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Here's how the bus looked the day before we bought it when it was still hauling old ladies to the casinos in Reno. Being in service until I bought it was one of my selection criteria.
It had a fairly recently overhauled engine, and was far and away the best looking bus of its kind that I had seen (as far as my novice eyes could tell: I had trained myself by reading extensively (mostly "bus nut" web sites) and going to look at approximately 50 buses before I settled on this one). It was also very low mileage - only 540,000 miles (that's roughly akin to the cadillac that gets taken out for the Sunday drive to church, in bus terms)!
The seller came highly recommended from a fellow bus nut who was helping me shop, and when I checked out their operation, I knew I'd found a winner. The place was spotless, organized, and the best part is that the owner is a fellow bus nut: he's got his own MCI bus conversion that he tinkers with in one of the bays of his garage! We immediately became friends, and he's been a great help and a reassuring presence in my early days.
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Here it is shortly after arriving home (October 2001). The owner of the bus company drove it to our house. So far, I've only driven it around an empty parking lot! It was a blast, but I never got above 15MPH. Lots to look forward to!
At this point, I've demolished our side yard, relocated our shed, graded out our driveway to provide access, parked the bus, blocked it up, and removed some of the interior (interior walls and insulation). Note the destination sign ("House of Travel") -- this is our current "working name" for the bus.
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This seems like ages ago. Actually, it's December '01, and I've removed the interior walls and insulation, and part of the floor. Almost 2 months of work, and I've barely begun! The real fun is about to begin!
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The point of no return. Here's where things get a little crazy. Look carefully - the roof is ready to be supported by the bottle jack on the 4x4; to the right is the homemade jack made from 3/4" all-thread and some welded channel - there's one of these near each corner, and I'll actually lift the roof by walking around the bus and turning the nut a few threads at a time on each jack after I've made the cuts; there's a piece of square tubing clamped across the window frame ready to guide my circular saw as I prepare to CUT THE BUS IN HALF!
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Here the roof is up half way -- 8". In other words, I've cut the bus in half and jacked the top half up 8"! If you look closely, you'll see the 8" gap in some of the window frames (for example, look at the vertical frame member closest to the peak of the shed on the right of the photo).
Actually, 8" is the total final amount of the roof raise, but I had to raise it 16" temporarily because the pieces I inserted to take up the 8" raise actually have a 4" extension on each end that inserts inside the existing frame -- kind of like a sleeve. So up she goes 8 more inches, the inserts go into the frame, then down she comes. The frames get welded in place, and now we're essentially DONE with demolition, and it's on to construction!
We hope everything connects back together the way it came apart! The string in the foreground has a plumb bob on the end aligned with a mark on the floor to make sure the roof is going straight up!
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Uhhh... not so fast chief. There's more to raising the roof than meets the eye! Here's a view out the front windshield. While the "roof" was raised 8", the front and rear "caps" (the front and rear roof sections of the bus, which are separate from the main, central part of the roof; the central part is made of aluminum sheets riveted to a frame -- it's about 30' long; the front and rear caps are about 5' long each, and are made of fiberglass) remain separate and have to be dealt with themselves.
These old caps have to be removed (and later replaced with new ones), and new frames have to be built to raise the cap height 8" to match the rest of the roof.
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