-i got the inside fixed already. It seems that when they build these things, the floor pan + wheel arches are already done-and are nice + square-but the (glass) body is rounded-and they just fill the gaps with spray foam. It break down and stores water after a while. Didn't notice till i started pulling up carpet-noticed it was wet-and all the little aluminum trim pieces were coroded.
I just put down carpet on the original wood floor.

[Stuff]

ya my body is 100% fiberglass. not sure if i like that or not but as long as there is no rot im happy lol!

gonna have a look at her this weekend underneath and hope for the best. it passed provincial safety in November so it should be good. Think the plugs are shorted out or something cause its sure hard to start her when she is cold!!

Im not sure how much for interior panels I want to remove. I kinda like having a carpeted wall lol! Just need to clean them really good. when I got the bus the windows were in horrible shape.. probably had been opened a few times (used to be a Richie brothers auction van one time) and had not been sealed correctly. So last fall here I opened them all, and put a bead of silicone down inside the frames of all the windows. Got a friend of mine to get on board with me and we hit the highway. Not one window rattled or whistled!! only thing i have is a couple of the windows with the large sliding windows need the part that goes on the sliding glass to hold onto the window and seal between them and the fixed window in the middle of the whole thing lol. so in the mean time foam will work fine lol.

Oh and a video buddy Troy and I made the other day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h5ICNJcdqc

[Stuff]

so I took some measurements and so forth. now I saw on here someone had used some google tool to mock up their bus. can anyone point me towards that?

[volund]

so I took some measurements and so forth. now I saw on here someone had used some google tool to mock up their bus. can anyone point me towards that?

They probably used Google Sketchup

[Stuff]

ah. well ms paint for me then

[Stuff]

Got some sketches on the computer now. gotta figure out how to put it all together now lol!

[zenmonkk]

Does your bus Have a metal sub-floor? Mine didn't and I was just wondering.

[Stuff]

don't know offhand really. I will have to check it later in the week. woke up to snow and rain today so its super wet out and i dont feel like getting under it lol.