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Old 01-08-2017, 07:58 PM   #41
Bus Nut
 
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Join Date: May 2015
Location: Minnesota
Posts: 502
Year: 92
Coachwork: Thomas Built
Chassis: International 3800
Engine: DTA360 5.9L
Rated Cap: 77
damn good job. I wish i knew my engine like that.

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Old 01-08-2017, 10:21 PM   #42
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Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: Columbus, Ohio
Posts: 142
Year: 1992
Coachwork: Fisher Body
Chassis: GM "B" Platform
Engine: 350 TBI Chevrolet
Rated Cap: 8
Wow, Could be why it sat for so long too. What in the world does the oilpan look like on this pancake'd Detroit?
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Old 01-27-2017, 08:29 PM   #43
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Join Date: Jan 2015
Location: Oakland, Ca
Posts: 58
Chassis: Crown Supercoach
Engine: Detroit Diesel 6-71 Mid-ship
Rated Cap: 78
Interior Updates

Well, California's drought is over. It's been raining out here for weeks, so I've taken shelter inside. Even got some work done.

First up, paint. I just could not live with that "middle-school locker room green" so I bought an airless sprayer and went at it.



I spent a solid week sanding and cleaning and masking for prep. In the end, it came out "OK" ... but honestly I was hoping I could get it smoother, especially in the back. But at some point, you just gotta keep moving forward.

I didn't do the rear escape door yet, so here's some contrast between the colors



Next, I insulated the walls below the windows. I used rigid foam for mold resistance and so I can disassemble things later if I need to rewire or rust-bust or anything like that.



I was torn here. I really like this textured chromed wall stuff, but it was in pretty bad shape (darn gum-chewing kids again) and riveted to the structural wall like crazy. That, plus the lack of insulation led me to this plan of attack. I made furring strips by tracing the curve of the bus walls on some cardboard with an improvised divider -- a sharpie duct-tapped to a stick -- and then cut the curve with a bandsaw. I also pulled out the floor-to-wall curve, so I'll be able to build the final wall square to the floor, gaining a bit of space and making fitting furniture easier.

I used R-5 xps 1" thick (aka "the pink stuff", aka the "blue stuff"). It comes in 4x8 sheets. Four was plenty for me. It's much easier/less horrible to work with then fiberglass batts imho.

Lastly, I scored this EPA-certified wood stove from the Habitat for Humanity Restore for $100!



Big enough for a house, but I don't care. To me, it's not home without a woodstove.

Forgot to take a picture, but I was also gifted a massive, RV-style, fixed propane tank that I'll mount once the mud drys out a bit.

Next up is getting all this big stuff in the bus! My crown is most-defiantly NOT ADA compliant. Both the front and back doors are only 22" wide... too narrow for either the wood stove or the cook stove I have for the project, and probably the shower pan, and other big furniture items i want inside.

I have a few ideas on how to get stuff inside. I could pull one of the windshields... but the consequences if I break the glass in removal are pretty expensive. And I dislike working with auto-glass anyway.

I thought about reworking the rear door, making it into a double door. That could work, but getting the hinges and hardware to work seems like it'll be time-consuming.

So my leading plan is to cut out the rear metal where the "bad-kids" seat all the way aft is. The "trunk" on the crown is massive -- I think I've read that school districts could order buses with a rear-mounted engine -- and all that separates it from the main passenger compartment is this sheet metal. I've looked closely, and it's not structural. So I think I could cut it out, bring the big stuff in via the "trunk", and then re-weld it into place, or rework it anyway, so that the bikes fit better in the trunk.

Crown owners, how did you get the big stuff in?
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Old 01-27-2017, 09:28 PM   #44
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Location: Vacaville, Ca
Posts: 1,634
Year: 1988
Coachwork: Crown / Pusher
Engine: 8.3 Cummins
I'm hoping to get things thru the RV Windows I put in, otherwise windshield it is.
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Old 01-28-2017, 09:03 AM   #45
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Location: Tavares, Florida
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Year: 1996
Coachwork: Bluebird
Engine: Caterpillar 3116
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very cool, gotta follow, and love the wood burning stove.
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Old 01-28-2017, 09:08 AM   #46
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Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: Tavares, Florida
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Year: 1996
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Engine: Caterpillar 3116
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We need a video of the old girl running, are you on Youtube?
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Old 01-28-2017, 01:30 PM   #47
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Location: Tepme AZ
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Year: 1976
Coachwork: Crown
Engine: Detroit Diesel 6-71
Rated Cap: 52 pax
Quote:
Originally Posted by yeggs View Post
Next up is getting all this big stuff in the bus! My crown is most-defiantly NOT ADA compliant. Both the front and back doors are only 22" wide... Crown owners, how did you get the big stuff in?

