After much discussion and convincing, my lovely wife Marilyn relented on the "Bus" issue. She agreed to the purchase of our new family addition, recently named, Lola, after the Kinks song of the same name, (wifes idea not mine, I prefered Helga or Olga in keeping with our nordic named car theme i.e Heidi, Sven, & Olaf all subaru wagons) We purchased Lola from Patrick Young of the Fresno Wheelchair Project to the tune of four large, and what a wonderful purchase it was. She's a 92 Ward on an International chassis, with a DTA360 turbo, a Spicer 5 speed manual with electric disk brakes and a wheelchair lift. The odometer reads 12,000 something miles and she was a Humbolt county, California handicapped bus, so no frame rust at all and hardly any wear. There is only seating for 8 school kids so 4 adults and the rest is handicapped spots, which is no big deal as I plan on puting in couch style seating against the drivers side wall and swivel seats along the passenger side; seating for 10 adults ultimately. She's going to be a hardware store hauler/mountain bike shuttle/travel trailer puller, so being a 24 foot "short bus" is a feature. We recently drove her "Down the Hill" to Bakersfield for a Lowe's run and came home with a pallet of 40 pcs of 16 foot choicedek boards and a pastle of other fixin's. Marilyn particularly enjoyed rolling the plastic shopping cart onto the wheelchair lift and loading it into the bus then unloading the contents directly inside and then depositing the cart back to the parking lot. My only concern, if you could call it that, is no air suspension, so its a stressfull ride down highway 58 with all the truck damaged concrete. I need to track down a scrapped u-haul truck with air ride and swap suspension. Add a rooftop airconditioner and a bit of soundproofing, a decent sound system, window tinting and a cream colored paint job and I'm in like the proverbial Flynn. I've posted pics of Lola on the gallery here:
http://www.skoolie.net/gallery2/Lola