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Old 09-18-2013, 05:40 PM   #21
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Re: New Skoolie on the Loose! 1974 Crown Supercoach

Quote:
Originally Posted by gusbus
That is an awesome story.
I second that!

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Old 09-18-2013, 06:28 PM   #22
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Re: New Skoolie on the Loose! 1974 Crown Supercoach

x 3 on the story!
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Old 09-18-2013, 07:42 PM   #23
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Re: New Skoolie on the Loose! 1974 Crown Supercoach

Your bus is a beauty. It was a brave thing to drive across the country in a bus.

I would not take mine out that far, although, I did a 520 mile bus drive a few months ago to get to where I am now. It was harrowing. The steering is sloppy.

i have driven across the country 12 times, usually in cars, but once in my 1966 Chevy camper truck that is pictured on my thread. My last trip was last year in a small pickup truck.

That bus that you have is the most beautiful bus. I love it's roundness.

You have done a good thing.
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Old 09-18-2013, 07:56 PM   #24
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Re: New Skoolie on the Loose! 1974 Crown Supercoach

Nice score. Picking up a bus on the other side of the country is part of the adventure. Everyone needs to do it at least once.
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Old 09-19-2013, 05:28 AM   #25
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Re: New Skoolie on the Loose! 1974 Crown Supercoach

congrates, love the way a crown looks
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Old 09-19-2013, 08:49 PM   #26
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Re: New Skoolie on the Loose! 1974 Crown Supercoach

That's a nice bus Inkblots! Congratulations ! Glad it all worked out for you. Driving all the way from CA without any trouble is testimony that it's in good shape. This will be a fun project. Please keep us updated with lots of pics.
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Old 09-26-2013, 12:37 PM   #27
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Re: New Skoolie on the Loose! 1974 Crown Supercoach

So where are you at in the conversion, we need photos
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Old 09-26-2013, 12:47 PM   #28
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Re: New Skoolie on the Loose! 1974 Crown Supercoach

So here's the update...

There isn't one! Pulling up the rubber floor in this thing is a nightmare. Whatever they used oh so close to 40 years ago must have been a combination of magic and permanence because this stuff just does not want to leave. On the plus side, the plywood below looks very good.



The plan for today is to remove the curved metal sheeting that runs from the chair rail to the floor. It is screwed into the chair rail, stapled, and some kind of red glue was used to seal it down. Once that is removed we can pull the rest of the remaining rubber up, fill the holes left by the seats and start putting in the plywood and then the flooring, as well as start framing stuff out. We are using the click together wood laminate flooring (it looks like clip board material on one side) in entire bus except the bathroom which will be tile. Any suggestions as the best way to put this stuff in?






We'll also be separating the seats today to take to the scrap yard. Hopefully we'll get a couple bucks we can put back into the bus.



The original plan was to remove the inner skins on the walls and ceiling, insulate, then recover everything. This plan has now changed based solely on the fact that this bus is built like a brick s%#t house! Instead we will frame out the walls and insulate the space available. As a temporary fix for the ceiling we are going to carpet over it. Once we've traveled some and gotten life more sorted out we may revisit the ceiling (especially if we decide later to spend any significant time in New England in winter!). We've also decided to keep the rear heater in place (just clean it up really well) since it's not in the way and still works. Next two weeks are going to be a challenge!

Sorry if these pictures are huge guys, photobucket is not being very cooperative!
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Old 09-26-2013, 12:58 PM   #29
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Re: New Skoolie on the Loose! 1974 Crown Supercoach

looks good
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Old 09-26-2013, 01:34 PM   #30
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Re: New Skoolie on the Loose! 1974 Crown Supercoach

Forge onward! I'm chomping at the bit to get mine home and get started on IT!
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Old 10-01-2013, 12:19 PM   #31
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Re: 1974 Crown Supercoach - Update 10/1

Update!

I know everyone likes pictures, so I've been trying to take a bunch - sorry if the page takes awhile to load!

