The Mighty Columbia is a 1995 Thomas WestCoastER that I bought at auction from the Los Angeles Unified School District.
It has a Cat 3116 engine with an Allison MT640 transmission (with the handle-type shifter, not the cool push-button kind).
It came with what looked like 2 AC units hooked into the engine, but that part failed on the first day of driving. I thought it was the alternator, which would have been worse. The heater makes the bus uncomfortably warm in very short order.
It came with 4 batteries, most about 10 years old, and two of them were swollen and leaking. Those got replaced on Day Two. (Yes, it needed to be jump-started at the auction yard.)
There are 4 locking doors on the single giant pass-through storage bay.
There was no cup-holder in the cab area, nor any good spot to put my water bottle, so it immediately fell down the steps to the service door. A good cup-holder is priority #1 for a road trip.
Stereo present; non-functional. Not even radio. No PA mic or anything like that, though there appears to be stuff for that.
Instrument cluster is Not Great. Seems like the speedometer only tells the correct speed 50% of the time. Tach and battery gauges seem good, but transmission temp is inoperative.
Tires look great!
Rear hatch
definitely leaks, forward hatch probably leaks. All the windows are tinted and in great shape for their age.
This is the starting point for
The Mighty Columbia... no conversion done yet.
...and away we go!
Linear Mode
