Cool Bus

We bought a Mini Bird school bus to use as a refuge from the elements when we're visiting our land.

Acquiring the Cool Bus was an adventure. We didn't know much about buses when we purchased it. It had a higher ceiling than most of the older buses we looked, it had a gas engine, appeared to have the ground clearance that we thought would be needed to drive it up to our property. Unfortunately when we drove it home from the dealer, the engine caught on fire. I did smell something odd, and slowed down, but the engine kept running so I kept going. On retrospect, if I had stopped, I think, the whole bus would have been engulfed. After exiting the freeway, it was running rough, so I danced on the break and gas at stop lights and coaxed it all the way home. After turning if off, I tried to restart it, it wouldn't start.

My first look at the engine after getting the bus home revieled what had happened on the way home. I replaced the intake manifold and updated the fuel injection from the poppet style to the multi-injector style.

With the repairs, the bus drove the 100 miles without issue from Chandler to Mayer . We run the bus engine on almost every visit to charge batteries and keep the engine oiled.