BURNINGMAN 2007

[lapeer20m]

no trailer this year. I am pulling a a chevy S 10 as far as chyenne wyoming for one one of my good friends. I'm hauling the truck under protest however, i really am not a fan of pulling vehicles with a tow bar.

The bus pulled out of the station (my house) about 630 am...only 30 minutes behind schedule. We are currently cruising along I-80 in illinois nearing the iowa border, exit 33 to be exact. The weather has been a bit rainy today, constructruction in a few places was a bit of a drag, but they finally got that multi-year construction project just outside of chicago finished! No bus problems so far, only had 1 fillup so it's difficult to estimate mileage. I calculated out 8.2 mpg for the first tank. That's about 2 mpg better than i normally get. One thing i'm doing different is keeping the rpms down a couple hundred below the govenor. We're comparatively light this year, plus i've turned up the hp on the injector pump since last years burn so we can really cruise up the hills. We'll see how she does when we get to the mountains...In the pWast i mostly drove her with the pedal to the metal all the time..with the hp increase we can keep the throttle about 3/4 and get the same speed on flat ground.

There are a total of 8 passengers including the driver, only about 7 bicycles, and way more "stuff" than any 8 people really need for a 2 week 5K mile roadtrip.

I'll post photos at some point

wish us luck!

[BassnTruck]

Originally Posted by Elliot Naess

Just like in any other city of 40.000 with real emergency needs, BM stongly discourages private vehicles from resembling emergency vehicles.

Guess my bus it out then. I like the paint job.

[lapeer20m]

it's a terrible crime, but i'm using the internet while at burningman.

the bus survivved the journey with pretty much no problems. We took the dreaded jungo road which is about 100 miles of dirt. it took 2:34 which is less than half the time it would take to drive around the long way. I'll definately take jungo home, and probably take it back out here next year depending what bus i have......

the man burned on monday, that was pretty crazy. Good thing the bm rangers were the ones that caught the guy who did it and not the burningman DPW guys. The DPW guys aren't even human, they are a ruff and tumble breed of hard core workers. They probably would have killed the arsonist.

the burn is going great for me, i'm just escaping the sun for a few hours now.

I've burned about 7 gallons of fuel in my eu2000 geni so far and she's ran pretty much non-stop. I have a freezer, the jacuzzi, some floresent lights and a few other things that run most of the time.

and as far as yoru bus that looks like an old army ambulance, it is welcome at burningman. You can't have an art car that drives around the event that looks like an emergency vehicle, but you could certianly have yoru bus parked at your camp.

i'll post on the way home to update everyone on our progress, and hopefully a few photos

[lapeer20m]

i'm trapped inside the bus because of a big dust storm right now, so i thought i'd post some photos of the journey so far....I appologize to the dialup guys...

I've driven through my fathers driveway tons of times with the bus. With the bikes piled on the roof i didn't quite clear the cable tv wire. Glad it wasn't electric!...........



here's the salt flats just outside of slc



stopped on a mountain pass to make sure these guys wiht the white bus were ok...they were just overheated and waiting to cool down



JUNGO ROAD!!!











i was concentrating hard....just like you do when driving in a bad snowstorm




the last 50 miles of the road got a lot narrower





it took just over 2.5 hours to navigate the dreaded jungo road...i'll do it again next year depending what bus i'm driving!

here is the bus on the open playa before we got into the event









i'll do more photos later

[Abbott]

Great pics!

[lapeer20m]

we've been on our way home for over 24 hours now. We left black rock city about 0600 on monday, then took jungo road back to winnemucca nevada where we took showers at a flying J. No problems to report so far, we survived the hill climb out of slc....for those of you who have driven a bus east on I 80 out of salt lake you'll understand what i'm talking about. It's the most difficult of the hills to climb on the entire trip.

right now we're approaching lincoln nebraska. Average speed including stops is above 52 mph from winnemucca to here. Fuel economy is a suprising 8.1 mpg for the return trip overall. Not sure why i'm getting such good fuel economy, we're not much lighter than we were on the way out, and we're less aerodynamic as we have more stuff on the roof rack than before.

i'll try to post some photos after i get home. my camera is packed away now and not easy to access.

if all goes as planned, we'll be home around noon tomorrow (wednesday)

wish us luck!

