Your thoughts on this Freightliner?

[Sleddgracer]

Yeah, I thought at most I was going to have to patch a couple of holes in the side. I bought the bus on eBay without ever seeing it in person or having it inspected (inadvisable, of course). A couple weeks after delivery I finally got around to inspecting it from the outside, and was pretty horrified by the mudflap situation since I didn't see how they were still attached at all. I didn't know anything about bus structure so I assumed the bus was in danger of collapsing at any time.

Now that I know more about bus structure I can see that while this is very bad by skoolie standards, it's not unfixable, and since I got into this project so I could learn how to fabricate with metal, it's actually a great opportunity. I'm also planning to rebuild the section around the wheel wells in such a way as to have a fully-insulated subfloor that only comes up to the height of the original metal floor, getting me out of having to do a roof raise.

As my grandpappy never used to say: "when Life gives you lemons, jam them up Life's tailpipe."

I'm fortunate to have many contacts through sled dog interests, and I was able to get a friend to look over a bus that looked very attractive in the pictures and sounded great in the ad - in the end I decided I can buy plenty of trouble for $500, no need to spend $5000 to buy trouble - lol

 

[Cjgoertzen]

This looks like my bus just. I paid 2500 can. Painted mine white stays descent inside when rollin down the highway.

 

[PolSim]

I paid 3850.00 for my 1999 with 230k miles from NCarolina school district.

 

[cadillackid]

ive never seen a freightliner FS-65 with Dashboard Air-conditioning.. thomas never offered a refrigerated defrost option either..



the C2 freightliner has a FL60 dashboard and is offered with dashboard A/C.. this isnt a C2..



no driving A/C is a dealbreaker for me too.. cooling when parked on generator or shore power is easy but cooling while driving is much tougher.. let the engine spin the pumps and pump big-cool into the cabin...



-Christopher

 

[EastCoastCB]

ive never seen a freightliner FS-65 with Dashboard Air-conditioning.. thomas never offered a refrigerated defrost option either..



the C2 freightliner has a FL60 dashboard and is offered with dashboard A/C.. this isnt a C2..



no driving A/C is a dealbreaker for me too.. cooling when parked on generator or shore power is easy but cooling while driving is much tougher.. let the engine spin the pumps and pump big-cool into the cabin...



-Christopher

Buses with factory dash ac are pretty rare. Why not just build your own system?

 

[jbeech]

Based on this one picture, it looks like a decent bus. Handy size. Whether it's the right size for you is another matter. If it were mine I'd pop rivet some sheet metal over the windows (leave them in place, just disguise them because it's cheap and easy). It looks to be about the size of my Freightliner Expediter truck (Cat diesel).

With respect to towing, I think you'd be fine if the boat and a load of kids are similar in mass. You don't need us, just do the math with 150 pound kids per seat. Or 200lb each if you're an engineer doing the calculation.

The new Rooftop AC the existing owner has 'may' handle the enclosed area, but with respect to assessing that I have nothing. No AC for when it's being driven is a personal choice. What I'd put up with at 30y/o and what I'd do now when I'm over 60 are two different things.

250k miles. May be a deal breaker, maybe not. But buying it with the help of duffers on the internet instead of with a mechanic looking over the engine and tranny is a fool's mission in my view. Story - I once went to look at an airplane selling for $75k and took a mechanic with me that cost $500. A few hours later he handed me a prospective $83k of stuff to make it airworthy. I bought something else, instead (paid him $500 for that mission also).

The point being, because spending $2500 on a bus like this one is distressingly easy, not ponying up for the services of the same guy you're probably going to hire to work on it for you would be downright stupid. Please don't take offense because responding on this forum is roughly the equivalent of thinking out loud to me. Note; if your rational for not taking a pro with you is you're going to do the work yourself . . . then you don't need our advice because you also know more than we do! Regardless, good luck.