Rock N Ruth are movin to a mansion on the fly.

[cadillackid]

I have a feeling it won't need any work at all. and it is way more than a cheap Chinese unit. This is quite a system. I post some photos in a few days. I have a lot to do in the next month or so so it is on the low priority list.
It looks unused. As I stated earlier, it doesn't appear that there has ever been any fuel in the tank.


Headed out to lay some astro turf.

thats why I say Keep the webasto.. dont ditch it and install a cheap chinese unit... through experience ive found these are just plain made better.. much simpler ignition system too so they have less to fail and dont rely on an 'oil drip', they are capable of atomizing the fuel in super cold weather..

 

[kidharris]

For a couple of reasons:
1. It takes more than a tank. A regulator is required.
With the small tanks that I use, size M2-M6, the regulator is built in.


2. The regulator is a conserver regulator, that delivers a measured dose each time the patient inhales.


3. I fill the tanks at home with the Invacare Homefill system. This requires the tank to have a special fill port plumbed into it.


The M2 tank is very small. I can even stick it in a big pocket on my overalls. It just doesn't hold much, so to get out and about using that one I need to swap tanks every 1 1/2 - 2 hours. The bummer is I only have one and, as stated before they are very expensive and hard to find.


*** Note: I was working today, with an M4 tank on my back, in a backpack and I took a tumble on my back, landed feet up, on my back, with the tank on my spine.


It's gonna hurt tomorrow.

can you rig something overhead and the length of the bus to travel the length of the bus with a canula hanging down so you can use a big tank and just let the line follow you, suspended above out of the way. Would be handy now and when you use the bus later. Might also be a selling point if you ever need to sell the bus.

 

[Rock-N-Ruth]

can you rig something overhead and the length of the bus to travel the length of the bus with a canula hanging down so you can use a big tank and just let the line follow you, suspended above out of the way. Would be handy now and when you use the bus later. Might also be a selling point if you ever need to sell the bus.

When I am in the bus I can just use a long hose on my concentrator.

 

[Rock-N-Ruth]

The old and the new, side by side.

 

[Rock-N-Ruth]

Webastorific!

all I can say after my chinese BS CRAP diesel coolant heaters is RESTORE AND KEEP the webasto... if its a DBW2010 (or scholastic).. its a simple and easy setup ... it doesnt require the fancy timer controller (whuich usually have dead batteries)... it is a simple jumper 2 wires to make it run...

I think I mentioned that the guy at the place I bought the coach from told me they never got the Webasto to work. Well I noticed a dial gauge below the control cluster that looked like a 28 hour clock. With the coach silent, it did indeed tick like a clock.


Tonight Ruth and I were exploring features that we hadn't fiddled with. We found out some neat things: The seats not only recline, but the inboard seats can slide side to side. There is a player that will play mpegs from a cd-r in one of the cabinets. I also found an Eagle Coach Webasto manual.


Woo Hoo! Turns out the funny looking clock is a 28 hour clock...28? That's what the manual says. It is also the Webasto controller. You can use it to turn the heater on and off or set it to turn on at a certain time and run for three hours.


Followed the very clear, not chinklish instructions, and, Woo Hoo. Webastorific sounds, and heat in the engine coolant and coach.


Going to start taking seats out soon. They are really nice. Anyone who is interested in some, I won't ship them, But , I will be happy to let you come get them. No charge. I am planning to keep a couple in the coach and some friends have spoken for a few, but there are still quite a few that haven't been spoken for.

 

[cadillackid]

wow a ticking webasto clock is a new one!! all the tiers ive seen are digital... and yeah they have some wierd ones... and also some 7 day timers.. in reality all of those fancy timers do is just send +12 volts down a single wire to the webasto.. which then sends 12 volts back on a different wire for a light that tells you the unit is turned on...

both of the webasto units I run are just on toggle switches on the dash...



any idea which type it is? I made a youtube video on how to check them over and some points for servicing the DBW2010 / schplastic (yellow) type...

