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Old 06-19-2015, 10:39 PM   #1
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Location: Statesville, North Carolina
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Build Thread For Haulin' Oats (and goats)

Here's the conversion thread for Haulin' Oats. It's called Haulin' Oats because we travel with a goat, and I thought it was funny because the bus doesn't go very fast. You can see my sense of humor.

I'm a gal named Fred, and my trip partner is called Dan. He's the man. He comes with two cats, Bartleby and Oscar, and I come with a cat, Frankenstein, two dogs, Piper and Juno, a rabbit named George, and a goat named Rosie. They'll all be living in the bus with us, and maybe some chickens later, too.

We traveled 25,000 miles around the country last year in a 1968 Cox Campsquire pop-up camper pulled by a 4-cylinder Honda Element. Our blog of the trip is at www.onenationundergoat.blogspot.com and we will be adding our bus travels to that as well.

Here are some highlights of our little band of fiends:

Dan and Rosie having a serious talk


Rosie enjoying a to-go snack a la Fred


The Wanderer staked out in Moab, Utah


Rosie deliberately sassing us, as per usual


Piper, Juno, and Rosie in the pop-up


The other team: Frankenstein (left), Bartleby (front), Oscar (back)


As you can see, the camper was a bit too small for us. Hence, the school bus.

She's a 1993 International DT360 with an AT545 transmission. We've swapped out the 6.11 rear end for a 4.7 ratio so now we can go a whopping 56 mph. Hopefully 60 on the highway, but that's yet to be tested. We're planning on a veggie oil conversion.


1 - A first look on the lot. Purchased from Alamance County bus garage in NC.


2 - Driving her home. In the dark. With no CDL, a temp tag, and no insurance.


3 - In case you don't know what the inside of a bus looks like


4 - This is the view I had as a child.


5 - The bus compared to our 1968 Cox Campsquire popup


6 - It makes the house look small.


7 - Most have a "dog nose," but mine's a Pug!


8 - Piper's the owner now.


9 - First passenger!


10 - Juno's driving.


11 - Piper: Are you sure about this, Juno?


12 - Juno: It's what I was born for.


13 - Piper: Ok, but watch out for the cats.


14 - Bus tires are the perfect size for no-cat's-land.


15 - Piper: On second thought, just run them over.


16 - Juno: Ok, are you ready?


17 - Piper: I think I need a seatbelt.


18 - Piper's concerns began to grow when she realized Juno has the brainpower of an ant.


19 - Remember, kids! Don't idle!


20 - Especially when you only have this much room in the garage! The front end is 1 inch from an overhead beam as well.


21 - This is what the inside engine hatch of the pug nosed bus looks like.


22 - Coolant leak scare resolved. There's a whole anxiety-ridden thread on this.


26: The original plan. Three rooms. A wall behind the cab to prevent cat-gas pedal mishaps, then the living room area with maple laminate flooring, a storage couch/bed, a clawfoot tub with board on top to use as a table, then the kitchen in black and white vinyl tile, with large sink, propane oven/range, cabinet space, then a wall before the bedroom with two single beds that convert to one kings bed, then another wall to the mud room with the toilet, and washer/dryer in one, and finally the goat pen area with a drained grated floor. Some changes have occurred since the original plan.
The bus will also be veggie oil converted.


27: Seats out! Leaving the floor stock and filling the bolt holes with elevator bolts. (PITA)


28: Test laying the vinyl stick on tile.


29: Test laying the maple laminate floor and vinyl stick on tiles.


30: Test laying floor, view from rear.


31: First coat of interior paint. It's oil based, so it stunk for a while.


32: Second coat of interior paint.


33: Installing foam underlayment and luan for the vinyl tiles. Frankenstein supervised.


34: Installing stick-on vinyl tiles.


35: Stick-on vinyl tiles installed.


36: Planning out the laminate floor plank positions.


37 - Tools of the trade.


38 - Bedroom flooring halfway done.


39 - Completed bedroom flooring.


