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It's a new project for Bob.

 
If you've ever been to Catalina Island, you may have enjoyed that experience from one of these historic buses. They have lots of well maintained miles on them, but proper care by their owners has made them last over decades of daily use.

Now it's time to put some fresh engines in them so they'll be ready for this summers tourists. The folks in Catalina that own them loaded them onto a ship for the ride across twenty-six miles of open ocean to the harbor at San Pedro, then drove them to their new temporary home at Bob's world famous restoration facilities for upgrading.

Bob removed the old gasoline engines and standard transmissions.  He has late model Cummings turbo-diesels ready to install. They will be mated up to Allison automatic transmissions.  There will be torque a'plenty and easy shifting on those beautiful slopes of Catalina.

The old motors have already been removed, and Bob is engineering the motor and transmission mounts.  As soon as the power train is installed he will design the intake and exhaust systems to integrate with their after-cooler-compatible, custom radiator.

Bob Rowsell, our president and general manager here at H.B. Industries in El Cajon, California is shown next to Yolanda Guerra, your Garage Operations Manager at Discovery Tours on Santa Catalina Island. Standing next to Yolanda is Marisa Diaz, the Regional Fleet Estimator at Quality Fleet and Truck Center in Gardena California, and next to Marisa is Hector Garcia, the general manager for Quality Fleet and Truck Center. Quality was also responsible for their part of the renewal of these classic buses. On the far right we see Orly Smith, the very fine Fleet Technician at Discovery Tours. They are all standing in front of one of the two refurbished “Flexible” classic masterpieces at the Santa Catalina Casino. This get-together of classy people happened at the special island-wide celebration commemorating the total refurbishing and re-powering of these magnificent and historic buses.

First bought as brand new buses by the original owner of Santa Catalina Island, a man named John Wrigley. You may have chewed some of Mr. Wrigley’s famous chewing gum.

Mr. Wrigley bought these Flexibles because the had the identical number of seats as his own McDonnell-Douglas DC-3. He could then bus all of his fly-in guests from the Catalina Airport down to Avalon.

Bob Rowsell is happy sitting in the newly refurbished driver’s compartment

. . . and he knows very well what new goodies are in the engine compartment

Just look at what can be done with some
new chrome plating and a great paint job

These photos were taken as the buses arrived from the manufacturer in 1953. The buses have been here for over half a century until they went to Bob Rowsell’s facilities in San Diego.

These beautiful murals on the sides of each bus were all painted by Santa Catalina's local artists over the past fifty years.

The big blue banner was flying for the gala 50’s party that Discovery Tours of Santa Catalina gave for the return of the buses. They all dressed in fifty’s attire to commemorate the occasion. The band play fifties music, and we all had ten cent burgers and ten cent Root beer floats.