 

[Rock-N-Ruth]

wow a ticking webasto clock is a new one!! all the tiers ive seen are digital... and yeah they have some wierd ones... and also some 7 day timers.. in reality all of those fancy timers do is just send +12 volts down a single wire to the webasto.. which then sends 12 volts back on a different wire for a light that tells you the unit is turned on...

both of the webasto units I run are just on toggle switches on the dash...



any idea which type it is? I made a youtube video on how to check them over and some points for servicing the DBW2010 / schplastic (yellow) type...

I have not crawled into the underbelly to lift the webasto cover and read the data plate.



There is also a toggle switch on the dashboard that is labeled webasto, alongside it is something that looks like a shift lever that goes up and down. Next to it are ascending numbers, starting at 0 on the bottom and ending at 12 on the top.



This lever appears to also have a position above 12 which is momentary, you must hold it there.
Turning the wabasso switch on, and selecting any position on the lever, with the ignition switch turned on, or the ignition switch turned off, does not seem to cause anything to happen. However, pulling the little button in the center of the clock out, and aligning the red forked hands with the white clock hand, causes the webasto to begin rumbling and then doing its job.


I am tickled. I don't have a lot of time to fiddle around with the other webasto controls, as long as the clock works I can only say woohoo.

One of the common complaints that I have heard about the two cycle Detroit diesel engines, is that they are hard to start cold.

We are getting ready to enter into winter, so it is good to know that I can preheat the engine before I try to start it.


When I get a chance I'll take a picture and post it.

 

[Rock-N-Ruth]

I offer congratulations with the caveat that you get the new bus inspected for RUST before you cast off your skoolie. Look to busgreasemonkey. com and busconversionmagazine.com for help right away and good luck!
Jack

We are happy to report that this is the cleanest chassis I have ever seen on a rig this old. The institute told me they owned it since New and it was stored indoors when not on the road.


Everything is straight and solid. No hidden rust under the panels as far as I can tell.
The other concern I have read about is the suspension. When the torsion links run out of adjustment they must be replaced. Expensive and often hard to source.


The good news is that the suspension is at a good ride height and is functioning as it should, providing the finest ride I have ever had in something with wheels on it.



I haven't looked at torsion links on the front, because I don't want to lay on the ground and remove that huge dust pan right now, but the links on the rear have plenty of adjustment left in them.



Our biggest maintenance concern right now, is the film of oil on the underside of the engine. We need to get it good and clean and find out where the oil is coming from.

 

[cadillackid]

We are happy to report that this is the cleanest chassis I have ever seen on a rig this old. The institute told me they owned it since New and it was stored indoors when not on the road.


Everything is straight and solid. No hidden rust under the panels as far as I can tell.
The other concern I have read about is the suspension. When the torsion links run out of adjustment they must be replaced. Expensive and often hard to source.


The good news is that the suspension is at a good ride height and is functioning as it should, providing the finest ride I have ever had in something with wheels on it.



I haven't looked at torsion links on the front, because I don't want to lay on the ground and remove that huge dust pan right now, but the links on the rear have plenty of adjustment left in them.



Our biggest maintenance concern right now, is the film of oil on the underside of the engine. We need to get it good and clean and find out where the oil is coming from.

its a detroit.. if there isnt a film of oil underneath then you are out of oil

 

[Rock-N-Ruth]

its a detroit.. if there isnt a film of oil underneath then you are out of oil

When I was a young man someone told me I would never get my Harley panhead to stop leaking oil. They said about the same thing, if you don't have oil all over your pan head it's out of oil. I was young and thought I knew better, the result was hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours trying to stop the leaking only to realize, they weren't joking.

 

[Rock-N-Ruth]

There is one thing that I really find lacking on my dashboard, a tachometer. We've had a number of big trucks and school buses and they've all had a tachometer. I never expected to be driving anything this big and not have a tach.

I'm sure it's a project for somewhere is way down the road, but I definitely want to add a tachometer in the future.

Also looking for silver eagle model 15 operators manual, 6v92 service manual and any other docs that might be useful.

