Support Chris and Rachel's Bus Repair Journey

Hello, we’re Chris and Rachel Londergan. After advice from a few people in our life, we’re turning to a go fund me to ask for your help. It’s a long story so stick with us.

We’re hoping to raise some money to help us fix our school bus conversion. I originally built the bus for us to live in for a few years so we could save up for a down payment on a house. It took us close to 2 years to make it livable, get it registered, and get it insured. It cost a whole lot of time and a whole lot of money. I had even taken it to a mechanic to get a tune up which cost us a couple grand and was told everything about the engine and the bus looks great. Building this bus was a risk I was willing to take and it came out just as I imagined it.

Plans in our life changed a little bit and I ended up joining the Air Force. As I was in basic training and tech school, my wife stayed in Massachusetts and lived in the bus with it parked at her parents house for 6 months by herself. Everything went smoothly.

When I came back from training, we got orders to go to Tucson Arizona. The gameplan was to bring the bus to live in and her car as a secondary vehicle. We loaded up everything we had, organized it, and took off. This is where it gets fun. We barely made it 40 miles in our 2600 mile trip when her and I realized something was up. The bus overheated and we were stranded on the highway for 7 hours waiting for a tow. This for sure was not the plan we hoped for. We got it towed back to a mechanic, unpacked the bus the next day, and loaded up her Forester with what we could bring and hit the road for Tucson. It was a pretty devastating blow and a difficult 24 hours for us.

We just heard back from the mechanic yesterday and he told us a cylinders o-ring was bad which caused a scored cylinder and an engine skip. In short, the bus needs 10,000$ worth of work between labor and parts.

We knew this was coming as I had done some research myself as to what the problem could be. We unfortunately don’t have the funds to fix it. The military doesn’t necessarily pay that well even if it has great benefits and my wife is still looking for work since we’ve moved to Arizona. I was very, very hesitant to reach out and ask for help since I know how hard it is out there for everyone these days. I had a few people tell me to start a go fund me and I’m going to put my pride aside and try this route.

The mechanic is busy with other work right now and said it could be a month out to get it fixed. Literally any type of donation would help.

Thanks for reading this far. If you wanted to check out the bus I’m talking about, go to the.indyproject on Instagram to see all the pictures from basically start to finish. This was a dream for us and its unfortunate life had other plans. Thankyou!