Machine Shop Bus

[graybus]

Years ago I converted a 1965 Ford, 66 passenger school bus into a machine shop. I had the bus for 35 years. It was not a mobile machine shop, but a way of moving my "heavy hobby" from place to place. Recently Machinist's Workshop magazine asked me to do an article on it, and the article has just been published in the Feb./March 2019 issue of the magazine. It has a "Rod Bender" project on the cover. You normally find this magazine in some of your larger book/magazine stores. If you're into buses, but not necessarily living in them, it is an interesting article. Any questions about it you can certainly email me through this forum and then we can take the messages private. The bus was 29,500 lbs. (9,500 lbs overweight) and was powered by a Ford Medium Duty 330 engine, 160 HP, with a 5 speed trans, 2 speed rear end. When I finally retired (the bus retired too) we moved 20,000 lbs of tools out of it into a shop building. The article has pictures and some diagrams, nothing technical, just a photo log of what it looked like. Enjoy!

Mike Fendley, Maysville, Iowa

[Oldcarnut]

Could you possibly post a picture of it here? Would be neat to see.

[graybus]

I thought of posting a picture - but which picture? You cannot see all the tools with one shot, there is a floor plan with tools listed, there is a cutaway hand drawing of the interior of the bus, there is the exterior of an ugly gray bus, then there is the picture of it half underwater with a turtle on the hood. There are many pictures of the interior of the bus mainly focusing on various tools. My problem - which one do I post? The magazine article has many pictures of the bus (8 pages) but they still could not publish all that I had. If you can email me privately, I can send you what you would like to see. Mike