Our Skoolie Broke Down Twice Before We Got Home

When $*** hit the FAN.

Take a peek at our last blog post for the beginning of this wild ride of buying a skoolie! I am going to pick up right where we left off in this wild adventure of getting Regina home.

Sunday morning we wake up, and pack up our things with the goal to be on the road and heading home by 7 am. Dave, who owns the Airbnb we stayed at, got up early to help lift the power line so that the bus could safely back down the driveway. Before we could get on the road though, fixing the emergency exit and getting the alarm to stop blaring was a project in itself.

Tyler hopped on top of the bus to help push the door down into place and Dave and I hammered the broken plastic until it seemed secure. After 45 minutes of trying different solutions, the alarm finally stopped and we were ready to head home.

Dave lifted the line and we carefully backed this monster out of the neighborhood. Not a moment before, Dave and Chasity (his wife) told us we should check our front right tire when we get to Walmart and that “it looked a little low”.

More foreshadowing…

Tyler gives me the all-clear and we head out. We get, not kidding, HALF a mile down the main road before Tyler is abruptly slowing down and pulling over. All of a sudden I can see why – there is rubber flying underneath the bus straight at my car….we blew that front right tire.

Tyler steps out of the bus and is but a few curse words away from hysterical. Our minds are reeling – “What do we do now? Are we stuck here? Can we leave it on the road? Do we have to get it towed and how much is that going to cost us? Do we have enough money to fix this and get it home?” The questions continued and the panic eventually subsided to disappointment and concern.

Come to find out (from multiple mechanics) that the tires used for the bus are essentially discontinued. We’d probably have to buy them online and wait for the shipment – yikes. We ended up limping the bus (on its exposed wheel) into the nearest shopping center parking lot to get it out of the road. Looked like we were going to be here for a while.

We reached out to the people we bought the bus from, hoping they had a place we could stay for free. No luck, so we booked a hotel for the night. Tyler continued to reach out to mechanics and tire shops to see if anyone could help us but no luck. Our disappointment and concern then turned into amusement – we could not believe this was the beginning of our story!

That night, our hotel was crappy but we made the best of it – we tried to work out in the fitness center but all the machines were broken (of course, our luck right?). So, we swam in the over-chlorinated pool and pretended to be kids for a while. We sent up a prayer before bed that tomorrow held more opportunities and solutions.

On to South Carolina

All potential leads on tires vanished the next morning. Again, we felt stuck and did not want to pay for hotel after hotel while waiting to spend a chunk of money on the bus tires. That’s when we remembered my grandparents recently moved to South Carolina! We found their address and they were only 5.5 hours away. It was safe to say we needed some family time, home-cooked meals, and a free, clean place to sleep. So that was that – on to South Carolina.

While we stayed with Grandpa and Grandma Howell, we played pickleball, scheduled an alignment for our other car, and taught them how to play our favorite card game: Spicy Uno. We shared lots of laughs and had a really nice time. It was a necessary emotional break in our crazy adventure of buying a skoolie.

We came up with a plan to replace the front two tires and wheels and replace all four back tires. King’s Tire quoted us at $3,000 – all said and done. The price made me feel sick but we had to do what was necessary to get home.

On the road again!

We had the tires changed and were able to get back on the road on Friday morning – one week after we left on this wild ride. Driving the bus was all in all, uneventful for a while. The bus starts to heat up if we go much over 65mph so we hung around 55 the whole way home.

The first night we made it to Lexington, KY where we stayed in another cheap and somewhat sketchy hotel. We woke up to the ground and our bus being covered in snow and ice! Not only that but she was blocked in by two cars parked on either side of it so we couldn’t leave.

We decided to try and just wait it out and went and got ourselves some breakfast and coffee.

When we returned, we were still blocked in and asked the front desk if they could help find the owners of the vehicles – no luck. So we decided we’d try to shimmy out of there. Surprisingly enough, it worked!! We were free and finally HOMEBOUND! (And enlightened on the fantastic turn radius of this bus!

We ALMOST made it…

Within ONE HOUR of home, we had hit another roadblock. The bus was leaking coolant like crazy so we stopped to refill the coolant at a Walmart. Tyler thought he could tighten the piece where the coolant was leaking out. Long story short – the piece popped off and boiling coolant was shooting from the bus engine like Old Faithful.

Tyler was not able to find the exact piece that we needed to fix the coolant system so again, we were leaving our Regina in a random parking lot. We drove the hour home so we could sleep and eat for free.

At this time, morale was LOW. I was really hitting my breaking point with the setbacks and mechanical issues getting our bus home. Tears were shed and I had little hope we would be able to fix it without issues the next day.

Tyler told me I could head home in our other car to get some rest Sunday morning. I thought about it but ultimately refused – we’d been through so much together and I was not about to bail on the last day.

We drove back to Regina the next morning and brought along some reinforcements (Tyler’s dad, Greg). They had a good idea of how we were going to replace the part. We took the piece we needed to replace to Home Depot and found two pieces that might do the trick!

Ultimately, it all worked out. $15 and two hours later we were finally headed home with our new toy.

Homecoming!!!

When we arrived at my parent’s house where we would be parking and working on the bus, my family was there and ready to celebrate! And laugh (A LOT) about what we’d been through in the past week but mostly, stare at our new awesome project.

Tyler and I were more exhausted than I think we had ever been. We went home to see our pup, Jude, and get some good sleep before heading in for work on Monday morning.

All in all, we learned a few things:

1. Plan to spend more than you think it will cost to buy a skoolie, especially an old one.

2. Check tires for dry rot BEFORE and AFTER the test drive.

3. Find joy in the craziness that is life!

And that about wraps it up! Thanks a ton for following along with this mess that we’ve gotten ourselves into. We’re looking forward to cleaning it up and turning Regina into a home!

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