Ladybird the bluebird

[Cracken75]

Well after lurking here for a number of years and planning builds out in my head more times than i can count. The time was finally right and i pulled the trigger on a bus. She is a 1998 Bluebird tc 2000RE 8.3 mechanical cummins/MD3060 with 5.38s. I won her in a govdeals auction she was a little rough from sitting but checked nearly all my boxes. I have been terrible about updating my build threads in the past of my other motorsporting interests but hopefully ill do a better job documenting this journey.

 

[Cracken75]

Alright getting the old girl home was a bit of work but we managed. she had been sitting in a field for about a year with 2 flat tires and a stuck brake drum.
The days leading up to picking her up it rained for multiple days straight so when we arrived the bus was in 4 inches of water and i needed to get the brake drum unstuck the tires replaced and moved out of the soaked field. where it was located we couldnt get any vehicles to untill monday and we arrived on saturday. it took 2 days of jacking it in the air putting boards under move a few feet repeat but we finally got it out. After getting the 2 bad tires replaced and a few other minor repairs we set off from just south of atlanta back to memphis. the bus did well on the way home but we had to take it rather slow as we learned the charge cooler has a big hole so i built no boost, and the tach was reading much higher than i was comfortable with. come to find out the tach is off by a factor of 350ish at idle and incrementally gets worse through the rpm range. but other than that we made it back to memphis with no other issues to speak of.

 

[peteg59]

Welcome to the site.
Congrats on your find and the safe journey home with it.
Now the fun begins!
Good luck and if you go forward with it, post pics...

 

[Cracken75]

Can someone let me know if my pictures are showing up?

 

[Jolly Roger bus 223]

yes they are.
some are sideways but others here can tell you how to fix that.

 

[TheHubbardBus]

Welcome! With that rough start getting started, you could say it's all downhill from here!

Of course, that would be a lie. But a little fantasy never hurt anyone :biggrin:


Sounds like you have a great foundation to build from!

 

[Cracken75]

Awesome! Thanks guys. Alright so once i got it home i went ahead and started pulling the seats and the floors up as i will be insulating the floor. the seats came out real easy and took a lot less time than i expected. As for the floor it was fairly labor intensive but being rubber straight on the metal a floor scraper made quick work of it all.

 

[Cracken75]

After that it was on to the ceiling and wall panels.

 

[Cracken75]

That brings us up to current. now before i start digging too much further into anything i want to start working on getting all the mechanicals in order. first on the list is getting this Charge air cooler replaced. I tossed a mechanical boost gauge on last night just out of curiosity to see if i was building any boost at all but that is a definite no lol. here is the nice hole in the intercooler.