Help bring home the Stitcher Bus!
Donation protected
The Stitchers need your help! Our beloved bus, our former home on wheels, has been sick in Nevada since August and we are asking for your help bringing her back.
Due to an unidentified high pressure oil leak the bus stopped running in Elko, NV on the way to Burning Man. Serena and her travel companions, who were on the way to meet Chance & friends in Black Rock City, were able to squeeze their luggage and selves into a rental van and left the bus in the hands of the only mechanic open on that unfortunate Saturday. Upon returning to Elko we learned that our mechanic friend had no idea what had gone wrong, only that somehow he had broken the radiator and cooling fan. For the very delightful service of ruining the cooling system, we forked over $1700 and towed our bus to the Ford dealership down the road where it probably should have gone first.
The good people at Gallagher Ford replaced the radiator and cooling system in order to set about finding the cause of the loss of oil pressure. After about 3 weeks and several more stressful phone calls, they determined that the “dummy plug o-ring on the LH and RH rails was torn” as well as a few other parts that needed to be replaced in the valve cover area.
At this point, we were forced to consider whether we could or should continue trying to fix her or scrap her, but the fact remained that our friends' cherished belongings were trapped inside and still needed transport 2,000 miles back to Pittsburgh. After realizing that accomplishing that task without the bus would cost another small fortune and result in not-owning-a-bus, we decided to cross our fingers one more time.
After reassembling the engine and starting her up, the oil pressure leak had been fixed! The grand total of the work completed at Gallagher came to just over $4600. We are very grateful to the hardworking people at Gallagher and look forward to being able to tell them as much in person.
We have been scrimping, saving, and borrowing to get this money and are under pressure to retrieve the bus in a timely manner as the dealership will soon begin charging us a daily storage fee. We have nearly all the funds to pay for repairs but have had to borrow significant amounts from family. We do not currently have enough money to purchase plane tickets and fuel to fly out to Nevada and bring our baby home.
We are humbly asking for help to cover the costs of transportation and to help us pay back our family who have already given very much and for which we are very thankful. We're hoping to bring our bus home before the end of January- any and all help is greatly appreciated!
Due to an unidentified high pressure oil leak the bus stopped running in Elko, NV on the way to Burning Man. Serena and her travel companions, who were on the way to meet Chance & friends in Black Rock City, were able to squeeze their luggage and selves into a rental van and left the bus in the hands of the only mechanic open on that unfortunate Saturday. Upon returning to Elko we learned that our mechanic friend had no idea what had gone wrong, only that somehow he had broken the radiator and cooling fan. For the very delightful service of ruining the cooling system, we forked over $1700 and towed our bus to the Ford dealership down the road where it probably should have gone first.
The good people at Gallagher Ford replaced the radiator and cooling system in order to set about finding the cause of the loss of oil pressure. After about 3 weeks and several more stressful phone calls, they determined that the “dummy plug o-ring on the LH and RH rails was torn” as well as a few other parts that needed to be replaced in the valve cover area.
At this point, we were forced to consider whether we could or should continue trying to fix her or scrap her, but the fact remained that our friends' cherished belongings were trapped inside and still needed transport 2,000 miles back to Pittsburgh. After realizing that accomplishing that task without the bus would cost another small fortune and result in not-owning-a-bus, we decided to cross our fingers one more time.
After reassembling the engine and starting her up, the oil pressure leak had been fixed! The grand total of the work completed at Gallagher came to just over $4600. We are very grateful to the hardworking people at Gallagher and look forward to being able to tell them as much in person.
We have been scrimping, saving, and borrowing to get this money and are under pressure to retrieve the bus in a timely manner as the dealership will soon begin charging us a daily storage fee. We have nearly all the funds to pay for repairs but have had to borrow significant amounts from family. We do not currently have enough money to purchase plane tickets and fuel to fly out to Nevada and bring our baby home.
We are humbly asking for help to cover the costs of transportation and to help us pay back our family who have already given very much and for which we are very thankful. We're hoping to bring our bus home before the end of January- any and all help is greatly appreciated!
Organizer
Benjamin Chance Stitcher
Organizer
Pittsburgh, PA
