Hi , and am I being realistic?

[davidbrady]

Hi John and welcome to the forum,

You wanna do what? What does your mother say? What do your friends say? I can hear them now: "this is the craziest, looniest thing I've ever heard, what will people think? You're going to pour all your money down that bottomless pit, living like a gypsy! Get your wings level and fly straight will you". (as my grandmother always said)

LOL! In all seriousness I think the idea is very sound. You can absolutely do everything you said, and there's few better choices than a Prevost bus of the vintage you describe. We in the RV and Coach Conversion industry have been doing tiny homes for a long time; it's mind boggling to me that folks are sinking $75K to $100K into wooden tiny homes on trailers when the same money can buy a 25 year old Prevost! The choice to me is a no brainer. The trick is finding a well maintained bus to start with. It's always better to pay more for the right bus than less for the wrong one.

Prevost-Stuff has two promising '94's listed. Here's one, and here's the other, both 40 footers, both on the surface look to be well cared for, and both have relatively fresh tires while one has new batteries. A 25 year old coach better have new suspension air springs and norgren valves all around and new brake chambers, and I'd want to see receipts. If a Prevost Service Center didn't do the work I'd want to know who did and I'd probably call them or pay them a visit. If these items are fresh a coach will stand tall on it's suspension for months without the leans. As you narrow in on a coach we can help with PDI (pre-delivery inspections) and checklists and things to look for. Taking a candidate bus to Prevost for an inspection is a great idea too. What you want to do is stem the tide of continual expenses by buying the right bus up front. Find the one that's been stored indoors, used regularly, maintained annually with a list of receipts to prove it.

So, once you've found your bus and had it checked out and once it has new or relatively fresh tires and batteries and air springs and norgrens and brake chambers, then you need to be concerned with maintenance. A Prevost Level-2 service which is fluids, filters, and grease and a bunch of visual checks will run a couple of grand. As time goes on they'll spot items that need repair, say a loose steering ball joint, cracked suspension bushings, purge valve for the air dryer, maybe a leaking hub seal. These items will be in addition to your annual level 2 and I'd budget around $500 per month for these. Then there's the essential house items; i.e., perhaps new inverters, maybe a new refrigerator, perhaps a waterpump. These are durable items and expenditures on these should taper off as you use the bus and work out the bugs. Budget maybe another $500 per month but taper off for the second and third year. Then there's the elective interior upgrades: fabrics, wall coverings, flooring. You can spend unlimited amounts on these items but the good news is you can put them off for as long as you wish.

All in all, I'd say $1200 to $1500 per month initial budgeting is realistic and as the second and third year rolls on I'd expect you to accumulate quite a cash cushion in your Prevost maintenance account to the point where you're steadystate monthly budgeting could be reduce to $500 per month (plus or minus).