Nice and already has a paint job. How she look under the bus and inside? Much rust?
Picker her up this weekend, kind of.
Had a 7 hour trip to get home. The Body is in pretty good condition minus a small rust hole in the floor by the stairs and a heavy black mold presence on the seats.
I took it straight to a mechanic for a once over before attempting the drive home. Checked all the fuel levels and got a piece a flat metal to patch the floor. I wanted to replace the fuel filters as well before making the maiden voyage but no where was open on a Saturday morning there.
Once I hit the highway my top speed was about 45. 50 or so on a good down hill. The mechanic told me the rear gear diff was a 4.11 which made sense for the low highway speed.
7 hour trip home is now a 12-14 hour trip home though.
At about hour 3 of the trip I noticed a dip in power happening.
Hour 4 or so it was getting worse. I started calling ahead of us looking for fuel filters and found them about an hour ahead.
As I pulled up to the place with the filters at hour 5 the bus died. I swapped them out and bled the lines. The old ones were full of gunk and algae. I suspected the hours of bumping down the road in a long sitting bus had shaken loose debris in the tank.
After some gentle coaxing (Two cans of starter fluid and cuss words of encouragement) she roared back to life. It took about 2 hours all together.
We continued our journey for another 2 hours and came to a leg of the journey that consisted of long uphill stretches with small flats. Each hill stole speed and nearing the top of the last one she rolled to a stop and died. I had to roll it back to the flat in nuetral to get it to start and had to carefuly work the AT545 transimission shifting with the gas pedal to clear the hill.
At this point we hit a down hill and were cruising and the bus started to smoke white behind us pretty bad. We pulled it into a travel stop and it died again as we pulled into the parking lot.
I suspected the the fuel was gunking everything up and starving the engine of power at this point. I checked the bleed bolt on the fuel line and it bubbled, not sprayed. Now I am thinking maybe I am airlocked and didn't get all the air out before. Bleed the lines again. Black sprayed out of the return line. Oil in the fuel. I called a vehicle shipping service and had it towed the rest of the way.
To outside eyes this might feel like a horror story, but I was always prepared for the engine to have major problems and the bus to need towed to make it home.
I have a project on my hands for sure, but for 1000 dollar (2800 now after the tow and parts) 1995 bus with 467k miles it did better than I expected. She made it over 7 hours which is what the trip was supposed to be.
Definitely had a blast with my buddy on the trip. Bus should be here tomorrow or the next day.
Making memories.
![[;)]](https://www.montanaowners.com/images/moc/icon_smile_wink_107.gif "Wink [;)]"){kind=icon}
