Back in late May I bought a Harley-Davidson Sportster 883 for $900. Got it as a fun toy but honestly, after the Burgman was finally fixed I stopped riding the Sporty. It always felt so slow, lethargic, and not even half as agile as the Burgman. As time rolled on, the novelty of owning the baby Harley wore off and I just stopped riding it.
Sheryl has been wanting to buy me a school bus for my birthday for some time and somehow managed to work out this crazy deal. She saw a bus for $4k and decided to see if she could trade him my Harley for the bus, maybe with a little bit of cash on top. In the end, he would accept the deal. 1 bus for the Harley and about a grand.
And what is this bus, you ask? It’s a 1998 International 3800 with a DT466E and Allison AT545, body is an AmTran CS 65 passenger. It runs and drives like a beast (held 70 all the way home), mostly everything works, and there’s minimal rust. The floors are remarkably solid as well.
It looks a little rough around the edges, but that makes sense as I believe it has been sitting under trees all summer, if not longer. We found a couple bird nests outside, a lot of moss, and a slew of beehives. So yeah, it can definitely use a power wash. The exhaust decided to fall off its hangers pretty much immediately. That’s actually awesome because I want to have a side dump exhaust on it. LOVING the soundtrack from the turbo straight six. The bus has about 200,000 miles on it and I’d say it’s in good shape for its age and mileage, just needs a good Svending. It may also need a front end alignment but that’s not a huge deal just yet.
According to the title, we are the second owners. The guy we bought it from works at the school district that retired it. When it was retired from school duty he just registered it as an RV but kept it titled to the school.
My plan is to turn it into a skoolie motorcycle hauler. Rear end of the bus will be a mobile motorcycle garage while the rest will be a Gambler camper. I’m cooking up my floor plan later today. We’re going to start with the easy stuff: Bedding, seating, lighting, audio, heating, and refrigeration. As we’ve recently moved in together, we’re going to put the excess furniture in the bus to kickstart the process. And finally I’ll be able to make use of the flat tow kit that shop-teacher gave me last year.
We aren’t going to go all crazy with custom walls and custom ceiling paneling. Instead, our plan is pretty minimalist. We’ll have some nice flooring, curtains, paint, and furnishings. She’s experienced with plumbing, so over time we’ll implement a bathroom, too. We aren’t going to go all out and make a log cabin on wheels. lol
Colors will at some point be mint green/turquoise and white.
I have a couple close friends that made a skoolie last year and they’re excited to help out. :)
Oh and how does it drive? Like a bus...but but, it’s so much fun! The DT466E only is useful when you go WOT so you basically just shove your foot into the floor and point the bus where it needs to go. One of the things that is broken is the cruise control. I definitely want to get that working. Part of me wonders why a school bus would even have cruise in the first place but I’m not complaining.