2007 GMC 4500 Bus as a Poor Man's Toterhome?

Recently acquired this 2007 GMC C4500 shuttle bus. Goals, somewhat in order:

• Fix some obvious leaks, figure out where it is on deferred maintenance items, etc. make sure it's worth keeping, essentially.
• Add hitch capable of at least my current 24ft enclosed, ideally a little headroom in case buddy and I can stumble onto a suitable two car rig.
• Interior "upfit". Somewhere between RV conversion and still a bus. Would like to be able to sleep 2 people in it at the track, nap some kids at a music festival, etc. But need to retain enough roadworthy seating to get a brood of cousins and grandparents to an annual musical festival or two that we have historically attended in our current c3500 short bus (which I'll be selling, ideally somewhere near the top bullet point up there).
• Tires. Two of them have plain to see lumps/flat spots and hard for me to tell which part of the ride quality is tires vs something else worn out vs it's just a medium duty chassis, but eventually I'll bite the bullet on some new rubber.

Some background: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/there-a-class-c-or-short-bus-option-that-can-tow-an-enclosed-trailer/272288/page1/ 

So at present, it didn't make it home from the sellers. Seller appeared to just be flipping it or maybe selling it for the church that owned it, but he had no background on it other than saying a church had owned it since 2017 and used it sparingly (so it mostly sat). Based on stickers and such, it was a bus for Fairfax Co VA prior to that, and since the odometer is at 389k, I think they used her pretty regular. Hopefully that means regular fleet maintenance routines.

Have ordered a belt, two idler pulleys and a few other bits from Rock Auto, be here next week. In the meanwhile it's been towed from side of I-64 to my job site where I shall enact repairs and complete the last hour and a piece of its journey home, hopefully next week. 

Following!

In for this as well... What motor is in this one?

Do you have a proper passenger side front door? 

Do you have a passenger seat? If no seat and the floor pan hasn't been modified, standard Silverado should fit.

golfduke said:

In for this as well... What motor is in this one?

 

6.6 Duramax. Which three letter version, I honestly don't know. Seems they used differing versions with different year breaks than the "light duty" pickups. They also detuned them to 300hp. 

John Welsh said:

Do you have a proper passenger side front door? 

Do you have a passenger seat? If no seat and the floor pan hasn't been modified, standard Silverado should fit.

It's got a 2 panel bus door. Electric!

For our 22 passenger bus we found a few pull out RV couches to sleep on and retained the front 2 rows of bus seating. That way we could seat the whole race team and sleep part of it(or more if they're willing to share beds).

Got new belt. Label says 139.58" for belt. That's the label from Carrier, that's affixed under the hood after they add the rear-AC compressor. A co-worker and I both got greasy during lunch (hopefully these pants and this shirt can be salvaged) and tried installing the 140.125" belt I ordered. Still too short. By inches. I could wrestle it directly onto the last pulley if I skipped the tensioner altogether, but skipping the tensioner, beyond being generally ill-advised, changes the path enough that it created multiple fouls and wouldn't have worked more than 30 seconds before shredding the belt. 

I've reached out to the bus manufacturer who pointed me to Carrier, now "MCC". Haven't heard back from them.

I have two thoughts: 1.) the tensioner looks like it's not clocked correctly for where the add-on compressor is mounted next to it, and there are grooves in the tensioner from the bottom of the belt that confirm my suspicion that something is amiss. 2.) A local YMCA is currently auctioning a bus that is same year, same manufacturer, same motor. I'm going to see if I can sneak a peak under the hood to look at their tensioner relative to add-on AC compressor as well as maybe get lucky and be able to read a part number on their belt. 

So, bus ownership week #1, the bus is winning. 

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Keep fighting the good fight.  Maybe she's just playing hard to get and you need to woo her a little bit, haha. 

Could you install a standard belt, bypassing the entire add-on compressor, just to get it running and driving?    Are all the other belt-drive components in the same position they would be in a Duramax 6.6 if it wasn't in a bus with the secondary air?  Is there a straight shot from the pass side alternator to the crank pulley - assuming that's how it would be routed in a non-bus application?  Just throwing out ideas.   

SEADave said:

Could you install a standard belt, bypassing the entire add-on compressor, just to get it running and driving?    Are all the other belt-drive components in the same position they would be in a Duramax 6.6 if it wasn't in a bus with the secondary air?  Is there a straight shot from the pass side alternator to the crank pulley - assuming that's how it would be routed in a non-bus application?  Just throwing out ideas.   

Sadly, no. At least not "simply". The second compressor is mounted to a plate that's mounted to the motor. That plate holds the tensioner (in an "other than factory" location), the AC compressor and an additional idler. The position and orientation of the newly rearranged tensioner is such that it's kinda all or nothing. There's really no reasonable routing that skips anything. 

Hoping the YMCA bus sheds light on things. If not I reckon I'll try routing a little piece of rope and taking a measurement.

Stopped and checked out YMCA auction bus, which appears to be a very close sibling of my bus.  All of the markings had worn off of the belt on it, and everything *looked* to be identical as far as accessories, idlers, etc. I didn't feel comfortable removing that bus's belt. It also had the same label from Carrier calling for the same length belt. 

I took a ton of pictures, few of which seemed to be focused on the right thing, and I think I'm going to try installing the belt I have, one more time, just to make sure I didn't monkey up the routing. I feel reasonably sure I had it. But it is going around more twist and turns than your average serpentine belt. 

Fun aside, I worked on the assembly line at a Ford plant for a summer. My job for 8 weeks was installing serpentine belt, mating fan to fan clutch, and spinning said assembly onto motors. While walking backwards. New one every 62 seconds. 6 choices for belts depending on motor and with or without AC.

So, this belt install feels easy in comparison. 

I love this, I'm sure you'll get it sorted.

I've long dreamt of doing this as a way to have a cheap "rv" to take to the track,  but never gonna happen for me. 

Attempt 3 (and 4 and 5) at belt. Got a belt that was 142in (effective length). Routed it once, this time alone, and it was loose enough that the tensioner was applying pressure, but just barely. Double checked it was around every pulley and said "okay, turns out the belt that matches the label IS the right belt, I must have routed it wrong last time."

Pulled 142" off, put 140" back on. When tensioning it, noticed it was slipping off of the fan pulley, but it just rides down the taper of the pulley and ends up on the shaft of the fan. Realized that wasn't in my "double check" with the 142" version, and also realized that I was again never going to get the 140" belt to go on the last pulley once I routed it back up on the fan pulley.

Off with the 140", back on with the 142". This time with special care paid to fan pulley, I could pull the tensioner to its max and maybe with another set of hands, and some pry tools, maybe I could have gotten the belt on. Devised a sketchy way of holding tensioner maxed and tried working belt onto two different pulleys thinking maybe I could sneak it on a smaller one or larger one more easily. No dice. 

So, I'm sneaking up on it, but also running out of belt choices. Things start jumping pretty quickly at this length. Don't see a 143" in a quick Google search. Think I saw a 145", but if 142" would *almost* squeak on, 145" feels like way too big. Also, why the delta between the sticker and my belt? Could one changed pulley be to blame? The alternators both look "special". Maybe they have larger diameter pulleys? Idlers? I don't know. 

Will spend some quality time searching the Internet over the holiday weekend and see what I can find for one more attempt at a longer belt. 

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