Here she is, I am starting this build thread a bit late so my apologizes if some photos are out of order. Also lots of bad snapchat screenshots from friends.



1999 TC1000
5.9L 24valve cummins
180,000~ miles
Ricon Wheelchair lift
Internal AC / heaters
L-track rail system for wheelchairs / seatbelts. This will become very important in our build.

Long live the struggle bus!

Welcome, interesting fender wheels, does it have a flat floor?

Apache junction....that brings back memories from 1978

Keep up the pictures

__________________
Our build La Tortuga
Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory.
George S. Patton

Here are some photos of the drive back from Apache Junction Arizona to SoCal.

In the city:

So majestic:

Blends right in?

Knocking the dust off!

Yes it has a flat floor, I will keep posting pictures and show you!

Top speed, downhill!

Here it is with the seats pulled out (really easy because of the rail system!)

Only had 6 seats in it I think, the rest was for wheelchairs

Looking good!

Awesome! We really want to find a short flat nose like this to turn into a little camper after we turn our full size bus into a home

From what I've seen, it appears the "flat floor" Birds have the potential for massive underbelly storage. Solid looking unit, keep the pix coming.

Unfortunately most of our underbus space is taken up by AC condensers. We are going to try and sneak a truckbox or 2 under the wheelchair lift area as it has plenty of free space, probably about 48"

Testing out our sleeping accommodations

Turns out that the current speakers use a shared ground (no good for quality) so that will be getting rewired

Taking off the rails to get to the cables

left Rails off

My friends reaction after breaking the cable we were using to pull new wire through the bus walls. This sucked.

Here we are starting to pull out the floor, This also sucked. I think the guys in the bluebird factory have ADD - some areas have glue pooled and others are very sparsely glued.


Here we are drilling a big hole in the door to install a lock (we used a garage door lock as someone else on here recommended)


Playing the rubber floor guitar.

The team working hard.

To understand the bird, one must become one with the bird.

Removing the L-Track rails is dirty work.

All of the floor and L-Track is out. Time to start cutting wood pieces to fit into the rail spots that we are not going to be keeping.

Tablesaw = FREE, ZILCH, ZERO, NADAAAAAA. although it has seen better days, i think it will get the job done.

Test mounting the TV. (this was a joke)

Safety first?

Some coworkers bought us some motivation swag.

Track spacers are cut and in, ready for staples and glue


Sanding the wood down to size

Wood puddy where needed

Rolling out underlayment for the Laminate flooring

Some fine looking fake wood we have here!

Oh man-I NEED one of those key fobs! How-where-how much?

__________________
Don't make a fuss-just get on the bus!

my bus build https://www.skoolie.net/gallery/Skoolies/Sped

I love the shirts, got a link for them?

And great job and I like how you folks are having fun!

just keep it safe....damn I'm getting old

__________________
Our build La Tortuga
Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory.
George S. Patton

I think the keychains came from here: http://www.zazzle.com/short+bus+gifts

but they were a gift so we are not sure.

Flooring is mostly in - We are keeping the outer 2 rails so that we can mount sofas and cabinets.

Here is the floor with the rails installed

Very cheap LEDs for interior lights from china of course.

Pretty bright and much lower power consumption than normal lights.

We reused some existing bus trim pieces for our flooring. Might get updated in the future, right now this works great as a low/no budget option.

Here we are starting to create the floorboards - not sure if anyone else on skoolie has used a technique like this.



Each of the floorboards has AC / DC on one side, and on the other side they have AC / DC / HDMI / RCA audio / Ethernet wiring for our keystone wallplates