Had a great time. Have to look forward to other events. Demac has the land he needs to make a nice Skoolie camp for future events.
I made it back home safe late last night. 55Mph limitation added about 3 hours to the trip than was advertised on GPS. The 3Box did roughly 1000 mile stent with no issues. Makes me feel a little better about the bus and the work I've done to it thus far.
One of the reasons for the trip for me was to actually see what I needed for the bus on trips. Some items of note. Battery storage. I even worked while traveling and barely had enough power to finish the job. I mean this seems obvious but I wanted to see how much I could achieve without a battery source. Demac lent me a little shore power for the next day.
I'm also not sure of the legalities but at 2600 RPM's the engine can be quite loud in the bus. It doesn't have insulated firewalls like a modern truck does to dampen the noise and it's loud enough I feel like it could cause hearing damage over time. So it would seem some sort of noise dampening head gear may be required. You obviously need to hear what's happening out side of the vehicle legally but honestly you couldn't hear it anyway with the noise level of the engine at those speeds. So I'll need to look into what is allowed for that.
The suspension was decent with the new floor weight and the arsenal of equipment I brought just in case anything was needed. It wasn't so light that it bounced a ton, but I think I could add a few more lbs and it will smooth out even more. I have a 33k GVWR on that small bus so it's over kill suspension for the size and causes a lot of bounce when underweighted i've noticed. The 4.5in flooring I added a lot of weight and I can already tell a difference in ride quality by a lot.
I learned more about the RPM's the bus likes to be comfortable at. It runs pretty fast at 2500-2600 RPM's and fluctuates between 55-60 MPH depending on incline, but I definitely need to get it moving faster with lower RPM's so a transmission upgrade is gonna happen in my mind. The AT545 felt worse at 45 MPH, but better at 55 MPH. It would go up to 60 MPH comfortably but beyond that it didn't like it so I rode 55 MPH basically the whole way. The turbo since unlocking the engine items with Servicemaxx worked really well, I used to lose speed on long steep hills, but not this time, it held 55 MPH quite easily going up them and didn't overheat. The engine temps were at 190 even on inclines, when I first bought it, similar inclines would cause engine to overheat slightly. Remember that my VPS was dead on the last trip I made so the turbo didn't spool properly for the inclines.
Cruise control also worked nearly flawlessly, I unlocked it as well and used it for like 80% of the trip. I had set the min cruise speed to 15 MPH in the computer with servicemaxx, down from 35 MPH so when I ever got stuck in construction traffic, I could just slow cruise at 15 MPH. It worked too. Before doing that cruise wouldn't enable that slow, I used that a couple of times on the trip. The reason I say nearly flawlessly was there was one time I was going at 55 MPH on cruise, and it went up hill and we kind of hit a large surprise pot hole, and that kicked it out of cruise, I think because the jolt caused the 545 to slip which took it out of cruise.
I also learned I need a desk in the bus if I'm going to work in it at all.
I also need to get a cup holder mounted to the dash, and there's an existing metal clip meant to use for a CB Radio hand piece. I may use that existing one and fabricate a metal case for my phone so I can have it hold it for GPS purposes. Holding a phone by hand is illegal in most states but I had to do it to check directions at times and can be a bit squirly doing so in a bus. Cars are much easier and more stable than a bus trying to do that.
The couch I installed just prior to the trip and mounted to the chair rails with seatbelts worked out better than I could imagine. It slept very well. The side arms fold down to make a bed, and they hover over the stairs too to make use of that dead space. I'll present pictures of that on my build thread today maybe.
