Well, it's been quite a month. Our last bus day was July 2oth. We were taking possesion of our new place and had to do a massive renovation in 6 days before we moved in. New floors throughout, paint on every surface, bathroom fixtures, carpet in a room, lights n'stuff. So the work on the bus turned out to be an asset in our home renovations becuase of all the new skills and confidence gained.
Anyways, the bus was parked useable. The plumbing system completely installed and finished (or so I thought
), gas and power done, framed and mostly panneled. So we used the bus to move to our new place. We thought all was going well until we unloaded the boxes and bins that were resting on our bed platform until it came into veiw, and we saw the frame had collapsed into itself after having sheared off the screws that were holding it together. All the weight was resting on our plastic 98 gal water tank
! So I quickly jacked it up and realized we had placed about 1500 lbs worth of stuff on the platform during the move. So I didn't feel so bad about my perception about my work quality.
In the end the h20 tank was fine, and I had to tear the bed frame down, and use metal framing hangers to put it back together. I never plan to place that much weight on there again, but it should hold now. It's much beefier.
After the move in, we decided that we should actually use our bus for somthing fun, like say camping. I know a crazy idea, but we never seem to have the time these days. So we headed into the rockies for 5 nights of glorious boondocking. This was our first trip in the new conversion and things went pretty well. After we arrived at our fist spot, it took about an hour of re-tightening a few bits of plumbing and re-attaching a power lead to "super durable superior marine style switch unit"
. It was nice that I hadn't closed up all the walls with sheeting, if I had the simple repairs would have been a large undertaking or have damaged material before I found the leaks. I would recomend a shakedown trip before final pannelling.
All went well until we went to empty the tanks. We covered over 400 km's of rough terrain and somtime during the final day the weight shifted in the holding tanks and they gave out. I approached the tanks to empty them and saw the ends of both tanks hanging far down below the skirting of the bus. They had both given out in the front foot and half and sheered off, cracking where the bend happened. It was dripping and gross, uhggg. So I grabbed my jack and a couple pieces of 2 by 4 to jack the whole thing up. I drained what I could and gave up. We emptied the bus of our things at home and returned it to storage.
After christmas I will get one large (120 plus gallon) stainless steel tank fabricated. I have yet to have a good reason not to combine both grey and black tanks. So if you have any good reasons please post it.
So all in all, I am very happy with my 4 week conversion. It is going to need a bit of attention and a few bits and peices in the spring, but it's usable.
I will try to post some pictures soon of the "final" conversion. Again thanks to all of you for making this such a great resource
. And a special thanks to you steve for creating and keeping up this wonderful resource!
-Richard