I have had a affinity for busses since very young. As a young boy living on the island of Malta I would get a new Match Box toy car if I was a good boy at school. My mom bribed me with these shiny toys from the store across the street from our apartment building. I got a greyhound buss one early in my collection of these. It was a sign of things to come.
While living in Wyoming I rode a small dirt bike all over the area at the foot of the Big Horn mountains. I got to know every creek, valley and abandoned ranch house. One of the old ranch houses was owned by a friend of my parents so I visited it often when near. I really liked this place because not only for the interesting people who lived there but for the old stuff laying about. In particular a small school buss. I convinced the owner that I wanted to revive this machine and he reluctantly agreed to let me work on it. I soon had it running and drove it around the the ranch. I was about 13. I had a dream of making it into a camper and seeing the sights of the northern USA. This was not to be as we moved yet again within 18 months. The oil field was in boom times and my father was a very busy man.
While driving tow trucks I befriended a guy who owned a small tow company with his own very small storage lot in which he had a large school buss he had towed to the lot as an abandoned vehicle and was now using as storage. The motor had been removed and a few other parts where missing. This buss's story was that it had been used to haul illegal immigrants up to Colorado from Mexico. When he told me he had to move to another lot I asked him what he was going to do with the buss, I knew he would have to get someone else to tow it because he no longer had a large enough truck to do so. I had a dream of making it into the camper I had dreamed of with the smaller buss in Wyoming, only on a larger scale! I made a deal with him to acquire a motor from a small AMC car he had in the lot with the notion of installing it in the buss just to make it possible to drive it a short way to the storage lot the company I worked for. He thought this was a lot of work to do just to move it a few miles as the motor I was going to install was a small 6 cylinder from an AMC car and was going into a big C60 Chevy 35 foot school buss! To me a motor is just a power plant and the maker does not matter as long it will physically fit in the space allowed. In a few days I mated the motor to the transmission, mounted it in the frame and had all the wiring and hoses fitted. I drove it out of the lot and to its new home and started work on converting it to a camper. The most expensive part of this job was the 6 new tires I had to buy! I found that tires of this size where pricey, even used ones. After I put the tires on the rims, I took it for a good mechanical shake down drive with its small 6 cylinder in line motor. I was surprised how well it did, sure it was slow but it kept up with the semi trucks on the highway! I knew it would get good gas milage with this motor, much better than the big block 454 cid motor I had been planning to install.
This buss took me from Colorado to Wyoming and then to Texas and back! I had many adventures along the way.
In Wyoming its alternator shook apart on the road to Keyhole lake, I saw the alternator light come on after a few miles on a very rough dirt road. I naturally stopped to check it out with all the possibilities going threw my head as to why the light was on. When I looked I was surprised to see the 4 screws that held the 2 halves of the case together and fell out and the back half was hanging buy the wires about a foot away from the other half still bolted to the mount, the belt still tight! Try and find alternator bolts miles away from a auto parts store at a lake in Wyoming in the off season! The place was almost deserted and no junk cars laying about for me to take parts from. I was able to find 2 long very small bolts with nuts to put through the holes to get me to a parts store a few days later after camping out at the lake. I was into ham radios at the time and had installed a large radio mast on the roof that had a large hinged part attached to the back of the buss. I would mount my antenna to it and raise it up and talk to others all over the world. This was a fun way to communicate to far away places long before chat rooms! On the road again after replacing the alternator screws the engine started to loose power going up a long hill so I started to look for a place to pull over and see what was going on this time. I was still in Wyoming on a 2 lane highway out in the middle of nowhere. At the top of that hill was a flagger with a 'stop' sign on a 5 foot pole. Flaggers stop traffic when there is construction work being done, this is to control traffic so cars can pass the equipment safely. I pulled to the side of the road fearing that my buss would stall and not restart, I did this as to not block traffic and cause a traffic jam. I got out and once more opened the hood to find more loose screws, this time the carburetor had shook apart! Well hell, at least it didn't catch fire!
This was the start of the next adventure that would last a couple of months. I do believe in God and in His plans for your life.