40 - No pic yet, but be installed a 10,000BTU window unit AC in the rear driver's side window.

41 - Framing the first wall behind cab and installing door.


42 - We have a working door!


43 - Second wall dividing kitchen/living room and bedroom.


44 - Insulation. The windows are covered with reflectix which we'll put up and down as needed. The reflectix and the first wall alone made the air conditioner able to cool the bus to a constant 85 degrees on a 97 degree day in direct sunlight.


45 - Second wall finished! We used peg board and it was great!


46 - 1970s camper propane oven


47 - Love that harvest gold. Hopefully it works. One knob is stuck and we haven't tested it yet.


48 - Bedroom wardrobe


More pictures of stuff to come!

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Old 06-20-2015, 12:01 AM   #2
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I'm a gal named Fred, and my trip partner is called Dan. He's the man. He comes with two cats, Bartleby and Oscar, and I come with a cat, Frankenstein, two dogs, Piper and Juno, a rabbit named George, and a goat named Rosie.

There's no way in hell this can be made up!!! I love it!!!!

more more more!!!!

p.s., my internet alias is Fred, and I have a lady friend named Pete
She HATES being called Phyllis!
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Old 06-20-2015, 12:07 AM   #3
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Quote:
A wall behind the cab to prevent cat-gas pedal mishaps
there's more to this story somewhere..........

does your gas pedal meow when you step on it???
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Old 06-20-2015, 05:25 AM   #4
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Originally Posted by milkmania View Post
there's more to this story somewhere..........

does your gas pedal meow when you step on it???
I'm going to have to have a cat free cab as well...
My oldest cat is oscar- He is around 17 years old.
GREAT pics!
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Old 06-20-2015, 08:23 AM   #5
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Gotta say...you guys (and gals & critters) rock --- Can't say I have ever even seen one before, but I really like the "Pug Nose" arrangement. Great progress...keep the pix coming...and Happy Trails.
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Old 06-20-2015, 08:28 AM   #6
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there's more to this story somewhere..........

does your gas pedal meow when you step on it???
When we were in the Element we had to keep Bart and Oscar in a big cage in the back. The dogs, the goat, and Frankenstein all rode free since they mostly behaved.

Oscar and Bart like to go on the dash and under the driver's seat and we were always concerned they'd get in the way of the gas, or more importantly the brake.

We had to keep the goat partitioned behind the big cat cage in the back because if she was up front she'd eat any trash or straws we had by the cup holders.

She's addicted to cigarettes and eats any butts on the ground she can find. Once she ate an entire unopened pack of Dan's cigarettes. Then she stared off into space for four hours on a nicotine high. I was very unhappy.



(I only have about 3500 of these pictures....)
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A gal, a guy, three cats, two dogs, one rabbit, and one goat, traveling the country together.
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Old 06-20-2015, 10:24 AM   #7
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So the goat can be trained not to go to the bathroom inside??
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Old 06-20-2015, 12:36 PM   #8
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So the goat can be trained not to go to the bathroom inside??
I was wondering about this too.

You have pics of that thing standing on your bed.

Nat
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Old 06-20-2015, 01:13 PM   #9
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Well you CAN potty train goats to pee outside like a dog, but they can't exactly hold their poop. Rosie tries unless she's in a bad mood. For a while she was trained to pee on command when I say "go potty" just like my dogs. But then she went to farm to be bred and hung out with other goats for a couple weeks and decided she no longer wanted to be potty trained. When she was really grumpy she'd actually hold it in when I took her out to potty, and as soon as she got back in the car she would let loose. While staring me in the eyes spitefully. Luckily the Element is entirely plastic inside.

She generally stayed in a large dog crate at night outside or in the back of the car depending on the weather. The camper picture was one of the few times we let her in for fifteen minutes or so. The real danger isn't that she'll mess, but that she'll eat the wood paneling.

