My preferences are going to be showing through here so take what I am going to say with a gain of salt.
I say no for three reasons:
- GM stopped supporting all of their medium duty products when they sold off that division. As a consequence, unless your local GM dealer happens to still have some NOS medium duty truck parts sitting around you will be pretty much SOL if you need any OEM only parts. Most parts can be sourced but they become the proverbial unicorns with prices to match.
- Wet brakes are great brakes but do NOT lend themselves well to sitting around. Without use they deteriorate quickly and very expensively. Air brakes, mostly because they do not use a liquid to operate the brakes, do not have the issues that occur just from sitting around. Also, air brakes come with spring brakes that apply when you lose air or when you go to park. It is really a nice and powerful step up from a driveline hand operated emergency brake.
- Cat power is very good power. But they don't call it Caterpillar Gold for nothing! Both the 3116 and 3126 had teething problems. Most of the bugs have been worked out with the ones remaining either intermittent or not worth the expense to fix. In bus to bus comparisons the Cat's generally used more fuel than the Cummins.
Personally, I think for the $$$ there are a lot of other buses out there with similar prices that are in ready to go back into service condition.
Good luck and happy trails to you!