How a Toyota Coaster Bus became Hughie the Beast Motorhome

Back in 2018, we started in earnest to look for our Toyota Coaster bus and plan the fitout and 4wd conversion. The first choice of a 4wd bus in Darwin fell through because of endless dithering by the tour company owners.

Fast forward to March 2019, then we found a suitable bus on the Gold Coast. The owner had wanted to convert it to a motorhome, then a marital breakup happened, plans changed, and the bus remained unregistered and only driven for occasional laps of the owner's swimming pool on a dishevelled block of land on a hilltop.





Next, we needed our truck driving licences, so back in Cairns Gen flew through her Medium Rigid Licence (Trucks up to 12 tons) test first time, whilst Robert failed for poor reversing, cutting someone off at a roundabout and speeding - oh dear. Our gruff driving instructor seriously thought Robert should get a full truckie licence, just in case he wanted to get a job driving trucks! Instead, we ditched the gruff instructor who loved shouting at every mistake - "you failed, that's already a fail!" - and Robert signed up with a super calm, friendly light truck licence instructor on the Gold Coast, took the test with an equally chatty, calm, likeable examiner, and passed his Light Rigid licence (Light trucks up to 8 tons) first time.





With our bus paid for, we sent it off to our Brisbane 4wd experts to get 4wd installed, upgraded shocks and suspension, recovery points, plus higher clearance and super single tyres.





Three weeks later, our trusty conversion specialist took out all the seats and set to gutting the innards, fitting cabling, floor, roof, insulation, cabinetry, and more. Half way through, the installer for the power spent 10 days fitting solar panels, battery monitor, solar controller, dc to dc power, lithium batteries, inverter, anderson plug for additional external solar, and a snazzy dashboard to show at a glance how the system was functioning. The display included wifi and bluetooth access for local and remote login and troubleshooting.

Power install done, the bus went back to the conversion shop to fit 255 litre inverter fridge, split domestic inverter aircon, kitchen, microwave, curtains, seats, cb radio, front and rear dashcams, shower and toilet room, and interior lights. Then a final visit to the 4wd conversion experts to get a second fuel tank (total for two tanks 180 litres) fitted plus recovery mats.







On September 12th, after a few snags and sagas, we drove off with our bus, known as Hughie the Beast.

Our shakedown trip for the next month took us 1800 kms from Brisbane back to Cairns in Far North Queensland to take our gear out of storage; spend a day out into the bush for 4wd training.

https://placesweliketonomad.blogspot.com/2019/10/taming-4wd-beast.html

Then make an enforced return to Brisbane to get the solar, aircon, electrical and other faults discovered in the shakedown fixed.