All but 4 bus seats and a few misc car parts are all gone to the scrap yard. $87.40 for 940 lbs of steel! Pretty much paid for lunch and the gas to get to and from the yard at least. It took almost 4 hours, a good old fashioned rubber mallet and a box cutter to dismantle the seats. With this bus it seems like the more complicated the tool, the less you get done. Brute force, patience and trial and error are the fastest way. It's an old bus and she likes things done the old fashioned way apparently!

We pulled up the curved bottom edge to the floor - "coving" so I've learned; and ho-lee-s#$%!! What a process. Angle grinder took care of some of the gulmite screws holding it to the chair rail, floor scraper dealt with the adhesive and staples holding it to the wood floor but really the easiest and fastest way to get rid of it was that rubber mallet again and a prybar. There was a gap between the plywood and the inner skin of the body so we great foamed there and in the holes in the floor from the bus seats. We had planned on taking up the entire rubber floor, but it doesn't smell and is if nothing else a tiny barrier between the floor and the wood, and is an absolute nightmare to remove, so we left about 3/4 of it. Putting in the rest of the sub floor today, and possibly starting on the click floor tonight.

A few notes about this bus:
I haven't found single a rivet yet. Just about everything is done with Gulmite screws. http://www.nomadicista.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1270 So far all we've needed to get rid of them is the angle grinder and mallet.

The "inner skin" of the bus you see in pictures is not the inner skin at all. Below the chair rail is the inner skin, so there are walls, about an inch gap, the inner skin, then about an 1"+ to the exterior body of the bus. There is a big gap between the ceiling panels and the actual roof also. I would love to insulate these areas with spray foam at some point, but the thought of pulling all that apart is scary.


I'm trying to post pictures in order but photobucket likes to do things it's own way.

First off, this is the rear bumper - does anyone know what this is?



2nd question - I want to be able to pull a trailer or car 4 down. From what I can tell, mounting a class 3 hitch to the bottom of the trunk probably isn't the best idea in the world. The bumper and trunk bottom are so low, and my truck is so high (the bottom of the doors are 24" off the ground) that I am really stumped. Clearly i need a smaller vehicle to tow, but how the hell would I tow it in the first place is the real question.



Only way I know to tow a truck like this is on a trailer... The trailer we have now plus the truck is 7500lbs even. The trailer is too small to hold the truck anyway, so we either need a bigger one or a different vehicle.


Sometimes working at night isn't so bad:


Trying to remove the coving:


Part of the remaining coving on the left, the chair rail, inner skin and the original wood floor (before we cleaned it)


Gone! Finally


The wig wag! When your air pressure starts to drop, the wig wag falls. Stays tucked up to the left if you're good to go.


We've been having great weather to work on the bus, sunny with little puffy clouds. Then you see these in the sky and after a couple hours it's cloudy. Yuck.


Found a little friend while I was stripping seats:


I tried not to make a mess with the seats but...


This is what they looked like under the foam. I didn't pull off the wood and leather for the scrap yard, I was just too tired.


At the scrap yard - never been to one like this so i thought it was fascinating.


Bye bye seats!


Great Stuffing:


Belly of the Beast - that wood cover is probably 1.5" thick.


Working on the sub floor:


Making sure it fits:


Eventually I'll post some pictures of our trip from picking up the bus, but I have to get back to work. Clock is ticking!
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Old 10-02-2013, 10:56 AM   #32
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Re: 1974 Crown Supercoach - Update 10/1

Looks like you are making great progress! The round pipe on the bottom of the trunk was put on for pulling or pushing the bus around the yard or shop if it wouldn't run. It is threaded on the inside and they would screw a tow ring into it.

The main frame of the Crown ends right after the rear axle at the fuel tank. The smaller frame under the trunk is there just to support the trunk assembly area. The cheapest estimate I got for a tow apparatus that would be hooked to the main fram was about $1,400 from a body works shop here.