 

[kidharris]

We just bought this 1995 Eagle 55 Pas Coach. No more hillbilly roof raise for us. We bought a high ceiling Bluebird with an 8.3 Cummins and pass through under storage, about a year ago, with the intention of doing our last bus build, our "forever home" so to speak. Then a lot of stuff happened that slowed build process to a creep and, I got deathly ill. Now I am dragging an oxygen tank around. So, I got the seats out of the Bluebird, put 2" of XPS down on the floor and laid in the sub sub-floor. I took the huge AC condenser off of the roof and, stalled in the build again.


We bought most of the materials that will go into our build and, I would look at the thousands of dollars that was under tarps waiting for me to get moving again. Well, in the last month or so I have been getting out and getting used to working with the oxygen tank in tow. I really need to learn to stop taking it off my back, setting it down and walking away from it. It hurts when I get yanked back by the canula in my nose. I feel like Homer Simpson, I just never seem to learn. DOH!



Long yarn-short. I fiddled around for so long with our "Forever Bus," that an even more incredible opportunity fell in our laps. Now Ruth and I had always thought a coach would be wonderful, all that under storage and head room, but, it always seemed more like a pipe dream. A decent coach is a lot of money we only dream about.


Occasionally we will bid on a coach for the fun of it but, we always give up around ten grand. This time the auction ended with us as the high bidder but the reserve was not met. Oh well, we knew we weren't meant for a coach. Then we got an email a couple of days after the auction ended offering to accept our bid. Thank you Lord!



So Monday we wire the money. Thursday, we go bring it home and start our new forever home build.


Oh, by the way, the Bluebird will be up for sale soon. Also, I can't fathom just piling the beautiful seats from the coach on the ground like we have with our school bus seats, so, anyone interested in some of them, we will be giving them away to skoolie folk or selling them on eBay. We prefer to give them to skoolie folk.


We will be posting an ad for the Bluebird with lots of pictures and a video or two soon.

more like a yacht than a mansion

 

[Rock-N-Ruth]

more like a yacht than a mansion

There is a distinction here. We live in our bus. It's not a fad, not a vacation, it's just our way of life. We consider our skoolie our house. So, in comparison, we are moving from a house with wheels, to a mansion with wheels.

I am familiar with the term, " land yacht ," however, I would associate that term, with a pleasure vehicle.

While we get great pleasure out of our current home, and expect to get even more pleasure out of the new one, it is our home, not our toy.

We build our first skoolie in 1989, out of necessity. But we really enjoyed living in it. At that time we lived in an area where it was illegal to live full-time in a vehicle. So, after a little more than a year living in our bus, we were forced to move into a home without wheels.

Then, we kind of got stuck with that way of life for a little while. But we always wanted to go back. So, when the kids were grown and we were on our own, we progressed pretty rapidly from school bus with no wheels, to school bus with wheels.

We realize that a lot of people do this as an experiment, or for pleasure, like camping and rving, and that is perfectly valid.
But for us, this is how we choose to be housed. And we love the ability to take our house to the grocery store. We also like the ability to travel when we like without having to pack.

Back when we started doing this, we never really imagined that it would become a movement. I think it is pretty cool that it has, and a lot of people have gotten an opportunity to experience what Ruth and I fell in love with so many years ago.

I do think it is sad that so many on social media, for whatever reason, over romanticize skoolie life to the degree that a lot of folks who end up trying it crash and burn because, they have a very unrealistic view of what is all about.

I think it is good that sometimes here on skoolie.net some of the users try to kindly shine a little light on reality.



Hey I just read what I wrote, and I just wanted to make sure that you know, that I'm not biting your tail off for making an offhand comment. Ruth and I appreciate the interaction with all of you guys. I don't know if I mentioned it before, but I've got just a little more than a little Asperger's going on.

 

[cadillackid]

I attribute the quick rise of the "movement" to remote work and of course Youtube... being a nomad always required either being a laboring farm worker or seasonal park manager, or a job where you travelled from place to place (mobile mechanic, mobile nurse) etc.. regular office , retail, factory jobs wouldnt work... enter the rise of remote work (hint it wasnt in 2020... ive been remote working since 2009).. tch jobs that could be done anywhere and celluar networks getting faster and faster made it possible for a much wider range of people to get rid of ground roots and live mobile.



