Tour of My 1985 Blue Bird Wanderlodge

I'm Steve for this hook up with cars and this is my

1985

blue

bird

Wanderlodge pt40. I bought this bus in 2010. This particular one has the name Showboat. Older buses usually have their own names. I'm not sure if this bus has been called a showboat throughout its life, but there's a good chance considering how original this bus is. These buses were made by

blue

bird

, the same company that makes school buses and they made some of the best motor homes in the 1970s and 1980s. This bus has a 300 one gallon diesel fuel tank, a 140 gallon water tank , an 80 gallon gray water tank and an 80 gallon black water tank, so you can stay on the road living in this thing for quite a while without returning to civilization on the roof, that's the snorkel that's the entrance of air for the engine you won't have any problems going through puddles with this thing behind this hatch we find the batteries, these are both the engine batteries and the house batteries, you can see on the side of the engine there. it says Detroit Diesel and after lifting the rear hatch we can see that Detroit Diesel right here is a very interesting engine, it's a 6v92 92 cubic inches per cylinder and it's a two-stroke diesel, it's supercharged and turbocharged, all of these two.

The Detroit diesel engines were supercharged, they need it to force air into the engine, but this one is also turbocharged and makes 330 horsepower. Above the engine is an engine heater to start the engine on those cold days. You can start the engine from the cockpit or From back here, in front of those battery trays, there's a gigantic radiator for this engine. It takes a lot of power to run a bus like this and it has 50 amp 220 volt connections as well as two 30 amp 120 volt connections on either side. a pair of landing lights that you can turn on individually, allowing you to illuminate the direction to help you park.

These buses have a good amount of underground storage, however, it doesn't go all the way because you need that space for the gigantic fuel. tanks and water tanks we take a look at the roof there are three air conditioners I think all three are original to the bus it seems that the plastic is falling apart in one of them the first plate up here is the television antenna and that comes out in a mass rising above the bus about a meter this is a television satellite dish the kitchen vent the bathroom vent gigantic storage containers that is a vent for the refrigerator there is another air conditioning unit in front of me another vent for the bedroom and another gigantic storage capsule, let's ring the bell, get on the bus.

It is practically original since

1985

. I have not changed anything. The previous owners kept it in pretty decent shape spanning the entire length of the bus. It is a piece of leather or vinyl that covers the carpet, making it very easy to clean. These simply clip onto the floor and can be easily removed. In the front there is a cockpit and I will go over that later. There's a set of speakers here above the door. It is the first one. set of light switches, these were never labeled so I labeled them myself to remember what they did.

This little table folds up into this filing cabinet, but I thought it would be nice to just permanently mount a TV to it so it doesn't. They don't fold up now all the curtains are electrically controlled with this switch, the curtains will move from side to side, we'll go up to the front and they will go all the way back and bend here. I would have to have the generator on or plugged in for this to work so the switch isn't doing anything right now because I have the generator off so it doesn't make any noise in the overhead bins plus speakers and this is where You would select your TV sources from the satellite TV antenna etc, then we get to the dining room and the control panel allows you to monitor things on the bus.

We can set off an alarm that informs us that our batteries are running low. Another alarm to inform us that our refrigerator is running low. too hot I can start and stop the generator from here this is a refrigerator fan that helps keep it cool behind the refrigerator and turn on our water pump this bus has five built in smoke alarms we can turn them all on and off from the switch here it also has an odor control system on the waist and I think what it does when you turn it on is it periodically heats up the black tank which helps everything degrade.

Here we can see the temperature inside and outside, we can also set an alarm down here is our fresh water tank, gray water tank, our black water tank and we can also monitor our propane tank from here. This bus has two 120 volt circuits that come in if you are plugged into a 220 source, it automatically divides them between the two. legs and down here is about one of seven sets of thermostats on this bus, these only control the heat as all the air conditioning is controlled from the driver's seat or from the individual air conditioners, usually on these buses, somewhere There's a hidden safe somewhere and mine is hidden under here.

Unfortunately, I have never been able to open the dining room. If anyone is a safe expert and wants to try this, let me know. It would be very interesting to see what's inside here, on the driver's side, located behind this speaker. We have our curtain controls and our master switch to cut out the electronics on the bus. It's a pretty elegant cabinet of curiosities. Here you can store all the things you have collected on your adventures. There are three types of heating on this bus. Engine heat. Propane heat. There are also electric heaters like this scattered around when I bought this bus all the pipes were frozen so I put in the sink kit so this is not the original there is a blender built into the counter and that is original it also came. with an ice maker, this is original to the bus, it has a small oven, stove and I upgraded the microwave a few years ago, in addition to upgrading the refrigerator, the original unit was three way, it would charge with DC, AC or propane. one only runs on propane and air conditioning, but I have it hooked up to an inverter, so it runs on batteries.