[lapeer20m]

update:

we're about 200 miles from chicago. We finally wimped out and stopped to eat a sit down meal. Still averaging above 50 mph including stops.

can't wait to get home and get the ol girl cleaned out. I am takign the bus to a breast cancer fund raiser on the 15th. Then it's time for an extreme makeover including repainting the exterior, new fabric on the interior ect, then to sell her on ebay so i can go get that 60 footer!

we should get home a little earlier than i originally thought if all goes as planned....

someday i wanna build a skoolie with highway gears and either a 643 or manual gearbox. This bus isn't bad, but i think i could nearly double my fuel mileage with "highway" drivetrain.

[boojiewoojie]

Looking forward to some more pictures!
We came through I-80 about a month ago- The climb outside SLC is indeed a bear. Out of curiousity, what was your slowest speed going up the mountain?
Rick
Oh... Good luck!!

[lapeer20m]

i'm not sure what my fastest speed could have been up the hill outside of slc. I downshifted to a lower gear, and soon caught up to a slower moving semi truck. I could have passed him, but i chose to stay behind him all the way up the hill, i figured my bus would appreciate it. I think we were cruising about 35 mph. slow and steady wins the race!

we just arrived home a little while ago. here are the numbers:

Miles from winnemucca to home: 2025
Average speed while moving: 56.0
Average speed including stops: 50.4
Hours: 36:10
time spent not moving 3:57
Mileage,.....i have to calculate the exact number, but it's in the 7.5 mpg range

I'm tired!

We had 2 problems on the last leg of the trip. The alternator stopped charging when the rpm's went above ~1500....i thought it might be a loose belt, so i tightened the belts but that didn't fix the problem. It was about 2 am just past chicago. I started the geni and used the battery charger to keep everything happy. The batteries took 40 amps of current for most of the next 6 hours home.....now i'm thinking it oculd be a battery, i'll figure it out later this week.

Problem number 2....i got pulled over for only the 2nd time in the 30K miles or so i've been driving buses. It was motor carrier division guy from the michigan state police. He insisted that RV's and even pickup trucks pulling a trailer with a gvw over 10K pounds have to weigh in at weigh stations. He kept us for about 30 minutes, but didn't write me a ticket. I'm gonna research that one, i was certian up until this incident that recreational vehicles are exempt from weigh stations....but he's the motor carrier division guy and that's what he does for a living, so he probably knows what he's talking about.....to be continued....

[wmah]

I thought rvs are exempt too. I see signs at a lot of them that say rvs exempt. It could be since it was dark out and he saw a bus going through that maybe he thought it was a bus carrying passengers for hire, and he came up with a white lie to make himself look good.

[Steve]

Originally Posted by wmah

and he came up with a white lie to make himself look good.

Or to see if the people inside were on drugs...

[lapeer20m]

i spent an hour or so searching for the motor vehicle code online and cannot find any official data on motorhomes/rv's at weigh stations in michigan. All the forums i run across say rv's are exempt. I think i'll stop by the local michigan state police post and ask them. If they say i'm exempt, i'll have them help me find the law so i can print it out and keep a copy in the bus. if RV's are not exempt, then i'll start going through weigh stations in michigan.

Driving to bm the past four years = 20,000 miles, plus i've driven just this bus at least 10K miles not going to the burn, and i've never had a problem not stopping at a weigh station.

i do think if it was daytime and they could clearly see the bus they would not have pulled me over. Part of me thinks that he was really excited to catch one that didnt stop and was dissapointed when he saw my non-commercial plate.

PHOTOS: these are in no partuclar order

see all of my 2007 bm skoolie photos: http://www.skoolie.net/gallery2/v/Sk...m07/?g2_page=4

here a shot of the line of cars waiting to get into burningman. you can' tell from the photo, but the line was over 7 miles long



somewhere on the playa



on the road



still waiting in line




A nite or two before the total lunar eclipse



we dropped the silver truck off at my buddys' house here in wyoming on the way out

[the_experience03]

For what it's worth my interpretation of Minnesota law says that if the trailer is over 10,000 lbs you're commercial, whether you're commercial or not. That is also the word I got from the lady at the DMV. At the same time you never see people pulling 3 Jeeps up to the OHV park or a big fiver to the lakes getting pulled over.

