Build the bus
 
 
Talking with our bus business advisors, we decided to have the roof on our bus raised. It costs nearly as much as the bus itself, but it’s un-resellable without it. That means we can have them install the new windows and blank out the area around where the bunks are going to go. Then we found out that we couldn’t have all this done for 30 days. That’s no good. We really want to take the bus on our July 1-10 tour.
 
Looking for other options, I found a guy who had the wider bus we couldn’t afford, and he’d already done the roof raise, already installed nice windows, and insulated it and had done a lot of stuff that we were going to do to our bus. He was building it to live in it. Then a condo became available where all his friends live and he bought it. So, he’s selling the bus.
 
Ok, if we hadn’t bought yet, I’d buy this bus and pick up where he left off. He was asking less money than we’d have in it after we just do the roof raise. Then we’d have to do windows, blank out the sides, paint it, insulate it, buy air conditioners, etc. Turns out that if we traded up and continued working on this new bus, we’d be about $5-8,000 ahead and it would certainly save us about a month’s time (That we can spend on Future Tense)
 
I showed the idea to everyone involved: my main bus advisor who owns a company that does conversions like this, some of the team members who have been helping me with the labor, and even one of the other guys in the band. Everyone concurred that we just had to do this.
 
Then, I negotiated his price down thousands of dollars to the point where it was a no-brainer. I called a friend in Florida and he agreed to go buy it and drive it to Pittsburgh. 20 hours later it was in my driveway. I now have two buses.
 
It arrived at 8:30, I took it for a test drive up the highway and we got started.
 
When we bought the bus in Dallas we inspected and auditioned many buses and test drove the best of the best to find the very strongest engine (my biggest fear).
 
THIS bus is way ahead in structural renovation, and the engine seems sound. The other bus has a lot more pick up, but that might be a function of a smaller bus. Also, this bus is from California and the engine is governed at 67mph. No one can give me a straight answer as to if that’s the turn of a screw or something more. Worst case scenario, we have to swap out the engine down the road and/or the tranny. (These buses have all gone through 2-3 engines before getting to me)
 
Please help us Build the Bus.
are you sitting down? Keep out We were able to save months of labor by upgrading the bus shell we’re working on! Praise God!