Good luck on your conversion, I'm looking forward to seeing the progress
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Old 10-02-2013, 11:00 AM   #33
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Re: 1974 Crown Supercoach - Update 10/1

looking good; seats are gone now...they sure looked like SS

all the hand rails and other SS I had I kept separate at scrap yard
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Old 10-02-2013, 12:10 PM   #34
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Re: 1974 Crown Supercoach - Update 10/1

Quote:
This is what they looked like under the foam. I didn't pull off the wood and leather for the scrap yard, I was just too tired.
What you had in your bus was pleather not leather but don't tell anyone because they will try to steal it to make motorcycle jackets. It's very, very expensive stuff.
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Old 10-03-2013, 09:55 PM   #35
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Re: 1974 Crown Supercoach - Update 10/1

Quote:
Originally Posted by browncrown
Looks like you are making great progress! The round pipe on the bottom of the trunk was put on for pulling or pushing the bus around the yard or shop if it wouldn't run. It is threaded on the inside and they would screw a tow ring into it.

The main frame of the Crown ends right after the rear axle at the fuel tank. The smaller frame under the trunk is there just to support the trunk assembly area. The cheapest estimate I got for a tow apparatus that would be hooked to the main fram was about $1,400 from a body works shop here.

Good luck on your conversion, I'm looking forward to seeing the progress

Thank you!! We are working on getting a smaller vehicle that might be light enough for a bumper pull or some type of crafted device. We'll be taking it up to see family here shortly and I'm going to visit an uncle that owns 18 wheelers. I'm hoping he can figure something out. We've decided to sell the big truck and get something smaller for the sake of the bus.

Quote:
Originally Posted by bansil
looking good; seats are gone now...they sure looked like SS

all the hand rails and other SS I had I kept separate at scrap yard
Whatever these things were made of was really heavy and not worth a damn!

Quote:
Originally Posted by crazycal
Quote:
what you had in your bus was pleather not leather but don't tell anyone because they will try to steal it to make motorcycle jackets. It's very, very expensive stuff.
Lol! Yes it is definitely pleather, but I forgot the " " in my post! I actually saved enough seat covers to repurpose into the ugliest emergency back up curtains. They aren't pretty but they might help if it was really cold!


Progress has been slow the last few days. We've been working on sprucing up the Bronco as its now on Craigslist.
http://raleigh.craigslist.org/cto/4091904753.html

I'm sad to see her go, but we need something better on gas and better for the bus.
Plan for the next few days is to finish putting the floor in, frame out the front wheel wells so we can install the couch and chair (temporarily), build a barrier to keep our cats away from the drivers area, and make curtains for all the windows in the bus.

Score of the day: we got 87 yards of fabric and a 1x1 box of elastic band (looks like the top of men's underwear: for $50 at a warehouse sale i found on craigslist. This means i should be able to make all the curtains we need and recover the couch.

Lots of work to do so I better get off aforementioned couch!!
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Old 10-05-2013, 10:45 AM   #36
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Re: 1974 Crown Supercoach - Update 10/1

UPDATE! We have a locking front door!

While we were working on the front door (bending back the lip so we could fit a piece of wood there) I was taking pictures, trying to demonstrate the progress and I took this one:

Yup definitely didn't know there was a spider on my hand until my camera froze the image on my screen.

In progress door:

We're going to snip off the extra bolt length paint the wood black to match the door, add some weatherstripping to the top and voila, we have a functional locking door!



Today we'll finish putting in the floor hopefully...
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Old 10-05-2013, 12:54 PM   #37
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Re: 1974 Crown Supercoach - Update 10/5

If the push pull points were strong enough to move the bus around the yard, they will be strong enough to tow a small car with a tow bar. A trailer with a heavy tongue weight is what you want to avoid.

When I drove tow truck some cars like the Volkswagen's use the same system for recovery points still. Pushing and pulling they are extremely strong. You just don't want something that weighs 500 pounds pulling it down against the way it was built.

