About the Cruiser
Here are some details about the Creative Cruiser project, its history and the restoration. It was blue when the project started and now it’s maroon and cream colored.
Make: Flxible Bus
Model: Starliner
Year of Birth: 1963
Birthplace: Loudonville, Ohio
The Cruiser’s History
1963
The bus is built at the Flxible factory in Loudonville, Ohio
1963-1992
The bus is owned by the Lovington, NM school district where it serves as the transportation for the high school’s sports team.
1992
The bus changes owners when it is bought by Ross B., the former high school principal. He only owned it for a short time.
1992-1997
The bus is owned by Joe W. in Azle, TX. Joe turned it into a lounge bus.
1997
The bus is bought by Kim & Dave in Alliance, Ohio. They give the coach an RV interior and use it on and off for many years.
2009
The bus gets a new owner… ME!
For the next 16 months, the bus sat at the home of a bus mechanic near Los Angels who just happened to get injured, got divorced, his job radically changed and then he totally lost interest in what I hired him to do. Unfortunately, that was to update the suspension and swap out the engine/transmission for a modern setup. That also meant that the bus could not be driven away from his garage. This delayed my project for at least a full year while he would not return emails, phone calls or even FedEx packages asking him for updates. I was in Florida, while my bus was stuck near Los Angeles.
2011
I finally got the bus moved to Texas where the suspension updates and engine/tranny swap as completed. This place also liked to take their time (and send lots of invoices). It took a full year for the shop to finish updating the chassis and fabricating the water tanks that reside under the bus.
2013-2017
The bus spent the next five years having the interior fabricated near Eugene, Oregon. The results are absolutely gorgeous, but if I had any idea it would have taken that long, then I would have never started this project.
October 13, 2017
A full 2915 days after I purchased this bus we were able to start living on it full-time!
Restoration
The Cruiser went through a complete restoration, from top to bottom. The original engine was swapped out for a new Cummins ISC with an Allison tranny. The interior, though livable from the start, has been completely gutted and replaced with one of my design.
Here are some of the features I was thinking of when I first started this project:
