We demonstrate that it is possible to use a variational method to compute 50 vibrational levels of ethylene oxide (a seven-atom molecule) with convergence errors less than 0.01 cm. This is done by beginning with a small basis and expanding it to include product basis functions that are deemed to be important. For ethylene oxide a basis with fewer than 3 × 10 functions is large enough. Because the resulting basis has no exploitable structure we use a mapping to evaluate the matrix-vector products required to use an iterative eigensolver. The expanded basis is compared to bases obtained from pre-determined pruning condition. Similar calculations are presented for molecules with 3, 4, 5, and 6 atoms. For the 6-atom molecule, CHCH, the required expanded basis has about 106 000 functions and is about an order of magnitude smaller than bases made with a pre-determined pruning condition.