We Found Our First Bus!

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After a couple months of searching, we found a suitable bus for our conversion and finished driving it back yesterday!

She’s a 2006 Bluebird International 3300 who as far as I am aware only had the one owner (who was using her up until the start of COVID and was due to retire her this month for the district). It seems like they took very good care of her and they were nice enough to take me for a ride and show me a few of the parts I was unfamiliar with. Aside from some wear and tear, she is pretty immaculate on the inside, looks to have almost zero rust underneath, has two working ACs, AND she has storage underneath which is a huge plus for me.

She has a DT466e engine. I’m not entirely sure about the transmission yet but I’m expecting to find that it’s an Allison 2000 based off of what I’ve seen in the manuals and online (The panels on the bus did not say? At least not in a way that I can understand). It looks like she was one of the last models of her kind before the emission shift.

I thought for sure that I might have a meltdown because the biggest thing I’ve ever driven was a smaller UHAUL truck but I feel like I adjusted pretty quickly. We drove on smaller side roads as well as the highway and she was doing 65 with no issue. My only concern thus far is we think there may be an issue switching gears because she’ll initially shake and buck once we’re accelerating somewhere between 35-55 mph. It only seemed to happen within about 20 minutes of starting the drive (like...each time we stopped to stretch or fill the tank) and then there would be no issues whether we were slow or fast. Other than that, she was great. I got temporary trip tags to get her home but it might take a couple months before I am able to get the title and registration with the dmv (covid delays) so we’ll probably be doing a lot of the cleaning/painting/gutting/prepping while we wait.

Oh, they also said the radio works (it’s got a cd player) but I think that when they removed the surveillance, it was attached to the same area in the fuse box as the pa system because I can hear it in the very front but not over the speakers. I brought all the manuals inside to get started on my homework, haha.

I broke my left foot a little more than a week ago and I’m having a hard time not going out there to get started pulling seats out.

[RobOfYork]

Congratulations. Hope it does well for you. And sending you healing vibes for that injured foot.

[ol trunt]

Nice bus--glad the fur babies took to her right away!
Jack

[WIbluebird]

Wow, that is a rare bus. I believe very few of those Bluebird buses were built on that generation of International conventional. The Blue Bird Canada manufacture plate is also interesting as most of these were built in Mt Pleasant IA or the northern Georgia plant (both of which are closed now). I want to say these buses were only built for around 8 months before the Vision came along and OEM conventional chassis buses went away for good.



Did you buy that bus in the US somewhere? If so I'm kind of fascinated as to how it ended up around here.

[tlzimmerman]

Looks like a clean rig. You spend most of your time on your knees tearing out seats anyways so get after it!

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RobofYork - Thanks much for the well wishes - I’m feeling a bit better every day and I’m having a hard time staying put, haha.

Ol trunt - Thanks I was surprised that fluffs did so well right away. My hound (I haven’t taken a pic of him yet on the bus) is horrified of large vehicles but he actually climbed in on his own too.

WIbluebird - That is very interesting to hear and makes sense with how little I’ve been able to find about her so far aside from the paperwork/manuals she came with. I did get her in the US through a couple living in Maryland. From the odometer info on the title, they were the only owners.

Tlzimmerman - Yeah, they kept her pretty tidy and it looks like there’s no rust at the base of the seats so they should hopefully come up quick too. I’m picking up some tools we need today and I’ll probably try to take out a seat or two before I’m shooed back inside.