hello from Australia

[retiredChemist]

Just thought I'd introduce myself, been lurking for a few years now. Albeit on the other side of the world.

I'll start off by saying a huge thank you to this site. It helped seed the idea and provided alot of practical knowledge along the way.

I'm about 6 months into living full time in my skoolie. Not finished building yet, but what skoolie ever is.

It's name is the land barge. 1990 Volvo b10m mk3 chassis with a qbb ally body.
Driveline is still standard. 9.6l turbo thd101, zf 4 speed auto .air bag suspension.

Started off life as a council bus where it did 20 years of 16hour shifts, then 5 as a school bus. Then I bought her.

Probably a rather unusual skoolie in that it's got the restraints for 4 kids car seats.

 

[EastCoastCB]

Sounds like a really cool rig, friend. What part of Australia?
Welcome.

 

[Tango-SKO]

G'day and Welcome! --- Sounds like an interesting combo. We'd love to see some pix of this beastie.

 

[Carytowncat]

Welcome! What little i know about Australia i learned watching the Simpsons.
"That's not a knife, THIS is a knife!" "That's not a knife, that's a spoon!" " I see you've played knifey spooney before!"

Love to see a picture of the Volvo

 

[retiredChemist]

How do I upload to the site?

 

[retiredChemist]

Sounds like a really cool rig, friend. What part of Australia?
Welcome.

Everywhere and nowhere. But mainly the qld area.

 

[retiredChemist]

I guess the motoring gods decided to smile at me last night.

Was off having a drive, with the kids. They were predicting a fairly cool night, about refrigerator temperature.

So I decided to stop at a trailer park for the evening to have power for the electric heater.

So we got ourselves all parked up and decided to take the dog for a quick look around the park.

I wandered down the back, then I see it 20 of the same bus as mine. All converted to cabins. Not bad considering only 69 were built and only 42 of those were the double dear door configuration.

After spending an hour or two wandering around the bus version of Valhalla. Considering externally they were as they came out of service. They had their fair share of battle scars. Seeing what spares they had and what the missing bits of mine are supposed to look like was invaluable.

Talk about luck parts wise. For a bus who's manufacturer went out of business 23 odd years ago.

Just some of the things I discovered were, it originally had 10.00r20 wheels not the 11r22.5 it's got now. Which explains why it handles the way it does. Was built to run really balloony tyres.

The original window design used a custom a clamp system like bullet resistant glass, only prettied up as a trim looking piece. which explains the over spec window glass(riot resistant not quite bullet resistant). The later ones used a rubber seal.

A couple of them had had radiator grills replaced in a similar manner to what I want to do to mine.

Not bad for an out of the blue find.

 

[EastCoastCB]

Very nice. You really should post some pics when you can!

 

[retiredChemist]

There's a few in the Australian land barge and it's kin album.