Project:Otis

[humangoogle]

Project:Otis is our project to convert our 1995 Blue Bird All-American into a trip rig.

I'll attempt to document the conversion here.

[humangoogle]

Getting the bus was a bit of an adventure. Had to fly down to Oregon and take a 3 hour shared van ride to get out to the middle of nowhere in the high Oregon desert where the bus was located. After a night in a slightly sketchy motel, I started on my 9 hour journey back home.

Here's the bus and my crew.

[humangoogle]

After an uneventful trip, my oldest kids and I started ripping out the interior.

About half of the seats were able to be removed with an impact driver and a few sockets. The rest were cut off at the floor and left to be dealt with at a later date. I wanted to get the floor up and see the condition. In the meantime, the kids also took down part of the ceiling. At this point, we're two days into the renovation.

[humangoogle]

Ugh. Those seats were a pain. Since I had no underside access to many of them due to the compartments under the bus, I was left to my old friend, the angle grinder. Eventually, they were all removed and I was able to start peeling away the layers and see the condition of the floor.

I was hoping for a pristine floor, but thought that was pretty unlikely for a 22 year old bus. My heart sunk a bit when I saw standing water under wet plywood. I've got some window sealing ahead of me! That said, once I got the rest of the floor up, I was less concerned. Overall, the floor was sound, with no perforations.

[PNW_Steve]

Welcome!

Nice looking bus. I think you picked a good platform to build from

You have certainly hit the ground running. I look forward to watching your build.

[Seriousracer]

Move fast take no prisoners

[HappyInTN]

Originally Posted by humangoogle

Project:Otis is our project to convert our 1995 Blue Bird All-American into a trip rig.

I'll attempt to document the conversion here.

Congrats on the bus! Welcome to the family. My project is not much further along than yours is.. about to paint the outside the inside is deconstructed and insulated. We have some youtube videos of some if our projects if they are of help to you. Good luck on the project.

[humangoogle]

After picking my kids up from a week at camp, I enlisted them to help start removing the ceiling panels and sealing up the first batch of windows.

Rivets. So many rivets! My air compressor wasn't powerful enough to run the air chisel for any length of time, so I ended up having my son use the air hammer to punch out the centers of the rivets and then I came after with a large SDS hammer drill (in hammer only mode). While this worked, it was very heavy. Video here: https://youtu.be/j9rgxt4C9Jo

After that, I switched to a method of center-punching the rivets, giving them a whack with a cold chisel and small sledge before attacking with the hammer drill. This worked quite well and I was able to make good progress in this manner. At this point, about 1/3 of the ceiling is done. Video here: https://youtu.be/GyHn2sUPTXA

We also removed the first 6 windows, cleaned up the old sealant and re-installed them after applying butyl tape to the window frames. So far, no leaks (on those windows!).

So thankful for great kids who are up for an adventure and (mostly) willing to pitch in wherever help is needed.

[humangoogle]

Floor prep continued. Pulled dozens of nails that stuck to the floor when I pulled the plywood. A long prybar made short work of those.

So much grinding and dust! Used my angle grinder with a wire cup wheel, which turned out to be very effective as the rust was only superficial and fairly easy to remove. Video: https://youtu.be/Eow0IpLxjm0

After grinding, cleaning, rust conversion (I used Klean Strip Phosphoric Prep & Etch), and more cleaning was complete, I gave the floor a coat of pretty ugly paint (Rustoleum Rusty Metal Primer) Video: https://youtu.be/2GJ_bSiCt0c

First picture shows one side which had been attacked with the wire wheel and the other side, which hadn't yet.

[humangoogle]

I'm sure it's worse elsewhere, but up here in the PNW, it really stays pretty temperate most of the time, so working in the bus when it's hot can be pretty miserable.

My wife and kids usually go back to the midwest for a few weeks each summer to see family and friends. That gave me a little extra time to work on the bus. Work at my "real job" all day, tend to the dogs and grab a bite, then off to the bus for a few hours. Made for a long 2 weeks before I flew out and spent the last week with them in OH.

That said, I also made quite a bit of progress. Stripped the walls of the metal (oh so many rivets. Over 1500 in all and I felt every one!), removed the old insulation, and started to work on the new subfloor after sealing the old nail and bolt holes with polyurethane glue and pennies.

I chose to go with 1 inch XPS and 3/4 inch T&G plywood. Could have used another set of hands those days as wrangling a 4x8 sheet of plywood up and into the bus is not an enjoyable task, but harder when it's just you. Anyway, over the course of several nights, I was able to get the new subfloor down, secured with PL premium and weighted down with 5 gal buckets of water.

The last cut, by the driver's area was the worst, but thankfully, it went in the first time without a hitch. (Measure 500 times, cut once )

[humangoogle]

Thanks. Looks like your project is coming right along!

Originally Posted by HappyInTN

Congrats on the bus! Welcome to the family. My project is not much further along than yours is.. about to paint the outside the inside is deconstructed and insulated. We have some youtube videos of some if our projects if they are of help to you. Good luck on the project.

[humangoogle]

Removing the hatches was easier than I thought it would be, but for some reason, when I first tried to pull them out, they wouldn't budge. In any case, I got them out.

Next, I cleaned all of the old sealant up and thoroughly prepped the area for new 16ga steel. Using seam sealer, ratcheting straps to make the steel conform to the curvature of the roof, and rivets to hold everything in place, I successfully closed up those two gaping holes, only to create a new one moments later for the rear A/C.

Got it mounted and temporarily wired up for testing and temporary use. What a glorious invention! I have a mini-split that I'll be mounting in the front section for most common use cases, but I'm a fan of redundant systems (and cold air!)

[EastCoastCB]

Outstanding!!!

[2kool4skool]

Looking good!

[BlackJohn]

Nice to see your kids involved and learning. Is that angle grinder being used without the guard? That is something they should not do or will learn the hard way...just sayinn


John

[o1marc]

Hard parts done. I love how you guys in the coolest corner of the PNW complain about how hot it is. Come down to the south east and we'll show you hot.

[jazty]

Originally Posted by humangoogle

I was able to get the new subfloor down, secured with PL premium and weighted down with 5 gal buckets of water.

That's great! if i were to do my floor again it'd be done exactly that way. Very nice ;)

[Rovobay]

Nice start. great work. enjoying the progress. work and vacation (overseas) has me halted on any bus project, but I need to get back to work. Where in Oregon did you get your bus?

[humangoogle]

A small town near John Day (Mt. Vernon)

Originally Posted by Rovobay

Nice start. great work. enjoying the progress. work and vacation (overseas) has me halted on any bus project, but I need to get back to work. Where in Oregon did you get your bus?

[humangoogle]

It's all relative

The weather and scenery here are horrible out here. [That's our way of keeping everyone else from moving here!]

Originally Posted by o1marc

Hard parts done. I love how you guys in the coolest corner of the PNW complain about how hot it is. Come down to the south east and we'll show you hot.