Autumn Bus Update

Autumn comes in a series of hints and whispers. Darkness comes steadily earlier. The available time between putting the kids to bed and too-dark-to-work grows ever shorter. The loss of light would be worth it were the heat and humidity dropping a bit, but they haven’t yet. For now I get by on the words of friends in more northerly climes, who have already started mentioning a crispness to the air.

Here the heat remains constant, the humidity never leaves. The bus feels like an oven by mid afternoon.

The good news is that the bus also gets closer to done in a series of hints and whispers. Bare walls disappear behind two layers of insulation, then finished birch panels. The ceiling is in and, to judge from bus visitors so far, it’s the high water mark of what I’ve done.

There are new cabinets as well, partly because additional storage is nice when you’re cramming five people into less than 100 square feet of livable space, and partly because neither the ceiling panels nor the wood on the walls is capable of bending to the degree necessary to follow the original curve of the Travco.

I’m not the only one to hide that curve behind a cabinet. Travcos up until 1968 had a plastic channel to hide it (which did double duty hiding some air conditioning ducting as well) and then in 1969 Travco started adding cabinets as well¹. I mimicked the latter as best I could.

There is still much to do, even if we do plan to leave before it’s completely finished. We need a floor and couch at the bare minimum, though I’d like to have the propane and sewage system working as well. Oh and then there’s a cab area, which I really haven’t touched.

Did I mention the brakes stopped working a couple weeks back? The Travco’s brake fluid reservoir is incredibly inconvenient and difficult to access. There’s a hole a few inches back from the accelerator pedal that’s just wide enough for a four-year-old’s hand. It’s way to small for mine. Too small for my channel lock pliers too. I was lazy and posted something in the Travco Facebook group asking if anyone had any tricks for getting the reservoir open and someone responded that I wasn’t trying hard enough. I mulled that over for a while. Then the day before I need to move it I felt like I wanted it pretty bad so I got a new pair of needle nose channel locks and sure enough, I hadn’t been trying hard enough.

Sometimes it’s good to have internet strangers call you on your bullshit. The reservoir was, predictably, empty. So now we get to bleed the brakes, which is good. I like to know that things like brakes are properly done.

The far more difficult project that I’d likewise been avoiding for some time was getting the generator out of the back compartment. Unlike the brake fluid reservoir, getting the generator out turned out to be much harder than I anticipated.

Everyone wants to know why I want to get rid of a perfectly functional Onan² generator. Here’s a link to fellow nomad Randy Vining reading a poem that nicely summarizes why I don’t like generators. Suffice to say that most of my worst camping memories involve someone else’s generator ruining the otherwise wonderful sounds of nature. In my view the advent of reasonably cheap solar completely eliminates any need for a generator.

Still, the generator in the bus was perfectly good and I didn’t want to just throw it away. There are plenty of people who want one. A few weeks ago I saw someone post in the aforementioned Travco Facebook group looking for a generator for a 1972 Travco. I noticed he was only about five or six hours away in North Carolina so I messaged him and told him he could have the generator if he helped me get it out.

He agreed and a week later he drove down from NC with a neighbor to help out. After a quick run to get some tools I needed to finally get the last bolt off of the thing, the three of use tried lifting it out and quickly realized that there was no way that way happening. I called around to see if any local mechanics had an engine lift we could use, but no one did. This was somewhat complicated by the fact that the brakes had gone out earlier in the day and I didn’t really want to drive further than I absolutely had to. Then I remembered that a local equipment rental place around the corner probably had some kind of lift. It was only three blocks a way and didn’t involve any major hills. So I hopped in, fired her up and we took off just as a torrential rainstorm hit.

Around block two the bus sputtered and died. Out of gas. Blocking a fairly major intersection. I rolled it back as far it would go. The rain was coming down in sheets. I had no choice but to leave it there at the side of the road. I hopped in Nathan’s car and he gave me and the meager two gallon gas can a ride to the gas station and back. I stood in the pouring rain with a makeshift funnel fashioned from a plastic water bottle, pouring gasoline in the tank. I was soaked through with water and gasoline long before I finally got it running again. Like my 1969 Ford, 2 gallons of gas is not enough to get the Travco started. Note to self, get two real steel 5 gallon gas cans and mount them on the bumper.

I finally made it to Barron’s rentals and we somehow convinced the otherwise unoccupied warehouse employees to help us lift the generator out with a forklift. I took six of us in all, gently lifting, nudging and balancing the massive generator on a single forklift tine and slowly easing it out. In the end though it worked. We got it out of the bus and into the back of Nathan’s Land Cruiser where it disappeared off to a new life in a 1972 Travco somewhere back in North Carolina.

I cleaned out the 50 odd years worth of motor oil and fluids and cut some leftover marine grade plywood the fit the bottom of the generator compartment so it would be a little less exposed to the elements (the wood covers a few holes and with a coat of sealant should last several decades). With the generator gone and the compartment cleared up there’s finally room to start moving some of the kids’ toys out of the house, which helps get the house cleaned up and more presentable for sale.

One things leads to another and it’s all accelerating. It takes a long time to line up dominoes, but so far it’s working and the few that we’ve managed to tip over have all fallen in place.

In the mean time there is much work to be done and miles to go before we sleep.