Getting excited!

[jtlbus]

Greetings,

One day last year I was pondering my life and really feeling like I needed a change. I'm 34, single, living on a small island, and bored! Once in a while I like to look online for parcels of land around the country out of curiosity. However I've never really quite felt like I've found where I want to call home in the sense of investing in a house, and therefore I have been renting (not cheaply either) apartments for the last 15 years which is getting a little old. So last year I was thinking about all this when the idea of a mobile home hit me like a ton of bricks, or More accurately steel and aluminumNo offense to traditional RV owners, but I find them to be a bit ugly and tacky, both inside and out. I started looking at school and coach bus conversions online and I fell in love with the idea. I'm not in the financial position to begin this project yet but I'm working on that. In the meantime I've been doing lots of research and figuring out what kind of bus id like to start with. After considering all the different types of busses, I am 95% settled on a Crown. I want a schoolie because they seem to offer the most rugged package overall and I want to be able to head off the beaten trail sometimes. From what I read, the Crowns are as tough as they get, I like the engine choices they offer, and I think they're one of the prettiest vehicles on the road! Unfortunately, The Crowns seem to have increased in price quite a bit over the last few years which seems to be partly due to the California bus replacement program. It saddens me greatly to see that they are crushing perfectly good vintage busses! I've still got much research to do on engine/transmission configurations but I know I want a manual transmission with overdrive. As far as engines, it looks like the detroit diesel 671 is a good choice, but it looks like the cummins 855 might be even better in terms of power, and I like power I've worked as a mechanic since the age of 17 so I can do a lot of my own maintenance and repairs. I enjoy working with my hands in general so all aspects of doing a bus conversion is very exciting to me!

So, I thought I would finally register and introduce myself after lurking around the boards for a while. I will hopefully be in the market for a crown sometime soon so if anyone has one for sale, I would love to hear about it. I'll be soaking up info and checking out other members projects for now and I hope to be staring my own conversion thread soon! Nice to meet you all, and happy bussing!

-Jake

 

[EastCoastCB]

Welcome! Glad to have you.
Lots of love for the Crowns. Me personally- I'd love one but no way could I afford it.
And being on the east coast, I've never seen one.

 

[jtlbus]

Thanks, Eastcoastcb! I can't say I've ever seen a crown in person either. I am also on the east coast. This will obviously present a major challange when the time comes to find a crown but there must be a few that made it farther east than California!

 

[EastCoastCB]

Start saving up mucho money and anything can be had.

 

[HolyBus]

I don't think you mentioned which island. I have property on Prince Edward. What part of the east coast?

 

[bansil]

is it Portsmouth?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portsmouth,_North_Carolina

 

[jtlbus]

I live on Nantucket island which is about 14X3 miles in size and located roughly 30 miles off the coast of cape cod, Massachusetts. It's a unique and beautiful place but things are changing rapidly here. Its been a tourist haven for a very long time but in the past couple decades it has also become a playground for the super wealthy. This means that a lot of what makes Nantucket so special and beautiful is being overrun with huge mansions, Range Rovers, and people flocking here to service the people with all that money. So life here is becoming increasingly expensive, and it's gotten very difficult to find housing here. I do like living here but there are so many limitations, And since I don't really know where I'd like to go, I think the perfect solution is a mobile home!

EastCoastCB: I know, the Crowns are getting pricey. I really love them, but I may end up going with another brand when the time comes if I can't find one that I can afford.

HolyBus: That's cool that you have property on PEI! I've never been, but it looks beautiful there.

bansil: Man, I thought Nantucket was small! This place has nothing on Portsmouth. lol

 

[HolyBus]

I have visited a few tiny islands. We bought on PEI because of the lack of tourism influence. It is changing too but I am fighting it.
I tell them everyday that if they want to see what tourism does to a place, visit central FL. The money comes, sure and so dos the trash, lack of concern, vagrancy, violence, theft, change for change sake, lack of space in schools. The list goes on and on. I have been in my house in FL 32 years but nobody else on the street lives here more than a year or so, often less (transient). The homeless are piling up and the schools don't have the money to support the growth. Give me an island with no tourism anytime if any exists.