I talked with the flagger while fixing the carb and found out this road was being re-paved and that there was a need for workers that would be willing to camp out near this project because it was too far to the next town to commute. I got the buss fixed and drove to the 'plant' and talked with the boss and was hired as a laborer, he looked at my buss and said I would fit right in with the other employees! I didn't realize that this wasn't a compliment.
The day I left Wyoming it started snowing, I took it as a sign to drive south and ended up back in Denver. I stayed a couple weeks and went on to where my parents where in Oklahoma then on to my sister"s in Texas. This is where I acquired Flash the cat that traveled with me and thought he was a dog! My sister had fun 'saving' stray cats and giving them away. Flash was but a tiny kitten when she insisted I needed him. I was not thrilled, to say the least! I needed to work on the buss and didn't need a kitten to take care of, a puppy would have gone over much better. I believe in letting an animal name itself by its deeds or personality. Flash came by that name because he loved to run very fast sometimes for no reason but to annoy me. He was a tailless cat, orange and striped. As he grew he always stayed near me weather I was working on the buss or driving around in a car or even taking a shower or bath. He got greasy sometimes while laying about the buss parts and I would take him into the shower and shampoo him with the appropriate soap fairly often. He didn't mind getting wet, just the drying off part he didn't like! He would even come into the shower when not greasy and cry at my feet to be washed, weird cat! His first friend was a parrot my brother-in-law had. They would play like 2 young kids, picking on each other and chasing all over the house! Later back in Denver he made friends with 3 dogs that my buddy had. It was fun watching them play, a cat attacking dogs and the dogs attacking him all in fun. He even ate dog food if it was small enough to get in his mouth. It was good times for the 3 of them, he injured them way more then any of the dogs hurt him! It helps to know these dogs grew up with cats so they where used to felines.
When it started getting too hot for me in texas I traveled north again, this time with Flash as my co-pilot. He loved to ride in the buss would jump out whenever we stopped and would go potty. It was fun to watch peoples reactions to him. Back in Denver I got a job at a body shop and sold the buss to a guy that worked there.
I fixed up a1973 chevy cargo shorty van with no windows with parts from a later model ford van that I got from a crash. My boss at the time helped me in his towing storage lot. It really turned out nice, it was in the 80's pimp style, bed in back, mirrored ceiling, bar, captains chairs on swivel basses, mag wheels and lots of chrome. I ended up living out of it for almost a year when my wife left me. Many good ties in that van! It ended its life when I ran it into a tree while drunk, lucky it didn't kill me!
The next buss I would get took me over 3 years to talk the owner into selling me! I loved camping and fishing along the Platte river in the mountains west of town. The first time I went along the road next to the river I noticed a 1955 chevy motor coach, a buss that was never a school buss but one made as a motorhome from the beginning, very rare! I thought about that buss and the next time I found myself along that road I stopped by and knocked on the house door and asked if I could buy it. The guy wasn't very happy with me eyeballing his buss but after a few minutes found out I was into that sort of stuff and he lightened up a bit. He showed me around his place and then out to the buss. It was being used for storage, apparently this is common, and I couldn't see much of how it was built. I told him I would help him work on it if he ever needed a hand and left my phone number. Through the years I would drop in when I was on the river fishing and I ended up living near in a town called Evergreen. One day while on a motorcycle ride on that scenic route I saw that they where having a garage sale and pulled over in front of the house. He recognized me and said he was glad to see me and had lost my number. We talked as I looked over the stuff for sale and he said he was moving. !!!!! I asked if he was ready to sell me the buss and he said no he was going to drive it to the new place. My heart sank and I asked how far it was to his new place. He said he was moving not that far, about 20 miles. Remember this is in the Colorado mountains and 20 miles of driving here in a 40 year old buss was going to be interesting for someone not used to a buss with no power steering, hydrovac brakes and hasn't been driven in a long time! I asked how it was running and how it drove knowing by the looks of it it hadn't gone anywhere in years. He said 'should be fine, a new battery oil change and some fresh gas it will be good'! I was thinking that was a very optimistic outlook and told him I would be glad to help him and gave him my number again thinking that I may never hear from him again. About 2 weeks passed and he called! He said he first tried putting gas in it and the tank had holes in it and it all leaked out, he called the local NAPA auto parts store and they said