When we walked her in cities we attached a homemade "butt bag" that caught her berries. (Goat poop is actually called nanny berries.) That way we wouldn't have complaints from anyone about a mess on the sidewalk. Rosie has walked at Union Square in Manhattan, Bourbon Street in New Orleans, downtown Moab in Utah, rode the monorail in Seattle, turned heads on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, and made a few rounds on the main Strip in Vegas.
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A gal, a guy, three cats, two dogs, one rabbit, and one goat, traveling the country together.
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Old 06-20-2015, 09:44 PM   #10
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Oh how fun a read that was, thank you I needed a good laugh today.

You definitely need to write a book on your travels and your menagerie.

Where in North Carolina are you located?
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Old 06-20-2015, 10:37 PM   #11
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Oh how fun a read that was, thank you I needed a good laugh today.

You definitely need to write a book on your travels and your menagerie.

Where in North Carolina are you located?
that's why I said "more,more,more!"
they're making a lifetime of memories that no one can take away from them!
not even the government
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Old 06-21-2015, 12:19 AM   #12
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I'm in Statesville, about 45 minutes north of Charlotte. I do hope to write a book one day, but for now there's just a half-finished blog. All of our electronics died along the way, so we had to stop posting when we got to Seattle. My Kindle went in the dog water bowl, I smashed the camera into a boulder I tripped over, the iPod landed in a puddle, the inverter exploded when Dad plugged it in to the battery backwards in the dark... and so on and so forth....
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A gal, a guy, three cats, two dogs, one rabbit, and one goat, traveling the country together.
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Old 06-21-2015, 10:15 AM   #13
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I would suggest a #2 pencil & real parchment as a durable, low-tech, all-weather alternative...but writing on goatskin might not go down well with some of your passengers.
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Old 06-21-2015, 02:22 PM   #14
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This time I'm bringing a non electric typewriter.
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A gal, a guy, three cats, two dogs, one rabbit, and one goat, traveling the country together.
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Old 06-22-2015, 07:48 PM   #15
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Seriously! Redhead Fred said, we're buildin' a bus for Hall n Oates! Awesome!
More like an Ark than a bus for you and your traveling animals, ...great stuff, keep it comin'!
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Old 06-22-2015, 09:27 PM   #16
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Talked to Canada and the USDA today about bringing a goat through the country to get to Alaska. There are lots of permits, those alone costing at least $400, and some tests and certificates I have to have done, plus she has to be officially sealed by the USDA for the duration of our time in Canada. Luckily she has her own bedroom so she'll be ok even if it takes us two weeks to get through.

Now it's just a matter of raising the money to get her there! We're hoping to finish the conversion and be on the road in 2-3 weeks.
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A gal, a guy, three cats, two dogs, one rabbit, and one goat, traveling the country together.
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Old 06-23-2015, 10:15 PM   #17
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Might be cheaper just to adopt her and file for a passport.
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Old 06-23-2015, 11:17 PM   #18
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very cool thread
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Old 06-24-2015, 07:04 AM   #19
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The past couple of days we've been working on the sink cabinet, the couch, and the beds. I like to work third shift since it's 75 degrees instead of 100. I just finished framing the beds and couch, and we started working on them at 10:30 last night. Dan pooped out on me a couple hours ago, so I did the second bed all by myself. It's only about half an inch crooked.

The sink is a massive two basin cast iron beast with attached drying area. It weight about 70 lbs. and is 22"Wx44"Lx10"D. And it's blood orange colored! I wanted something big enough to do dishes in and maybe wash the cats. Stock kitchen cabinets aren't long enough to put it in, and stock countertops are too wide for what little space we have, so we built one that is the exact dimensions of the sink, which sits on top because it has a lip all the way around. The front will have two bifold louvre doors made from chopping up a pair I have. The other two I have will be the doors for the bedroom walls.

I'll try to get some pics up later, but for now... SLEEP!
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A gal, a guy, three cats, two dogs, one rabbit, and one goat, traveling the country together.
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Old 06-24-2015, 08:23 AM   #20
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This is the best club in the world to be a member of!!!!!
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