Joe Weimer's

1949 Chevy 1-Ton School Bus

"Large Marge"


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16 August 2007 Update

From Joe :

          I found Marge in a Good Guys magazine five years before I bought her.  I called the guy and the price was $3500. Five days later, it dropped to $1600 and included a parts truck! He told me if I wanted it, I better come now since they were expecting snow within the week.  I told him I didn’t have the $1600 on me but it was in the bank. It was 10 pm on a Saturday and there was no way I could get hold of the money until Monday.  The guy told me he'd take my check. So I called a friend and we drove from St Louis, MO to 2 1/2 hours northwest of Topeka, KS to Clay Center, Kansas.

          It was "The Road Trip to HELL."  My friend got a phone call at 2 am (Sunday morning) that his Dad had passed away. He said we should keep going because that is what his Dad would have wanted (his Pop was a die hard car guy).  We get there and drove a few miles outside town to a field with weeds and grass over eight feet tall.  We drove in, saw it, bought it and then waited for the guy to come back with a tractor so we could load it.  There was no spindle on one side.  

          It took two tanks of gas to get there and six to get back.  At one time, just outside Columbia, MO, I caught myself doing 95 mph downhill with the truck and trailer behind me.  Scared the living cr@p outta me when I noticed it.

          The entire trip took from 10 pm Saturday night to 5 am Monday morning and all with only two hours of sleep.  That was over 10 years ago and even then I thought, “DAMNNNNN I'm getting too old for this.

          After I got her home, I noticed Marge was a Catholic School Bus by the sticker in the window that said "St Mary's Corwin Church & School" on it.  

          I can hear those Nuns yelling at the kids still today -- "JOOOOE!"

          I did get to drive her around the block with my son before he went to Iraq which was a GREAT FEELING. It was the first time since I have owned her (10 plus years) that I was able to drive it.

          For more pictures, check out my Webshots account.

Joe Weimer
"TooMany2Count"
Bolter # 3999
Cahokia, Illinois [an error occurred while processing this directive]

12 June 2004

From Joe:

        This is a 1948 Chevy 1-ton school bus, based on a panel truck. It's rolling on a stretched S-10 frame with a 9-inch rearend. The power plant is going to be a 1977 425/400 turbo Caddy combo. Right now, without the power plant and floor in it, it sits about eight inches in the front and 11 inches in the rear off the ground, which believe it or not means this truck has been dropped a total of 20 inches so far from the stock height and I'm sure it will drop just a tad more once it's all together.

        I am going to build a seat that will fold down into the floor like in the late model Burbs back seat just in case someone "HAS" to ride with us, along with a trunk in the rear floor to hide my BIGG a** ugly spare tire, a longggggggg mileage fuel cell -- can we say 50 gallon saddle tank and, of course, we can forget the "tunes." I have a four channel output Yamaha stereo that will have four 100 watt amps hooked up to it running through Boston acoustics speakers. The last time I heard that stereo play, it was in our '40 Chevy playing Pink Floyds "Dark Side of the Moon" (the tape is still in the stereo, too) and it was turned up just about all the way. Nothing better then listening to mind-altering, heavy duty rock 'n roll while having fun driving your street rod.....yeeeeeeeee haaaaaaaaaaa.

        Soooo, hopefully it will awaken sometime this summer for its first ride in over 33 years. Can't wait to be able to fire it up. I told the wife I would drive it in RUST if I have to, just so we can take it to a show this coming October in Quincy, IL.

        For more pictures, check what I've got up on web shots.

Joe Weimer
"TooMany2Count"
Bolter # 3999
Cahokia, Illinois


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