that he would have to adapt a universal gas tank to it because no one made one that was made for that old of a truck. He asked for my help and I came out that weekend. The house was already rented to someone else and they weren't happy the buss was still there, so when I showed up before the buss guy got there they where thrilled because I was driving my tow truck and thought I was there to tow it away! I told them I hoped to buy it from him but my truck was too small to tow that size of vehicle, especially in the mountains, it might lift it but never be able to stop it going down hills. The guy showed up with a battery, oil, brake fluid, antifreeze, tune up parts and a portable auxiliary fuel tank full of gas. We start working on it and I get it running and he starts trying to fill up the rotted tires with air and this isn't going well, he only gets 2 to hold air but the others are hopeless. So we start to bleed the brakes and it bursts 2 lines and all the wheel cylinders are leaking very bad. This I have seen all this before in any car that sits for years, it is normal for stuff to rot and rust after years of neglect. I can see he is loosing interest in this project quickly and again ask if he wants to sell. No is the answer once again! He says he will call a tow truck and see how much to tow it to his new place. I know he has no idea how expensive this will be, towing a car is one thing a buss no matter how small is different. I don't mention that it will have to be flat-beaded out unless he puts 4 new tires on the rear. I am excited as I start preparing to get this buss to my place! He calls me back in a few days and tells me how much the tow company wants and if I know of a cheaper one! I tell him if he puts 4 good tires on the back I can call in a favor and get it done for about $500-800. He tells me he doesn't even have the money to buy used tires and no where near enough for a tow. He says he will sell it for $2500, I offer $1000 we agree on $1500! I gathered all the parts I knew I would need and worked on it far a few days and drove it out of its long time residence, it took me 2 days to drive it about 40 miles. It was a really nice coach, it was fitted with a propane refrigerator, just like a house one with an arched top from the 50's, a 3 burner stove with a oven, again just like a house only much smaller! It had cedar paneling, gas lighting and a tiny shower! It had never been a commercial buss so the dash was just like a pickup truck of the same year but the drivers seat was just like a buss. I cleaned it up nicely, keeping it as original as possible. Because you could see it from the main road I had lots of people leave notes on it wanting to buy it and when working on it people would always stop by to talk about it. I really didn't want to sell it but some of the offers where very attractive! My neighbor liked to hang out and help me and after one very nice offer he said before I sell it to anyone he wanted a shot at owning it! He knew the story of this coach because we fished together and he saw it where it sat even before he knew me. He was a horse trader kinda guy with lots of stuff, I mean whole storage units full with cool stuff that he sold at the flee markets and some he just collected. We eventually made a deal with cash and some things from his collection that I wanted, I never even got to take the camper anywhere.
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This all wheel drive GM safari van really went in the snow well! I used it for telecom work until it died then leased a new chevy astro van for work.
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I saw this while in L.A. and came back and took some pics and the owner comes out and he ends up showing me the inside of this special exhibition display van made in the late 40's
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This is one of 5 or 6 of these things GMC made for exhibitions , the sides swung up to make what was inside easy to see. The story is that inside where were the future tech like microwave ovens and jet engines!
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I would have given a kidney or even a testical to have one of these!
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The driver's seat is higher than a Large shipping container!
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This Monster had Duel Front Wheels!
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Dodge camper van fully outfitted with shower and kitchen. I used this one on just one trip then sold it, I really hate dodges of these years, underpowered and hard to work on!
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My first custom paint job done with my brother in law in 1976. I later found this van parked near a friends house 4 years later with a burned out interior.
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This van was given to me to haul away as junk near where I lived in the rocky mountains. I used it as a storage shed for years then turned it into a moving van. After the move I made it into the 'Stealth Urban Assault Camper'.
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I first insulated it inside then paneled it in wood and epoxy paint on the floor. I wanted to put the ATVs in the back without worrying about the muddy tires.
