Welcome to our blog. I (Bruce) will be the primary person posting here, but Linda may contribute something from time-to-time.
We purchased our converted coach in September 2009. It is a Prevost H3-40 that was built as a shell in August 1990 and sent directly to Royale Coach (Monaco) for conversion, so it was never in commercial service. Monaco finished it in October 1991 and titled it as a 1992 vehicle. The conversion was 18 years old when we bought it with the shell being about one year older. It is now four years later. Since it’s titled as a 1992, the state considers it to be 21 years old. At age 25 I think it will qualify as a historic vehicle. The license plate is OMNIBUS, from the French phrase meaning “every man’s conveyance.” The term “bus” was ultimately derived from this word.
As best we can tell we are the 4th owners. The coach had been sitting (outside) in a northern climate for at least a couple of years before we bought it. We were still a few years from retirement at that point and wanted some time to fix it up while we were still gainfully employed. We have been fixing it up ever since, while using it primarily to attend nearby RV rallies. I have been submitting articles to Bus Conversions Magazine describing some of this work. The first article was in the February 2013 issue, where our coach was featured on the cover.
I (Bruce) retired June 1st 2012, and Linda retired April 1st, 2013 (no fooling). We have been pushing hard to prepare for our first extended travels. We planned to leave on June 1st, but could not pull everything together in time. We finally set our deadline as June 9th, ready or not. On the date of this post (2 days prior to departure) I tried to finish up work on several bus projects as best I could, which is to say, they were not really finished.
One of my projects was the installation of a Zena power generator system for charging the house batteries while driving the coach. The physical components were all installed, and the wires were all run but not completely hooked up and thus not yet operational. This is a complicated system that needs to be installed correctly, so it was unlikely that I would finish this project while on the road. This was not absolutely necessary for travel, however, and finishing the project could wait.
I had also installed a Parker Fuel Polishing Module (FPM) and had to redo some of the fuel lines due to leaks. The re-worked lines still had a small leak in the return line from the Aqua-Hot. The leak is either where the hose fitting threads into the check valve or between the two halve of the check valve body itself. The purpose of the FPM is to circulate and clean the diesel fuel when the coach is parked/stored long-term, so it was also not necessary for travel. The leak is only present when running the FPM; operation of the Aqua-Hot was unaffected, so it was usable while traveling.
Another project I was trying to wrap up was replacing the leaking flexible exhaust pipe in the generator bay. I discovered that I was unable to get the new bendable exhaust pipe end-fittings to fit on either the powerplant exhaust or the fitting going through the bay floor so that they would not leak. This, in turn, prevented me from wrapping the pipe in exhaust header insulation. Without a leak-free, heat-insulated genset exhaust we would be unable to use the genset, and that would be a problem for travel.
Finally, I had replaced two older Aqua-Jet fresh water pumps with a single Shur-Flo 4048 water pump. The pump was installed and connected, but yet to be tested as we had not yet filled the fresh water tank. All-in-all it was a pretty discouraging start to a long trip.
While I was wrapping this stuff up Linda started cleaning and organizing the interior of the coach to make it ready for travel. We spent the evening trying to get the house ready for us to be away for a while.
