Our Old Rover

[Rover All Over]

We have an ex school bus which was owned by Rover Motors in Cessnock. It's about 10m long mid engined Leyland Tiger.

Not a lot of work done on it thus far so not really anything much to post a picture of but will do my best to find one that will make you all happy until we have something done inside that looks pretty enough to "expose" to everyone.

There are lots of boxes in it with all the stuff we want to built into it. We do sleep in it when we are working on it up at our daughters place but only get up there on alternate weekends, so far progress has been slow, Alan has sealed all the joins on the roof, replaced any missing rivets, given the roof 3 coats of thermashield, and 2 coats of topcoat.

When we do hit the road we are still using the coaster for the odd trip away whenever we can fit one in between babysitting stints.




Cheers
Alan and Cheryl

[madiesmum]

not a bad bus the ol tiger.

when you are doing it up be mindful that it is a mid mount engine and you will need internal access to it.

[Rover All Over]

Yes, we do have tape on the floor marking out all the "bits" and what goes where. It will be kitchen on both sides of the engine hatch, and cupboards which are narrower than what the passenger seats were, so there will be room to get to it.. The original owner will be doing the servicing on it for us.
She runs sweet as.

Cheryl.

[Dot]

How about a floor plan?? I haven't been inside a mid mounted engine bus.

[T1 Terry]

When we had to worked on the mid engine busses in the bus yards the cleaners hated it. That diesel oil black and smell eats into anything it gets close to and works it's way towards the door. In Tassie we finally locked the centre hatches of the mid engine coaches and modified stuff so it was all accessible from the side skirts.
When we started building our project the first thing I planned was to never mix the house with the drive train, so nothing on the under side is accessible from the inside, even put the engine in the boot Once that smell gets inside it's a hell of a battle to get rid of it. My conversion would have been so much easier as mid engine but the floor plan wouldn't have worked with opening hatches and V8's need access to the top of the engine or a tune up would involve the engine coming out

May I suggest building all your cupboards and fitout in cardboard first, then try it out for useability and accessibility for the eng etc, you may find the lounge and table need to be either side of the access hatch so they can be removed if any major work is required through the top.

T1 Terry

[Rover All Over]

Hi Terry,

What you say makes sense, you can get to the engine from the outside of the bus via an opening hatch on either side, the engine is mounted on it's side. I'm not sure how that would work but the mechanics at Rover always alternated their motors, they always had spares on the floor ready to go and as each bus came in for servicing they dropped the motor, put in one that was serviced and waiting and the bus was off the road for a limited amount of time. Haven't spoken to them about how they would do it now although they are still running a few Tigers on the school runs. From our point of view if they did drop the motor to service and it took a day or two worth the wait to have it right I reckon.

I'll have to have another look at the floor when we are up there next, because I am thinking now that the dinette it actually beside it, the fridges behind the dinette and kitchen opposite both the dinette and the fridges.

Alan and Cheryl