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I made the rear door to open in 2 ways, one just to walk in and out. The second half would open enough to the ATVs in and was nice to open wide and see out or get the breeze blowing through.
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I bought the stove, table, cabinet doors, roof vent and fridge from a wrecked motorhome, and stripped all the other stuff I could use for this conversion.
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With the bed folded up you could put more bikes in for trips to the sand dunes!
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I later put another fold up bed over the first one.
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I loved this combination for salmon and lake fishing in Idaho. It drove good on bad roads and the boat pulled like it wasn't even there.
more to come...
While living in Wyoming I rode a small dirt bike all over the area at the foot of the Big Horn mountains. I got to know every creek, valley and abandoned ranch house. One of the old ranch houses was owned by a friend of my parents so I visited it often when near. I really liked this place because not only for the interesting people who lived there but for the old stuff laying about. In particular a small school buss. I convinced the owner that I wanted to revive this machine and he reluctantly agreed to let me work on it. I soon had it running and drove it around the the ranch. I was about 13. I had a dream of making it into a camper and seeing the sights of the northern USA. This was not to be as we moved yet again within 18 months. The oil field was in boom times and my father was a very busy man.
While driving tow trucks I befriended a guy who owned a small tow company with his own very small storage lot in which he had a large school buss he had towed to the lot as an abandoned vehicle and was now using as storage. The motor had been removed and a few other parts where missing. This buss's story was that it had been used to haul illegal immigrants up to Colorado from Mexico. When he told me he had to move to another lot I asked him what he was going to do with the buss, I knew he would have to get someone else to tow it because he no longer had a large enough truck to do so. I had a dream of making it into the camper I had dreamed of with the smaller buss in Wyoming, only on a larger scale! I made a deal with him to acquire a motor from a small AMC car he had in the lot with the notion of installing it in the buss just to make it possible to drive it a short way to the storage lot the company I worked for. He thought this was a lot of work to do just to move it a few miles as the motor I was going to install was a small 6 cylinder from an AMC car and was going into a big C60 Chevy 35 foot school buss! To me a motor is just a power plant and the maker does not matter as long it will physically fit in the space allowed. In a few days I mated the motor to the transmission, mounted it in the frame and had all the wiring and hoses fitted. I drove it out of the lot and to its new home and started work on converting it to a camper. The most expensive part of this job was the 6 new tires I had to buy! I found that tires of this size where pricey, even used ones. After I put the tires on the rims, I took it for a good mechanical shake down drive with its small 6 cylinder in line motor. I was surprised how well it did, sure it was slow but it kept up with the semi trucks on the highway! I knew it would get good gas milage with this motor, much better than the big block 454 cid motor I had been planning to install.
This buss took me from Colorado to Wyoming and then to Texas and back! I had many adventures along the way.
In Wyoming its alternator shook apart on the road to Keyhole lake, I saw the alternator light come on after a few miles on a very rough dirt road. I naturally stopped to check it out with all the possibilities going threw my head as to why the light was on. When I looked I was surprised to see the 4 screws that held the 2 halves of the case together and fell out and the back half was hanging buy the wires about a foot away from the other half still bolted to the mount, the belt still tight! Try and find alternator bolts miles away from a auto parts store at a lake in Wyoming in the off season! The place was almost deserted and no junk cars laying about for me to take parts from. I was able to find 2 long very small bolts with nuts to put through the holes to get me to a parts store a few days later after camping out at the lake. I was into ham radios at the time and had installed a large radio mast on the roof that had a large hinged part attached to the back of the buss. I would mount my antenna to it and raise it up and talk to others all over the world. This was a fun way to communicate to far away places long before chat rooms! On the road again after replacing the alternator screws the engine started to loose power going up a long hill so I started to look for a place to pull over and see what was going on this time. I was still in Wyoming on a 2 lane highway out in the middle of nowhere. At the top of that hill was a flagger with a 'stop' sign on a 5 foot pole. Flaggers stop traffic when there is construction work being done, this is to control traffic so cars can pass the equipment safely. I pulled to the side of the road fearing that my buss would stall and not restart, I did this as to not block traffic and cause a traffic jam. I got out and once more opened the hood to find more loose screws, this time the carburetor had shook apart! Well hell, at least it didn't catch fire!
