My wife and I purchased a 2000 E450 shuttlebus (7.3 L turbo diesel) last week. We have 2 kids (10 and 7) and live in BC, Canada. This is mostly her dream and so I'm supporting her by agreeing to make this plunge. We'd like to make it an all season camper as we hope to use it just as much in the winter as the summer. So many decisions and research! how far do we strip it? do we insulate? what about the r value of the windows. Do we keep the AC unit? 5 of the windows have been replaced with plexi-glass. Do we replace (they seemed noisy).
We admittedly rushed in and didn't get a inspection beforehand. The odometer shows 241,000 km and I purchased the carfax after the fact and it showed that it clocked 320,000 km in the first 4 years of its service life, then went quite for about 5 years, then re-started at 169,000 km in 2010 and it shows pretty good service history from 2010 to 2020 when it was operated as a wine tour bus. As it was commercially registered, it had to have a safety inspection done every 6 months. We bought it off someone who bought it from the wine tour company and was going to use it for mountain bike tours but then covid hit.
It runs, drives, and stops as the previous owner took us for a drive in it but we have yet to drive it ourselves. It has very good condition tires. The calipers look old. The engine bay and motor itself are dry and very clean. My wife did talk to the wine tour operator about its its history and she mentioned something about the transmission being redone in 2015. It's going in for a full mechanical inspection next week. So far we've torn out all the seats and poles as well as the led light sign up front.
The rear gear ratio is apparently 4.59 and with the 225/75 16 tires (just over 19 inches), I'm concerned about highway mpg...
Wish us luck!