That way I can leave it running all the time and never have to worry about it. The bathroom door is open right now, but I wanted to show you that you can close off the bedroom area, giving you a really large area where you can shower in there, have access to the bedroom and closet, get dressed in a very large area and still be separated of the rest of the guests I have left the bathroom all original these are all the original accessories here there are three phones in the bus you can pick them up you can call the driver and you can also talk to the bedroom so from any of those places we can call any other section from the bus here we have another way to turn on the water pump we also have control for exhaust fans here in the back of the closet in front of the bathroom we have something that is becoming standard in many campers and a motor home, but back then it was really ahead of your time this is a central vacuum unit so you can store your vacuum here in the closet just plug it in and clean your motorhome moving further back there is another door we can use to separate the bedroom from the rest of the motorhome we have another electric heater down there, a giant queen size bed and all the way back here in the back is the iconic blue bird clock, up here is a switch to raise the TV antenna mast, like this like a driver to move it this is the second location for these I'll show you another one later again there's another phone here in the bedroom behind all these glass panels there's more storage there's plenty of room back here and the overhead compartment above the driver These are the TV controls located just above the driver's seat and this acts as a backup camera for the coach when you put it in reverse above the passenger seat.

We have controls that you can connect to your own CB connector. and adjust the volume of your cb and for the driver you get controls for the days starting right above the driver we have our cb connectors we can control the front exhaust fans we can turn the three air conditioners on and off from here and these controls turn on the television and select the station when you put the coach in reverse, the television automatically switches to a backup camera on the panel to the right of there we have the heat selector, we would select this for summer so that the heat does not run through the coach, stays.

Back there with the engine we have an auxiliary electric water pump to help pump the coolant here if we want heat. This is the dimmer for the rear lighting on the controls on the roof of the bus. There are spotlights and we can target them individually. we can select the right and the left. Both have reflectors and spotlights. We can direct them and move them around here. We can also change how fast they move with our little joystick. Right here, this is a switch that activates a fan. the rear backup camera we have our air conditioning controls this is for the air conditioning compressor that comes out of the engine and they explode here in the cabin next to us we have some screens for timers safe line that lets us know if we are plugged into the outlet current when we turn on the ignition, this will start flashing and beeping to inform us that we should not walk away while we are plugged into the outlet.

Here I can start and stop my generator. We have an odometer and here we can raise and lower our TV Antenna Mast there are two switches because you have to hold both to operate it above these controls as our CB underneath there is a light for the CB we have a radio obviously I put this In the original, it wouldn't be this. modern, we have an altimeter, we also have a fuel vacuum gauge, like I said, this is a TV and a backup camera and it still works. To the right are the gauges for the generator.

We have oil pressure, water temperature, voltage, how many hours does it have? we have ammeters for the battery charger, how much AC voltage of both legs and the amperage of both legs of the AC circuit located just above the pedals is the kill switch, you can cut off all power right before you leave, that way not coming. Back to a dead bus, of course we have the air brake release and this is a trailer brake controller. To the right of these are vacuum operated switches that control the vents to blow fresh air around the cabin on the floor.

There is another phone and it has hydraulically operated leveling jacks so you can lift each corner individually and level your coach. This front driver's seat is electrically operated on the right. We have a couple more pneumatic switches. We can get the air out of our tag axle suspension. We can take the air out of our entire suspension and it actually has an air-operated tilt steering wheel, plus on top of that is the ignition switch and it has an Allison five-speed automatic transmission with trans brake, so you can lower this or it increases depending on the amount of transmission braking you want and there is also a switch to turn on the transmission retarder which only comes on when you press the brake pedal.

You can press it any time you want, if you lower it it will start giving you more. the transmission brakes between my legs like a cable and if the engine were to leak, pull this cable, it clicks, a little thing blocks all the air going to the engine and it should shut it off here on the dash, we have a speedometer and a turbo. Boost Gauge Air Pressure for Rear Engine Oil Temperature Engine Oil Pressure The engine alarm is active right now because I have the ignition on and the engine is not running. We have the engine water temperature.