The rear side door on my 76 Crown is 31" wide and 50" tall. Big enough for anything I needed to move in and out. I'm using a chest freezer as a frig and an apartment sized propane range so nothing in my bus is that big anyway. The mattress will probably be the hardest thing to move in...
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Old 01-29-2017, 12:38 AM   #48
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Great looking bus, now you know the engine inside and out, literally
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Old 02-01-2017, 11:24 AM   #49
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Join Date: Jan 2017
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make sure the stop flap works on the intake in case you get a run away. If it has not lost it's prime and is runable it should start pretty easy. the old fuel should be fine and at worst will stop up the fuel filters if it is contaminated. Get some spares for when the time comes. Oil will look black in a 2 stroke shortly after an oil change... not a problem. straight 671 will hold about 22 qts. Run it a bit then change it out. these motors run forever.
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Old 02-01-2017, 03:13 PM   #50
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Join Date: Jun 2016
Location: Orange County, CA
Posts: 1,356
Year: 1990
Coachwork: Crown, integral. (With 2kW of tiltable solar)
Chassis: Crown Supercoach II (rear engine)
Engine: Detroit 6V92TAC, DDEC 2, Jake brake, Allison HT740
Rated Cap: 37,400 lbs GVWR
I'm surprised that your door is only 22" wide. Both my entrance and emergency doors are exactly 24" wide. When I had Ronco Plastics make my four tanks I told them that if they were even 1/16" larger than 24" I would not be able to get them through the door for temporary storage inside while I made their support frames underneath. My Splendide washer/dryer fitted through the rear door with less than a quarter inch to spare.

I like having enough space between the front door and wheel to have my generator there on a slide-out mount. I've never seen any other bus (except a Neoplan Spaceliner) that has so much space there. For me, a wider door would just be wasted space. It's still slightly disconcerting when I make tight turns and the whole front of the bus swings so wide, sometimes completely over a curb!

John
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Old 02-23-2017, 11:21 PM   #51
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Location: Oakland, Ca
Posts: 58
Chassis: Crown Supercoach
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Fridge

Hey All,

I've been getting a lot done and doing a bad job writing it up. I'll try to write more. I'll get started with this fridge I got off the free section of craigslist:



It's a NorCold RV fridge. It'll run off either propane or 120VAC. It's actually a neat cycle:



That tube on the right side there is a "boiler." In it, a mix of mostly ammonia and a bit of hydrogen (called R717 in the biz) are heated. Then a dark magic of physics, chemistry, and thermodynamics that I can never hope to fully understand happens, I get to say words like "sublimation" and "phase-change" something happens, and a propane flame makes my beer cold. What a time to be alive.

The thing about free things is that they tend to be broken. To me, that's half the fun; the only way I've ever found to learn them fancy science words is by taking sh#& apart and figuring it out. And I've found people to be reluctant to let me tear apart their brand-new whatever to see how it works.

But the crap on the CL free section is mostly things people don't want to pay the garbage man to haul away, so it's prime tinkering material.

Anyway, I plugged it in, and it didn't work. Surprise surprise. So I dove into the electrical:





The four tools I used to get this working. Label maker to keep the wires in order (they were mostly the same color). 12v bench power supply (all the control electronics are 12vdc). Multi tip screwdriver. Infrared thermometer.

Worked my way through the electrical and found the electric heating element had failed and was shorting, blowing a fuse. Easy. New part $35.

Interesting because again, its so counter-intuitive to use heat to make cold. Or, more properly, move heat around. It's all convection that moves the coolant, like those cool patterns the cream makes in my morning coffee. Unlike your home fridge, there is no compressor pump circulating. In this system, it's just pressure and physics. Have to admire the elegance. Anyway, the fridge doesn't care if you use a propane flame or a electric heating element... apply heat at the bottom of the "boiler" pipe, ammonia circulates, and moves hot from inside the fridge to the radiator at the outside top. Neat.

Next up, the propane. I hooked up a 20lbs cylinder, and 12v from the bench supply. Clicky clicky but no fire. Pulled out the burner, cleaned it up with a wire wheel and cleaned the orifice with a welding tip cleaner.



Fire! But the clicker kept trying to ignite the flame even after it was going, and then shut the flame off after about 20 seconds.

So I pulled the igniter and hit it with some 120 sandpaper, and reinstalled. And now it works! So I guess the igniter somehow heats up and changes impedance which the igniter board detects? Never bothered to check the values, probably should have for that scientific method or whatever.

Moral of the story: find free things and fix them. Building skills feels even better then the money you save, and you'll feel like a f-ing ninja when you can improvise a fix in a pinch -- something you can't do if you haven't looked inside before it breaks out there in the world.

Not even sure it's worth the $35 for the ac heating element!
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Old 02-24-2017, 12:07 AM   #52
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Location: Greater Boston
Posts: 504
Some railroads had steam-powered air conditioning for their passenger cars. They had steam lines for heat in the winter, so air conditioning in the summer wasn't much of a stretch.

Steam heat lasted well into the 1970s and 1980s before finally being replaced by electric heat. (Remember that railroad equipment lasts a long time - so it's not as much about the technology changing, but replacing enough of the equipment so the retrofit bill isn't sky-high.)
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Old 02-28-2017, 04:31 PM   #53
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I worked for a while for the Physical Plant at an unnamed major Eastern university located in College Park MD. Back in the late 70s/early 80s we still had large stationary steam-fired ammonia cycle chilled water generators in some buildings. They were getting rid of them one by one because liability and such. People used to die from ammonia leaks in residential refrigerators back in the day; I can't imagine what a catastrophic release of ammonia from one of those puppies might do.

IIRC they were the only reason that the steam plant could not be shut down seasonally.
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