TygerCub's Project

[SeanF]

Congratulations!

[baadpuppy]

Congratulations on your pending purchase. I hope everything goes smoothly. You're way ahead of the game having the seats already removed.

jim

[TygerCub]

I've been alternating between elation and buyer's remorse. But once I get this home, I'm sure everything will work out just fine. There's a lot of background emotional baggage I was carrying around that was making this into a super big deal. But today I gained perspective again and now an look at it like "just another car purchase".

I'm sending the balance to the guy tomorrow. I think I'll use FedEx to make sure we both get a tracking number (so I KNOW he gets the money), and to ensure it is signed for at delivery. I'll probably include a self-addressed, return box for the keys and title. That way I can go ahead and get this thing insured, tagged and on the road as soon as possible. Still may not be able to get up there before the 20th, but at least I'll actually own the thing outright.

Guess it's on to making sure at least one of the dozen floor plans I've fiddled with so far can fit inside this thing.
SO much to DO! So LITTLE time to do it within.

[swinada]

hey CONGRATULAtIONS to your purchase. Looking forward to a well documented conversion

[TygerCub]

(doin' da happy dance)... Received the keys and title in the mail Saturday! WOO HOO!

Called GMAC Insurance and they'll cover me for $550/year. That's a bit more than I was expecting, but no biggie. Went to DMV today to get the title registered in my name and ended up walking out after standing in line for a half hour just to GET A TICKET to then wait to be called. I figure I'll go back tomorrow... but this time have a book to read to pass the time. Nothing worse than sitting with NOTHING to do and no way to be creative while waiting for a elusive number to be called.

Friday after work, Mom will ferry me up to Front Royal where we'll spend the night, pick up the bus Saturday morning, hopefully take a little time to play tourist in the local caverns, then take our time driving home Saturday & Sunday.

I'm getting impatient. Don't know why. I'll have to wait even longer to make a couple more paychecks before I can really get started on anything. But at least I'll have the bus in my possession.

[baadpuppy]

Originally Posted by TygerCub

I'm getting impatient. Don't know why. I'll have to wait even longer to make a couple more paychecks before I can really get started on anything. But at least I'll have the bus in my possession.

Ahh, but once you have the bus, you can sit in it and look at the space and plan. There is so much planning you can do when it is in front of you. You can attack it with a tape measure, and figure out what will and won't work for you. You can put tape down on the floors to get ideas for where things will go. So much fun to be had without spending a penny. Except perhaps on the beverage of choice of course.

Congratulations, and good luck at the DMV. I've been lucky here with my DMV visits. I spend more time standing at the window than waiting.

It's really a good feeling to finally put those tags on your bus and know you're legal and won't be hassled by any cops.

jim

[TygerCub]

Grrrr. This has been an extremely frustrating week!

Monday: I went to the local DMV and waited in the ticket line for forty minutes before giving up. I figured if after forty mintues I was barely half way to the ticket station, then how much longer was I going to have to wait to be called to the service window?!? So, I went home and looked up the other DMV offices in the area. There was a "service station" right down the road from where I worked... Perfect!

Tuesday: I went to the DMV service station down the street from work. The DMV website said they could handle vehicle registrations, just not license renewals. No one was in the lobby. Good sign. I get up to the window and the lady is rather perplexed by the title since she's never seen a bus title before. Neither have I, so I have no idea what's missing. She looks it over... starts putting info into the computer... turns the title over and says I must have the odometer reading. Uh... okay, lemme make a call. I try to reach the original owner, but he's not answering his phone. No biggie, I'll just email him and try again tomorrow....

Wednesday: Got the odometer reading from the previous owner, have already filled out the paperwork, and am good to go! Um, no. Once more, the lady at the service window has problems with entering the data on the title. She calls over another lady to help, and together, they figure out what to enter for a bus. I can't register it as an RV yet because there's nothing inside yet to qualify as an RV. But they finished processing the title, filled out the DMV section on the back, then passed me on to the "pay here" window. The lady at that station was happy to help me. She looked at the title, started entering information, grabbed a couple of tags (ALRIGHT! ) then... Um... this is a BUS? She looked a little confused and called another lady over to help. Behind the silly piece of plexiglass they put over the window to "protect" the people behind the counter, I could only barely catch a few words they were saying. Exemptions? Class A? Do you have any other paperwork with me? Paperwork? I ask... No. Only the title. The nice lady at the other station said that was all that was needed. Phone calls are made as one side of the office tries explain what's going on to the other side of the office. More people start to gather around the computers in an effort to get this thing processed. Heads shake, fingers point, and confused faces abound.

