I first shot and posted this bus in October of 2014, when it was still a work in progress. Then I saw it the other day, and shot it again. And almost that same day, the owner left a comment about it on that old post, with some details. Woo woo… So I’ll share his comment with you here, as well as the updated pictures.
By the way, the green upper structure is part of the bus, not the building behind it. Looking at it just now makes that window and air conditioner look like it might not be so.
Here’s how it looked back then. And here’s the owner’s comment:
Oh hai whatcha know. Thats my bus. It did have a 351m v6 in it. I replaced it with a 305c v6 from a 66 pickup but retained the beefed up timing chain cover/ dual thermostats.
The color was my “primer” to cover up the even gaudier paint it had when i got it. Ive upgraded to a 600w solar system on a folding mast. The loft is getting wired late winter to include all the leds i can possibly add and yes, a stripper pole will most certainly serve the position of foremast with a projector atop pointing at a screen on the main mast.
Oh yeah, fabbing up a metal tree at my shop to support the dome and the open pentagon will be a fog cannon.
And here’s a closer look at the dome, which has now been sheathed in steel sheets that are quickly acquiring some patina.
Is that a landing deck up there?
I’m guessing that this bus didn’t exactly get any faster with the swap from a 351 to a 305 CID V6. But then, who’s in a hurry? It looks like it’s only moved a block or so since I shot it in 2014.
This would totally have been my dream vehicle when I was 13. It’s nice to see that some guys have kept their inner child – or is it their inner Fabulous Furry Freak Brother? – so alive! I’m looking forward to getting some pics of the interior.
At 13 I had the idea that I could buy a postal van and live in it while travelling the world. Like all my other teenage plans that one didn’t pan out but nice to see someone’s doing it.
At first glance I thought that chimney stack was part of the bus too!!
I think the first traffic cop or commercial vehicle inspector would stop this “vehicle” and have it towed away deemed unsafe for the road.
I do wonder about that. The modifications look mostly non-structural and non-mechanical. So he might be okay there, as long as they’re all securely connected. But man is that thing tall–you’d have to be extremely careful where you drive it so the height isn’t a problem.
How do you drive it under a 13 ft. bridge?
I’m guessing you just avoid them.
The worst a low bridge would do is return the bus to its stock configuration…
I`m surprised that I didn`t see “Magic Bus” painted somewhere on this.”Its too much the Magic Bus”.
Is this still road legal?
Step right up for the Magical Mystery Tour!
That’s a strange one. Too bad no interior shots were available. And that landing deck is just outright bizarre, as well as the geo dome in the back. I can actually somewhat understand the big green building tacked onto the top (particularly with the A/C unit), but not the other two features.
Although I do see a 55 gallon drum up there. Maybe the purpose of the deck is to store a whole lot of extra fuel/water containers for a really long haul into the boonies (or maybe they’re depth charges). If you’re going way out in the sticks where the weather is severe, that extra fuel, presumably for a generator, would come in mighty handy to stay comfortable.
But I can’t imagine this guy getting very far on the highway before being pulled over. It really doesn’t look very safe, at all.
Still, it is a 13 year boy’s dream, much more elaborate and fun than a treehouse. Someone definitely never grew up.
Looks to me to be a bus for Burning Man. That 55 gallon drum would be good for hauling water out to the Black Rock Desert.
Reminds me of the buses used in the tv series “Here comes the double deckers” and “The Partridge Family”.
Looks kind of like one of the first aircraft carriers.
Something tells me that there is a Partridge Family 8-track tape somewhere in this bus.
I’d say the Grateful Dead is more likely.
Hope you are there with a camera when the first biplane is launched off the deck!
You know, ever since I was a little kid I’ve wondered about those gasketed, fixed, unopenable single-pane rearmost side windows on school buses. They were all but universal through the mid ’60s, then Superior Coach started putting ordinary rectangular openable sash windows all the way to the back. Blue Bird stayed with gasketed single-pane rearmost side windows longer than that—parallelograms through ’74, then switching to sort of half-trapezoidal, like the Carpenter(? Maybe Ward?) bus in this article but with rounder corners. That was kept through at least ’77; by ’81 the Blue Bird buses had openable rearmost windows, too.
So…why the non-opening ones for so long? Was it something to do with structural integrity or strength? Or just a thing that was done because that’s how it was done?
Good question on that rear, fixed, odd-shaped, side window. My guess is it has to do with a change in general bus design aesthetic. For a while, buses had a sort of ‘fastback’ look. Besides being swoopy-looking, I suspect it might have had something do with helping keep the rear windows clean and clear.
But then that changed to a more upright (and space effective) rear design. Unfortunately, there might have been a backlog of the old style fixed side window. So, they just kept using those old windows (which were more designed for a slanted fastback bus) until they ran out of the windows, then updated with a square window which fit in with the style of the upright, non-fastback buses. It’s not like anyone would notice all that much.
The bottom line is bus design hasn’t really been the most stylistically advanced, certainly nothing like the yearly automotive model change. Whereas it used to take no more than a couple years for a complete design overhaul on a car, a major change on a bus style takes something like decades.