Covid just accelerated it as many people felt that even if they had 2 masks and 10 shots they were going to die of it and went mobile / hermit.. we saw alot of those come along here for a couple years... youtube channels that got real popular then got picked up by even mainstream TV shows so alas that brought even more people in.. many of these are the ones that end u in faled skoolie projects as they arent all-in from the beginning... they think its just buy a bus, paint it pretty and now you are living full-time..

 

[kidharris]

I attribute the quick rise of the "movement" to remote work and of course Youtube... being a nomad always required either being a laboring farm worker or seasonal park manager, or a job where you travelled from place to place (mobile mechanic, mobile nurse) etc.. regular office , retail, factory jobs wouldnt work... enter the rise of remote work (hint it wasnt in 2020... ive been remote working since 2009).. tch jobs that could be done anywhere and celluar networks getting faster and faster made it possible for a much wider range of people to get rid of ground roots and live mobile.
.

My dad was a heavy equipment mechanic that followed road construction and mining after WWII and we led a nomadic life until the Interstate highway system was pretty much finished. We lived in mobile homes in a lot of places. A lot of different schools too.


The hippies popularised skoolie & van (mostly VW type II's aka VW buses) living in the 60's and 70's. Hitchhiking was big also.I thought that this was the romantic image that a lot of people carried over to the modern skoolie/van life movement. free love and flower power. maybe I'm just too old, been there done that, etc.

There is a distinction here. We live in our bus. It's not a fad, not a vacation, it's just our way of life. We consider our skoolie our house. So, in comparison, we are moving from a house with wheels, to a mansion with wheels.

I am familiar with the term, " land yacht ," however, I would associate that term, with a pleasure vehicle.


I do think it is sad that so many on social media, for whatever reason, over romanticize skoolie life to the degree that a lot of folks who end up trying it crash and burn because, they have a very unrealistic view of what is all about.

I think it is good that sometimes here on skoolie.net some of the users try to kindly shine a little light on reality.



Hey I just read what I wrote, and I just wanted to make sure that you know, that I'm not biting your tail off for making an offhand comment. Ruth and I appreciate the interaction with all of you guys. I don't know if I mentioned it before, but I've got just a little more than a little Asperger's going on.

Living in your car/wagon/tent was a big thing during the great depression & dust bowl. Before that was the covered wagon and the natives had their tipis and travois which worked better after they got horses. true snowbirds.

My reference to a yacht, was because boating has an even longer history of people living in boats. Personally I like the concept of a skoolie compared to an ocean capable boat. You have to be self sufficent and carry all the stuff to survive and keep moving (make repairs) including alternate/emergency transport to make shore supply runs & act as a lifeboat.


I think we are both thinkiing simillary, just expressing it differently

 

[Rock-N-Ruth]

My dad was a heavy equipment mechanic that followed road construction and mining after WWII and we led a nomadic life until the Interstate highway system was pretty much finished. We lived in mobile homes in a lot of places. A lot of different schools too.


The hippies popularised skoolie & van (mostly VW type II's aka VW buses) living in the 60's and 70's. Hitchhiking was big also.I thought that this was the romantic image that a lot of people carried over to the modern skoolie/van life movement. free love and flower power. maybe I'm just too old, been there done that, etc.




Living in your car/wagon/tent was a big thing during the great depression & dust bowl. Before that was the covered wagon and the natives had their tipis and travois which worked better after they got horses. true snowbirds.

My reference to a yacht, was because boating has an even longer history of people living in boats. Personally I like the concept of a skoolie compared to an ocean capable boat. You have to be self sufficent and carry all the stuff to survive and keep moving (make repairs) including alternate/emergency transport to make shore supply runs & act as a lifeboat.


I think we are both thinkiing simillary, just expressing it differently

Living in a home on wheels has challenges that you mostly won't see in a stationary home. If you want to compound those challenges, put it in the water.


We did it once for a whole summer. It was fun but not us as a lifestyle.


I have a pipedream of living on a sea going tug, towing a large barge, which would be our yard.

 

[Rock-N-Ruth]

Seats are coming out a lot easier than any of the school buses we have done. I got in a rhythm yesterday and unbolted one whole side and half the other. Pic to follow.