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Old 10-14-2013, 02:06 AM   #38
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Re: 1974 Crown Supercoach - Update 10/14

We have a floor!

...And I only have one crappy picture. Sorry guys!

Still have to do the engine hatches, but we're almost there.

Aside from that we have part of the front barrier up (to keep the cats in).
Tomorrow we have to finish the barrier and do something about window coverings and start putting things in the actual bus.
Everything we put in is going to be temporary because we're hitting the road in 2,
maybe 3 days... Yikes.

Once we get to our destination (my mom's house) we're going to paint the bus if it's warm enough. My mom is donating some extra "taupe" paint they used to paint the aluminum siding on their house this year, so we're hoping there's enough to do the whole bus. If not, we'll make up the difference with some good old fashioned rustoleum from HD.

I was hoping we'd be able to start framing when we got to her house, but we ran into some issues and are now flat broke.
We decided not to sell my truck after all, which is fantastic, but before that was decided we got an offer and the guy was supposed to be coming Tuesday. After I confirmed he was coming, the damn radiator in the truck busted. Emergency trip to advance, $200 and 45 minutes later, she was running better than ever. Later that night we decided to sell our trailer - the Bronc (Betty) doesn't fit on it, we can't pull it behind the bus, and our grandparents that live a mile away have a trailer we can borrow whenever, so it's now for sale! (http://raleigh.craigslist.org/hvo/4125065153.html)
Once the trailer is sold we're going to try to find a little Ford ranger type truck that we can tow 4 down and keep Betty for fun/heavy duty towing/bad weather/emergencies/zombie apocalypse.

I was hoping the bus would be further along by now, but I'm thrilled that I get to keep my truck.

In celebration of keeping Betty, we decided to goof off in the yard this afternoon and our roommate had the brilliant idea to drive his truck through the muddy part of our yard, and got stuck.



Problem solved! There are now even bigger ruts then ever, but he had a solution for that too:

May i present "Redneck Landscaping" with a Ford ranger hood and some rope!


It was a fun day. I have some pictures (and will take some more of the bus tomorrow) but they aren't on photobucket yet.

Hope everyone in skoolie land is doing well!
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Old 10-14-2013, 05:34 AM   #39
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Re: 1974 Crown Supercoach - Update 10/14


Ya'll are crazy
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Old 10-17-2013, 02:49 PM   #40
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Re: 1974 Crown Supercoach - Update 10/14

Quote:
Originally Posted by bansil

Ya'll are crazy
Crazy is probably an understatement lol

So we've named the bus! She is now "The Magic Bungalow!"

We are also now on the road, heading to the great white north.
Three people (we picked up a friend on the way) and 4 cats
The cats are doing surprisingly well. The boys don't care at all, they've been wandering around, looking out the windows, and generally scoping the scene and enjoying the ride. The girl kitties stay under the couch while we're moving (until we block it in), but there's been no howling, growing or flipping out at all.

Since we ran out of time we had to pretty much toss everything in, bolt it down and run, but it's super cozy and it's really nice to not need a hotel that takes pets. We are so happy with this bus!!


The Magic of velcro, staples, and fabric. Voila!


Stopping for the night in Laurel, MD.


If anyone driving to or from DC, Laurel is a good place to stop. The Silver Diner has THE best food - it's delicious, healthy, and a lot of it's organic. We had a Philly cheesesteak omelette, caramel French toast and corned beef hash at the table and everyone was pleased and stuffed!


They only venture to the dash when we're stopped




We were gonna give this Lil guy away, but I don't think we can... 4 cats in a bus isn't toooooo many right? Lol


Lil dude taking care of Zebbie, who has been behind the couch since we let them out of the crate (in the crate was the only time anyone meowed)


Lil dude napping


Lil dude and Ollie claimed the couch


Not much to take pictures of on 95N, everything on this road is boring to new, but probably because I've done the NC to MA drive many times..! There will be lots of pictures coming however, nothing beats Massachusetts at Halloween time!
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