1974 Crown - Cloudhorse

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This past March, driving south on CA 395 from Bishop to Aberdeen, with our 3 and 5 year both asking how much longer, I knew there must be a better way. And in fact somewhere I could vaguely remember it. The time 17 years earlier when 13 friends and I each chipped in 60 bucks and bought ourselves a 1973 Gillig we called Millie. For us that was the switch, we stopped asking "how much longer" and instead asked "when do we leave?" I wanted that back.

Moments later, on 395 heading south, in the shadow of Whitney herself, I silently promised my (thankfully) sleeping family I would build them a bus.

Something simple. Something classic. Something with no firmware to update. Something that would let the kids move around along the way. Room for the bikes, raft, climbing gear, fishing rods, wood-stove and clothes line that someday we'll have. Spacious for 4, cozy for 12. Clean and green as we can make it. Tough and enduring. Door-to-door, bumper-to-bumper, fun.

Here goes.

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It was clear there was much to be done.

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But I bought it anyway. For the children.

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And they do seem to really enjoy it, even before it has anything at all done to it. And Elizabeth likes it too. And they named it Cloudhorse, which seems right. It's a girl. Bus personalities are strange.

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(Though they do have me thinking about approach angle.)

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Solved by applying jumper cables directly to starting solenoid.

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Portapotty is probably a sooner than later. For now there's a pee bucket in the stairwell. Gross, I know, but one fire at a time.

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If it was just me, I'd go Unimog. I'm loaning him Cloudhorse for his wedding. Mostly so that he owes me some Unimog miles.

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Heck of a hydraulics package. That's backhoe and hyraulic chainsaw.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/S2...=w1188-h891-no

And front bucket of course.

I'm thinking name of the unimog should be "Progress."

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Neighbor was ready to let go of two nice couches.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/f1...=w1188-h891-no



100 degrees out and waiting in the Safeway parking lot while mom picks up a picnic on father's day. Notice anything missing? Not a single "Are we there yet?" in sight.

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- New Michelin tires are now up front. Steering wheel buzz from the cupped front wheel is gone. Still a howl that might be a front bearing. Guys will get into that tomorrow.
- Getting ready to put the trued-up rear drums back on with new shoes once the rear axle seals are done. Differential cover was also loose. All getting resealed and re-packed.
- We'll get the diff info while repacking, and can continue designing the transmission of the future, but save that for the future. Now that I know the splits (Thanks Deanna) on the T-905 I'm fine with it for the time being. We'll do at least one trip through Sierra to the east side and see how that goes before rebuilding. Still miss the quicker up-shift of a ten speed, but fun before fancy. Maybe we go big-cam? Time will tell.
- And the to-be-expected discovery of at least one more thing once parts come off - a broken leaf on the rear right side. That's one of 15 leaves, so given I'm mostly driving empty, I've decided to wait a few weeks on that one.
- Going to give the clutch-brake a second try and Mike will let it warm up to test this time. He's seen the fault condition, definitely not setup right yet.

[Busmanmoab]

would love to see what your talking about but not all the fotos are coming threw is it just me ??

[M1031A1]

Bunches of broken pics........ Sorry.........

[cadillackid]

what a cool bus!! most lof the pic links are broken like others are saying.. cant wait to see the pics when tyou get them fixed.!

I love these old crowns
-Christopher

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thanks for letting me know.

strange - can see them in my browser.

will change image host.

too bad - this was the easy way, using google photos, which uploads automatically from my phone and has google image search.