Thursday: The short point to this long ramble... I'm going to have to sit through the hell that is a "full service" DMV. The "service station" doesn't carry bus tags and they can't give me regular ones even though the bus is NOT commercial and does NOT have seating for more than 5 people (including the driver). I MUST get this done today since I'll be leaving tomorow to pick the silly thing up.

And then when I get it home, I'll have to park it in the driveway until I can find yet another place to keep it since the SECOND spot I was going to rent was taken this week.

Why does this have to be so damned difficult?!?!?!

[Griff]

Yeah, TygerCub, it can seem like a rite of passage trying to get your title & tags but hang tough, dude, you'll get those plates and pass your initiation!

Then you can sip your dargeeling in the shade while the poor stick-n-staple folks look wistfully your way!

[Griff]

My Faux Pas!

...and my sincere apologies, TygerCub! (...dudETTE...)

(Thanks for straightening me out there, Vanguy67!)

[SeanF]

Find out if you can get a temporary tag, and avoid the title transfer stuff for now? Just to insure it & drive it home.

Good luck, hang in there
Sean

[TygerCub]

Thanks, guys, for all the encouragement.

You know what? I just said Fukit!... went to B&N yesterday after the whole fiasko, bought a book and told myself to just buckup! That I'd just have tto hurry up and wait (damnit!) at the DMV like every other soul on the peninsula, and this afternoon, at about 4:48 p.m. EST, received my title, tags, and registration.

WOO (de freekin') HOO!

There's a hell of a lot of those "life sux" moments for me these last few months, so my sense of objectivity is strained at times. Sorry to vent quite so much to the board, but since it was about the bus, I felt it was okay to share. Especially since I was sure I wasn't the first, and definitely not the last person to face that type of hassle. We all must pay our dues and deal with whatever life throws at us. I'm just not the type to go down quietly

Things will get better, and worse, and better again. I'm sure of it. In the mean time, I'll offer a bit of blood, buckets of sweat and gallons of tears to BOB the bus. I'm sure he'll understand.

[TygerCub]

Well, yesterday, Mom drove me up to Front Royal where we spent the night, then went to pick up BOB the bus, and drove back today. It took about five hours to go up there Friday. It took a little over eight to come back. And OMG! it was HOT !!!! No air conditioning in the bus, dontcha know. Heat was just coming up in waves from the floor, totally baking my feet. Even though it rained early in the morning, by the time we made it Fredericksburg, the sun was out and doing its best to remind everyone this is finally Summertime.

No "real" problems on the way home. We went to a local Target that was down the street from the original owner's house and I practiced making turns in relatively tight spaces. Almost wiped out one of their signs... but missed it by >> that much << . It was 10 a.m. before we finally headed to the interstate. I was nervous at first about going so slow, but like Mom said, folks are used to going around school buses. I think I'm going to paint a giant yellow arrow on the back pointing to the left and blazon the following under it:

"May as well pass me... I can't go any faster!"

Anyway, things were going okay for the first ten minutes, then... a warning buzzer for the "brake pressure" started to alarm. We pulled over to the side and shut the bus off. Opened the hood and check the fluid. Everything looked fine. We called the original owner who said it had done that to him a couple of times before, but went off after he cut the engine off and then back on again. Not to worry. Okaaaay...

Buttoned everything back up, hopped inside, started everything back up and ... no buzzer. Great! We got back on the road.

Three minutes later, it came back on again. WTF?!?! For various reasons, this weekend is NOT the time to pile even more stress on my mind. I found another spot to pull off and called the original owner again. He said it was odd, but since the levels were all good and the bus was otherwise driving fine, his guess was a bad sensor. I'm not a very trusting soul so I called my cousin to see what HE thought. Luckily, he also believed that it was probably a bad sensor. He reassured me that unless I felt anything happen to the power steering that I would be fine just driving it home. With his reassurance in mind, I just tried to ignore the alarm and felt hyper aware of every vibration, shake and sound the bus made for the first half of the trip. When the rain cleared up and we stopped for lunch, the alarm went off and stayed off for an hour or so. Then it started getting REALLY HOT, and the buzzer came back on again. We stopped for another break (mostly because I was personally overheating as my feet were getting baked) and by the time we started again, the alarm was silent. It pretty much came and went without warning for the rest of the trip. Luckily, the last leg of the trip was silent. I was already stressed out by the traffic, the heat, and personal issues. I counted myself lucky to not have to listen to that thing too.

