Our journey

This is our journey on how our bus went from this

To this

We purchased our bus in 2013 and were so excited to get racing that we did minor repairs and hit the race circuit. Over the years we repaired the following:

We replaced the old 871 Detroit engine with a 350 Cummins
Changed the 4 speed transmission with a 10 speed road ranger
Had to fabricate a shift tower with air assist to shift the third rail for the Fuller Road range transmission
Put in an on demand hot water heater
New plumbing throughout
Made new furniture
Fixed leaky roof

We then hit the road for another couple of years of racing

Now in 2019, we are doing rust repair, replacing water damaged paneling
Building new dinette benches
Replacing refrigerator and cabinet it goes in
New t & g fir flooring that we have milled and planed in our lumber yard mill

It is really sad seeing her as she is today, but, we have a race in a month and she should be ready and back cruising on the road

Darren, thanks so much for starting a project thread. Many of us think the project forum is best part of our site.

You mentioned the shifting linkage for the 10 speed. I have been gathering as much information as possible on the conversion to 9/10/13 speed transmissions. Any documentation you have on that conversion would be great. You mention an air assisted third rail and that sounds like a new approach that I am not familiar with.

Jim

You have your work cut out for you, I like fab work but it can get a bit over whelming at times. Keep up the good work and be careful.

Looks strangely familiar...

I am lucky to be almost done with that process!!

Right now I am working on replacing my engine.. with a 12.7 L Detroit S60.

Looks good, and don't stop the good work!

Today’s progress - 14 July 2019

Got the driver side new wheel well welded into place.

Last edited by Dtsmith on Sat Jul 20, 2019 7:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Good progress today, the drivers side wheel well is done and starting to put back together. The inside, the new subfloor is down, the area for the new propane fridge is complete, ( it only had an electric fridge when we got the bus) plus the new vents for the fridge and a couple of new electrical boxes installed. tomorrow, the rest of the insulation and then the new cabinet for the fridge will be installed, and the fridge hooked up and hopefully the new wall paneling.

Phase 1 of our repairs is now complete and we had a successful trip to great falls, mt. We had one small issue with the throttle pedal as it was getting hung up. Darren fixed it the night of our first night at saltese, mt. It was painful getting there as the fastest we could go was 8 miles per hours through the pass and 50 miles per hour on the flats. It was a very long 225 miles.....after the fix Darren said it was better than it has ever been. He didn’t get the speedometer cable set up so we were relying on the speed app on my iPad. I did have to mention though that he might want to keep the speed under 80 mph.....the speed app was registering 92mph on a long straight away.....oh, the life of living with a race car driver..........