Greeting from Iowa - New Thomas Diesel Pusher Build
Hello all in the skoolie.net community.
I just bought my bus on Friday and have not even picked it up yet. I drove to Silver Lake, IN to Kerlin Bus Sales and found a great bus, test drove it and fell in love with it. After I left (I purposely looked at buses with no way to drive it home) I had them take it to a diesel shop that I chose and had it inspected and it passed admirably. The bus also has all the records of maintenance from the school district neatly documented and included with the bus.
PRIOR to all of this I delved through thread after thread in this community to help me with my decision. Engine size and position, transmission, rear differential, highway geared bus vs city bus, etc. I felt like I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted from copious research from this website prior to even looking at buses proper. I had it narrowed down to two choices and drove an 84 rear and an 84 front engine bus. Decided on rear engine. I am ready to drive this bus home and get at it!!
For $7500, I bought a 2007 Thomas CatC7 84 Passenger rear engine bus. It has allison transmission and 167k miles. It is in beautiful shape inside and out and 70mph on the highway was a breeze at just over 2100 rpm. I am anxious to begin my build. I am an emergency room physician in Iowa and I had seriously considered just buying a class A motor home, but thought that making a bus into a skoolie would be a wonderful project instead. I have a pretty healthy budget for the build and am anxious to do my best to build a very beautiful "not so tiny" home on wheels.
I am sure throughout the build I will be scouring old posts and asking new questions as I (hopefully) transform my bus into a modern beautiful home, albeit one on wheels.
Mark Miner
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