I had an RV storage place lined up to park BOB, but they closed at 6:00 p.m. and we didn't get into town until 6:20. Bummer! Mom suggested we leave it at the local fire station where she used to work. If I'm lucky, they won't mind the bus being there until Monday afternoon when the RV place should be open. It's gonna be a real PITA to work around the RV place's schedule, but at least I have it home now.

Whew! What a long strange trip this is being...

[Sojakai]

Ick, Pizza Hut. I would setting for one of those BBQ Mini-Stands. Yummy, Hotdogs, Hamburgers, Chicken.

[TygerCub]

I coulda done with a snack bar for sure!

So... today (Monday), my ex and I helped each other ferry vehicles to their appropriate new resting spots. He drove me to the RV yard, and I helped him get his motorcycle to his new house. One less thing to worry about. But I admit the old guy at the RV yard really annoyed the hell outta me with his attitude. He was friendly enough, but had absolutely no faith in me getting BOB turned into anything more than a mess. Granted, it's probably because he's got two buses in there already that are half gutted by someone else with the same idea. He said they'd been that way for several years.

Tough. I'm not that "other person". I'm sick of people being nay-sayers and putting down an idea that's different and outside of main stream society's idea of "how things should be". The more I think about his callous "yeah right" attitude, the more angry I become. What happened to people's sense of adventure and pioneering spirit? People need to crawl outside of their commercially created, prefabricated, neatly packaged little box and take a good look around at the world before it passes them by and they're left standing in the dust wondering what just happened!

I gotta go get something to eat. Sorry, no more pictures. I was too angry then to take any, and am too angry now to type anything cordial or on topic. Y'all have a great evening!

[paul iossi]

you got to love the naysayers, i remember someone telling me that his unconcieved grandchild would be shaving before i could fabricate and license a custom 1 off street legal off road machine, i delivered razors a year later in the wheeler when i picked up the cigar for the first born. sweet revenge

[Duckf00t]

Yep-

All my family thinks we are out of our minds- until I actually drive it up to there house and show them what can be done- I'm sure they have this picture in their minds.



You won't and shouldn't try to make the "blanks" out there uderstand-
Now to explain "blanks" I am also a tattoo artist- Blanks are people who both don't have any tattoos yet somehow know everything about them- most especially why you shouldn't get one... funny how that atitude changes once they breakdown and get one- then tattooing is the greatest thing ever. Hang in there and know you aren't alone.

[TygerCub]

The Partridge Family was only the BEST teenie-bop-pop group on television (next to the Monkeys )!

Think "The Brady Bunch", but WAY cooler!

One thing about that paint job... NO ONE could say they didn't see you coming!

[Papabear]

Ah, The partridge Family...."Come on get happy" Man, I had a crush on Lori. Wanted to get in to her laundry basket for years. She still don't look to bad. And then you put Farrah and Lori together. HOLY $H*T Hold on, I'll be right back.
Back to the point: Don't let them get you down. Not bragging but, if I wanted a $300.000.00 moving stick and staple, I would get one. I prefer the individuality of the skoolie. Building it myself and knowing whats into it and how it ticks.

[Duckf00t]

The paint job was inspired by Piet Mondrian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet_Mondrian
Who knows why- must have been an off set thing- My wife remembers the movie when they picke up their bus an painted it. She admits now even back then she thought about being a skoolie.

The original bus is long gone but many replicas have been made

Hello, world, here's a song that we're singin', c'mon get happy
A whole lotta lovin' is what we'll be bringin', we'll make you happy
We had a dream we'd go trav'lin' together
We'd spread a little lovin' then we'd keep movin' on
Somethin' always happens whenever we're together
We get a happy feelin' when we're singin' a song
Trav'lin' along there's a song that we're singin', c'mon get happy
A whole lotta lovin' is what we'll be bringin', we'll make you happy
We'll make you happy, we'll make you happy

OK I'm all done now I had too

[TygerCub]

May her beautiful soul rest in peace.

And after that sad note... I hijack my conversion thread back our regularly scheduled conversation about BOB the Big Old Bus...

Tomorrow I'm taking BOB by my cousin's shop so he can get a good look at the engine and see if he can trace down why the hydraulic pressure buzzer kept going off for no apparent reason. If there's time - and if I have the energy, and if it doesn't interfere with his work - I'm thinking of crawling under the bus to start brushing off some of the loose rust in preparation of adding an extends/rust prevention. I'll eventually be in a dryer climate, so don't think the rust will advance too fast, but I'd rather be safe and stop the rust now while it's still relatively benign.

If I'm REALLY energetic, I may start tearing out the old carpet and side panels so I can lay down new insulation. That will be about all I can afford to do for the next two weeks. Should keep me busy, though. And I WILL take pictures. Lots-n-lots of pictures.