[Elliot Naess]

Millicent is safely home from BM.

Met Jason there.

More later. Must sleep.....

(Woohoo!)

[Abbott]

Originally Posted by Elliot Naess

Millicent is safely home from BM.

Met Jason there.

More later. Must sleep.....

(Woohoo!)

Good news that. Did you notice anything I should know about what to do/not to do when raising the roof? I plan to try and get mine raised this coming weekend.

[Elliot Naess]

Well, I'm still comatose, but how about... go higher! Upper bunks need air space above, or it becomes too hot and stuffy up there. This must be balanced with the need for any kind of installation on top of the roof, but we are legally safe to 13 feet six inches, and 14 feet most places. So if I were doing Millicent over, I would probably go up three feet instead of just two.

I still got 9 MPG, so wind resistance did not totally kill my milage.

Must sleep more....

[Elliot Naess]

OH, Abbott:

The skin. All that new sheet aluminum skin on Millicent rattles and booms and oil-cans and thunders like a Jamaican oil drum orchestra. The rattle-can foam I sprayed into the seams helped a lot, but you may want to use a glue when you install the skin. And the skin needs support in the "middle" -- so it does not oil-can. That is, unless you use "plate" instead of "sheet" for skin, but that would be heavy and expensive. I don't know yet what I'll be using, but perhaps liquid nails and solid foam, or bulk spray in foam, or....

There you are: the "booming" of the new skin was the main complaint.

[Abbott]

Originally Posted by Elliot Naess

OH, Abbott:

The skin. All that new sheet aluminum skin on Millicent rattles and booms and oil-cans and thunders like a Jamaican oil drum orchestra. The rattle-can foam I sprayed into the seams helped a lot, but you may want to use a glue when you install the skin. And the skin needs support in the "middle" -- so it does not oil-can. That is, unless you use "plate" instead of "sheet" for skin, but that would be heavy and expensive. I don't know yet what I'll be using, but perhaps liquid nails and solid foam, or bulk spray in foam, or....

There you are: the "booming" of the new skin was the main complaint.

Thanks for that Elliot. I was wondering how that aluminum was working. I have 7 4' X 8' sheets of 20 gauge cold roll I will be using. I will need to pick up a couple more sheets to finish. I also have 60' 2 3/4" X 1 1/4" tubing for the uprights and bracing and 60' of 1 1/4" square tubing for the new door frame, window frames and bracing. I already have the back cap lose and I finished cutting the front cap loose today with a cutting torch (low flame) and a skill saw with a carborundum blade. The trick was not to damage the windshield with the slag from the torch. Duct tape, cardboard and a couple pieces of old metal flashing I had laying about worked ok for that.

I was also able to get two of my lifting devices (3/4" allthread) welded on, I plan to build the other two tomorrow and add some diagonal bracing...I am not sure I trust the 1/4" angle iron by itself without a gusset. I am expecting to raise the roof 18" this weekend. A rough measurement shows that an 18" lift (approximately) will work out with the 48" wide sheets of skin without trimming them.

[Elliot Naess]

The all thread jacks should do the job -- if the welds are adequate. You might want to "follow the top up" with wood blocks or something in case an angle tears loose.

And... do you have adequate guidance so the entire top, perched on just the all thread, cannot rack over and tumble to the #$%^%$# ground? The top is a rather large sail. Also, gravity can/will pull those all thread screws over in a jiffy if they are not abso-freaking-lutely vertical.

Please consider rigging some sort of very stable guides like I did.

[Abbott]

Yes, I am going to add angle iron guides with welds and clamps to (two) to four posts, plus the four all thread lifts with guides. I plan to put a 2X4 block under the bottom piece of angle (to the floor) then gusset the top piece of 1/4" angle iron with a piece of light gauge angle. If all goes as planned I should have the roof up and be welding in the window post extensions no later then this coming Sunday.