This was the start of the next adventure that would last a couple of months. I do believe in God and in His plans for your life.
I talked with the flagger while fixing the carb and found out this road was being re-paved and that there was a need for workers that would be willing to camp out near this project because it was too far to the next town to commute. I got the buss fixed and drove to the 'plant' and talked with the boss and was hired as a laborer, he looked at my buss and said I would fit right in with the other employees! I didn't realize that this wasn't a compliment.
The day I left Wyoming it started snowing, I took it as a sign to drive south and ended up back in Denver. I stayed a couple weeks and went on to where my parents where in Oklahoma then on to my sister"s in Texas. This is where I acquired Flash the cat that traveled with me and thought he was a dog! My sister had fun 'saving' stray cats and giving them away. Flash was but a tiny kitten when she insisted I needed him. I was not thrilled, to say the least! I needed to work on the buss and didn't need a kitten to take care of, a puppy would have gone over much better. I believe in letting an animal name itself by its deeds or personality. Flash came by that name because he loved to run very fast sometimes for no reason but to annoy me. He was a tailless cat, orange and striped. As he grew he always stayed near me weather I was working on the buss or driving around in a car or even taking a shower or bath. He got greasy sometimes while laying about the buss parts and I would take him into the shower and shampoo him with the appropriate soap fairly often. He didn't mind getting wet, just the drying off part he didn't like! He would even come into the shower when not greasy and cry at my feet to be washed, weird cat! His first friend was a parrot my brother-in-law had. They would play like 2 young kids, picking on each other and chasing all over the house! Later back in Denver he made friends with 3 dogs that my buddy had. It was fun watching them play, a cat attacking dogs and the dogs attacking him all in fun. He even ate dog food if it was small enough to get in his mouth. It was good times for the 3 of them, he injured them way more then any of the dogs hurt him! It helps to know these dogs grew up with cats so they where used to felines.
When it started getting too hot for me in texas I traveled north again, this time with Flash as my co-pilot. He loved to ride in the buss would jump out whenever we stopped and would go potty. It was fun to watch peoples reactions to him. Back in Denver I got a job at a body shop and sold the buss to a guy that worked there.
I fixed up a1973 chevy cargo shorty van with no windows with parts from a later model ford van that I got from a crash. My boss at the time helped me in his towing storage lot. It really turned out nice, it was in the 80's pimp style, bed in back, mirrored ceiling, bar, captains chairs on swivel basses, mag wheels and lots of chrome. I ended up living out of it for almost a year when my wife left me. Many good ties in that van! It ended its life when I ran it into a tree while drunk, lucky it didn't kill me!
The next buss I would get took me over 3 years to talk the owner into selling me! I loved camping and fishing along the Platte river in the mountains west of town. The first time I went along the road next to the river I noticed a 1955 chevy motor coach, a buss that was never a school buss but one made as a motorhome from the beginning, very rare! I thought about that buss and the next time I found myself along that road I stopped by and knocked on the house door and asked if I could buy it. The guy wasn't very happy with me eyeballing his buss but after a few minutes found out I was into that sort of stuff and he lightened up a bit. He showed me around his place and then out to the buss. It was being used for storage, apparently this is common, and I couldn't see much of how it was built. I told him I would help him work on it if he ever needed a hand and left my phone number. Through the years I would drop in when I was on the river fishing and I ended up living near in a town called Evergreen. One day while on a motorcycle ride on that scenic route I saw that they where having a garage sale and pulled over in front of the house. He recognized me and said he was glad to see me and had lost my number. We talked as I looked over the stuff for sale and he said he was moving. !!!!! I asked if he was ready to sell me the buss and he said no he was going to drive it to the new place. My heart sank and I asked how far it was to his new place. He said he was moving not that far, about 20 miles. Remember this is in the Colorado mountains and 20 miles of driving here in a 40 year old buss was going to be interesting for someone not used to a buss with no power steering, hydrovac brakes and hasn't been driven in a long time! I asked how it was running and how it drove knowing by the looks of it it hadn't gone anywhere in years. He said 'should be fine, a new battery oil change and some fresh gas it will be good'! I was