Sacked by the "downturn", an unemployed architect touring the country in a bus...




I used to live in New York City. I designed homes for the tycoons of Wall Street; Park Avenue, Scarsdale, Greenwich. It was great fun. And, after years of saving up for a down payment, I was just about to buy my own little place in Fleetwood, half an hour north of the city, when the economy fell apart. Architects are like canaries in a coal mine when the economy slows, and true to form, there were massive layoffs in firms all over the country. Devastation of the profession. So, I decided to try to find something else to do for a while. I bought a 23' school bus and I'm on the road to see if I can figure out what that might be.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Tourque converter? Whas that? And how about vegetable oil?

It's the thing under my bus that was rattling and clacking like crazy and making me embarrassed at stoplights. I had Ford look over the whole bus a few days after I bought it. They found a few things; oil leaking at the rear axle, coolant line seepage, and the cause of that sound! It's fixed now. Not cheap, but it was worth it for peace of mind and civic pride.

Speaking of civic pride, I have learned that I can have my bus' diesel engine converted to run on used cooking oil...
No joke. It's available technology, on the consumer market. A conversion kit costs about $2,500, and there after, you simply fill a supplemental tank with used Kaola Gold from MacDonalds, run it through a filtering step, and then drive on your merry way, leaving a trail of fumes that smells a little like french fries. I so want to get this system. Please let me know if you want to send a donation to a fuel conversion kitty I'm starting.
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