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The Trash Panda Crawler Hauler Conversion


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I wanted a way to haul my Cherokee around and figured a bus would work nicely and they’re cheap. So I bought a 39’ international with a dt466 and drove it 500 miles back from Maryland after buying it sight unseen on eBay. Over the weekend my friends and I cut it down and started the bed. By the end of the weekend we had the bed framed out ready for tread plate. Yesterday I started laying the tread plate and will hopefully finish today to take it on a maiden voyage to Gulches Offroad park tomorrow.

sorry they’re all upside down, I still haven’t mastered fixing that. 

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it's a hiccup between different softwares when they try to keep track of the orientation of a photo. :(  I've had good luck with rotating them on a laptop and re-saving before uploading. 

 

she looks fantastic!  :D  any plans to repaint or are you keeping the schooly look?  what will the insides be?  beds?  couches?

 

 

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1 hour ago, Pete M said:

it's a hiccup between different softwares when they try to keep track of the orientation of a photo. :(  I've had good luck with rotating them on a laptop and re-saving before uploading. 

 

she looks fantastic!  :D  any plans to repaint or are you keeping the schooly look?  what will the insides be?  beds?  couches?

 

 

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Thanks for doing the flippy do for me. The plan is a white roof, light grey body and keep the black trim. (Hence the trash panda, since my Cherokee is the green dumpster) currently there’s just a couch and a couple bus seats left inside, but I’m trying to make it functional before comfortable. I’d like to have a bed, a little dinette thing that converts to a bed, a kitchenette with a fridge and basic stuff, maybe a shower. 

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If you drove I95 to/from MD to get that, you literally passed within 5 minutes of my house in southern VA.  If you ever need a break or a stopover on a drive like that, just shoot me a PM.  Garage door is always open and there's beers (and sodas/water/whatnot) in the fridge.

 

My next door neighbor is an LTL driver, and the guy at the end of my street is an OTR driver......that thing would NOT have looked out of place sitting outside my house, lol.

 

Jeff

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On 9/29/2021 at 1:47 PM, mjeff87 said:

If you drove I95 to/from MD to get that, you literally passed within 5 minutes of my house in southern VA.  If you ever need a break or a stopover on a drive like that, just shoot me a PM.  Garage door is always open and there's beers (and sodas/water/whatnot) in the fridge.

 

My next door neighbor is an LTL driver, and the guy at the end of my street is an OTR driver......that thing would NOT have looked out of place sitting outside my house, lol.

 

Jeff


that is the way we came down. Also, it’ll probably be a while before the bus makes it back around that area. I’m planning to leave in December/January so I’ll be hugging the bottom of the country to avoid the snow and cold as much as possible. 

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well I got one picture right side up, but I got the deck painted, laid some wood down so we don’t have to jump from beam to beam, added rear indoor speakers and some outdoor speakers. Now the right rear turn signal doesn’t work though so that’s unfortunate because there’s tons of wire and fuses and nothing is labeled.

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  • 1 month later...

The Trash Panda is now painted to match its name. I'm really not great at remembering to update here, for more in depth stuff about it follow the build on Instagram @the_green_dumpster and YouTube The Green Dumpster. I'm trying to post more and with more detail on both platforms. Shooting for a dream here of making something on YouTube to help pay some of the cross country trip planned for the bus/Cherokee so please go follow/subscribe/like and tell all your friends/family to do the same so hopefully the dream can come true. That's enough rambling, hope ya'll enjoy!

driver bus (2).jpeg

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1 hour ago, Pete M said:

love it!   any updates to the interior?

None yet, hoping to rip it all out in the next couple weeks to start the interior conversion. Gotta sell some parts and obtain some dinero before we get too far in it unless the YouTube stuff absolutely blows up soon. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...
On 11/13/2021 at 12:25 PM, Pete M said:

love it!   any updates to the interior?

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here’s an update, got the dinette in, fridge in, half the flooring done, bed platform at the back, and have cabinets to use for my kitchen area. Once I get the bathroom figured out I’ll have the inside pretty well sorted. Then just the edge trim, painting, plumbing and electrical stuff, but I’m leaving room to run wires and plumbing so I don’t get myself in trouble finishing something out and not being able to get behind it for wire/plumbing.

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