thinking that was a very optimistic outlook and told him I would be glad to help him and gave him my number again thinking that I may never hear from him again. About 2 weeks passed and he called! He said he first tried putting gas in it and the tank had holes in it and it all leaked out, he called the local NAPA auto parts store and they said that he would have to adapt a universal gas tank to it because no one made one that was made for that old of a truck. He asked for my help and I came out that weekend. The house was already rented to someone else and they weren't happy the buss was still there, so when I showed up before the buss guy got there they where thrilled because I was driving my tow truck and thought I was there to tow it away! I told them I hoped to buy it from him but my truck was too small to tow that size of vehicle, especially in the mountains, it might lift it but never be able to stop it going down hills. The guy showed up with a battery, oil, brake fluid, antifreeze, tune up parts and a portable auxiliary fuel tank full of gas. We start working on it and I get it running and he starts trying to fill up the rotted tires with air and this isn't going well, he only gets 2 to hold air but the others are hopeless. So we start to bleed the brakes and it bursts 2 lines and all the wheel cylinders are leaking very bad. This I have seen all this before in any car that sits for years, it is normal for stuff to rot and rust after years of neglect. I can see he is loosing interest in this project quickly and again ask if he wants to sell. No is the answer once again! He says he will call a tow truck and see how much to tow it to his new place. I know he has no idea how expensive this will be, towing a car is one thing a buss no matter how small is different. I don't mention that it will have to be flat-beaded out unless he puts 4 new tires on the rear. I am excited as I start preparing to get this buss to my place! He calls me back in a few days and tells me how much the tow company wants and if I know of a cheaper one! I tell him if he puts 4 good tires on the back I can call in a favor and get it done for about $500-800. He tells me he doesn't even have the money to buy used tires and no where near enough for a tow. He says he will sell it for $2500, I offer $1000 we agree on $1500! I gathered all the parts I knew I would need and worked on it far a few days and drove it out of its long time residence, it took me 2 days to drive it about 40 miles. It was a really nice coach, it was fitted with a propane refrigerator, just like a house one with an arched top from the 50's, a 3 burner stove with a oven, again just like a house only much smaller! It had cedar paneling, gas lighting and a tiny shower! It had never been a commercial buss so the dash was just like a pickup truck of the same year but the drivers seat was just like a buss. I cleaned it up nicely, keeping it as original as possible. Because you could see it from the main road I had lots of people leave notes on it wanting to buy it and when working on it people would always stop by to talk about it. I really didn't want to sell it but some of the offers where very attractive! My neighbor liked to hang out and help me and after one very nice offer he said before I sell it to anyone he wanted a shot at owning it! He knew the story of this coach because we fished together and he saw it where it sat even before he knew me. He was a horse trader kinda guy with lots of stuff, I mean whole storage units full with cool stuff that he sold at the flee markets and some he just collected. We eventually made a deal with cash and some things from his collection that I wanted, I never even got to take the camper anywhere.
.jpg)
This all wheel drive GM safari van really went in the snow well! I used it for telecom work until it died then leased a new chevy astro van for work.
.jpg)
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This is one of 5 or 6 of these things GMC made for exhibitions , the sides swung up to make what was inside easy to see. The story is that inside where were the future tech like microwave ovens and jet engines!
.jpg)
2 front doors that each had a stairs to the cockpit
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The driver's seat is higher than a Large shipping container!
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Dodge camper van fully outfitted with shower and kitchen. I used this one on just one trip then sold it, I really hate dodges of these years, underpowered and hard to work on!
.jpg)
This van was given to me to haul away as junk near where I lived in the rocky mountains. I used it as a storage shed for years then turned it into a moving van. After the move I made it into the 'Stealth Urban Assault Camper'.
I made the rear door to open in 2 ways, one just to walk in and out. The second half would open enough to the ATVs in and was nice to open wide and see out or get the breeze blowing through.
With the bed folded up you could put more bikes in for trips to the sand dunes!
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more to come...