Transmission oil temperature. We have a pyrometer in the exhaust. Our front air. pressure a tachometer this is our compartment lights there is a built in anti-theft alarm we can turn the bottom step on and off when we get in it is electrically operated we can turn that step on right here we can lock and unlock the front door from here our rear parking lights and our front and rear landing lights this is our transmission retarder with this activated it will automatically give us some transmission braking when we step on the brake pedal high idle is used when the bus first starts turn it on and once has warmed up for a short period of time, it will raise the idle to do the rest of the warm-up and air everything out.

We have the headlight controls, we canturning on and off the position lights, the driving lights, which are kind of like the fog lights, this has cruise control, our fuel gauge, the tag axle air pressure, we have a low level light fuel, a fuel and water light and then several warning lights down here are for the leveling system so if I turn it on it will show us which corners we need to raise to level the bus we can control the driver and passenger wipers individually wiper heaters was an option but I don't have it this is for our washer fluid controls we have heated mirrors different defoggers fans for the heaters the switch turns the leveling system lights on and off if we have trouble starting the main engine or the generator, this switch here connects all the batteries, so hopefully if you have trouble starting one, it will start, there are three different ones. types of horns on the bus there is an electric horn, an air horn and a musical horn the musical horn uses this selector.

You can change the songs right here, so when we turn on the power it will start playing a song. We can change the song. We'll play a different one, we can start over here, we can change our songs right now, flip that over and it'll start playing the next song, so we have the engine's voltmeter and ammeter within reach of the driver, there's our cb microphone and this trainer. It even came equipped from the factory with an escort radar detector and it is surprising that this still works today. I updated the generator. Let's turn it on and I'll show you that we open this compartment here.

This is the original generator radiator. If we open this compartment here we have a switch. That allows the generator to come and go here and it just comes out the front of the bus, so I put a more modern Cummins Onan generator in here. It is very quiet compared to the Perkins diesel I originally had. I still have the Perkins color generator. maybe I'll reset it in a video later, but it surprises a lot of people that this area at the front is not used for the engine that drives the coach down the road, it's just for the generator, so if we want to start the Wander Lodge We simply turn the ignition key, start the engine.

I already have some air built up, otherwise the alarm would be going off right now, but we can hit our high idle switch. I know if you could hear the engine revving right there. it will allow you to get all the air into the suspension more quickly and let the engine warm up so you don't have to spend so much time waiting for all those things to happen. I like the sound of this thing because it sounds. like a bulldozer, it has a very nice sound going down the road right now. I'm on my way to the local off-road park.

I'm going to help work a little there. My friend Daryl should have his bluebird roaming around. launch there, it's the first time we've had both together. His is quite a bit newer and he completely restored the interior of his. I don't think he crossed the scales alone with the bluebird. I've probably always been pulling a trailer, so let's put it on the scale here, see how much this thing weighs. 36,220 pounds. It's actually lighter than I thought. I assumed it would be in the 40's. This is a stroller cabin exterior from 1998. one is still completely original this one is three feet longer than mine this one is quite different than mine the cabin is similar but different many of the switches are they've moved them to different places even here above the door where you come in it looks a little bit pink here it could just be the lighting there are a lot of mirrors here this is the lx version so it's a little wider than mine and all these mirrors they make it look bigger than it is install the ceiling fan that's the location of the original tv i'll turn on the lights for you but i don't know where they are and like every other trainer i've had i don't see any light switches on any of the walls, here they are.

There are no slide outs on this bus. There are no slide outs on my bus either. It makes it really nice because when you go down the street it doesn't prevent you from getting anywhere else on the bus, you can always walk down the aisle. Go to the bathroom in the bedroom wherever you want, climb to the top of this wandering hostel. You can see there is a lot more space. Some solar panels have been added now. If you compare it to the roof of my bus, I have almost no space left. Up there maybe I should remove those storage pots so I can install a solar installation like this.

He said this is not enough solar power to keep up with the draws, so you'll probably want to have at least eight panels here somewhere and I. I was thinking about it last night. I could install some panels on top of some things because if you look at the height of the air conditioning and the storage pods, some of the things I could cover with solar panels and it wouldn't hurt its functionality, it would actually shade the trainer a little more, keep it a little cooler inside. Well, I hope you like this introductory video to my Bluebird Wander Lodge.

I haven't done much with the Wanderlodge in a while, but after using it this weekend. My enthusiasm for it is growing again and maybe in the future I will do more projects. I had to do a lot of work when I bought it, all the pipes were frozen so I replaced a lot of the fittings. I've been pretty much every inch behind everything fixing the pipes, so if you want to see more videos like this, comment below and hit subscribe.