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Old 11-25-2016, 06:19 PM   #1
Skoolie
 
Join Date: Apr 2016
Location: Marietta, GA
Posts: 192
Under cloud and under star

I bought our bus last month, but on the way home, the water pump went out - not terribly surprising since it had been sitting in a corn field for two years. After being towed through Amish country to the mechanic's shop, the bus got a bumper to bumper checkup, a new water pump, tire, and hoses. I FINALLY got to bring it home this week.

Tuesday, we tackled the seats - literally. We tried unbolting them with socket wrenches on top of and below the bus, but almost all of them seemed to be rusted in place. Carpenter didn't seem to believe in consistency with the size of bolts they used, so we had to keep switching out our tools, but most of them were rusted fast and wouldn't budge anyway. We next tried grinding the bolts inside the bus and prying the seats up with crow bars, but we quickly learned that the most efficient method was just to hulk out and manhandle them. My sister is a beast!

Wednesday, my husband and I started grinding off the remaining bolts and screws holding down the metal strips, and began to pry up the rubber floor. There was no plywood underneath in our bus, the rubber was just glued down to the sheet metal. There was plenty of crunchy rust dust under the rubber, so I went to the hardware store and picked up some twisted wire wheels for the grinder, and some Klean Strip Phosphoric Prep and Etch (which I'm hoping is basically the same thing as Ospho). I'll let you know how that goes when we get to that part, but pulling up the rubber flooring took a few days, so we haven't quite gotten there yet.

Today, we removed the heaters. Despite our best efforts to get all of the coolant into a bucket, it made quite a mess when we cut the hoses. We spent the next several hours cutting up the seats so we could take the steel to the scrap yard. They wouldn't take the cushions or vinyl covers, so we'll have to take those to the dump separately. After two trips to the scrap yard, I pressure washed the inside of the bus to get as much of the loose rust off as I could. We're running two large fans inside the bus now, hoping to get it dried out tonight.

I'll try to get some video footage uploaded somewhere soon so you can see our progress so far!

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Old 11-26-2016, 07:56 PM   #2
Bus Crazy
 
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I'm looking forward to watching your progress! LOL... that was the other newbies blog! Y'all need a blog
My blog is www.thismidwifetravels.com

Sandi
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Old 11-26-2016, 09:03 PM   #3
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Welcome! Goodness you mean she yanked the seats out by force?!
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Old 11-26-2016, 09:36 PM   #4
Skoolie
 
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Welcome! Goodness you mean she yanked the seats out by force?!
I mean she went full on She Hulk and flying tackled them! My husband took a video of us ripping out the last one, but I need to get it off of his phone. (Soon, I promise!)

Today, my mom and I spent some mother/daughter time working on the bus. She wanted to take a little joy ride before we got to work, so I tossed her the keys and we headed down the road (with her little dog aboard too!) We had only gone a mile or so, when I smelled something... then looked down and saw the coolant gushing out the hoses that I suddenly remembered we didn't get around to re-looping last night.

We hastily returned home, sprayed out the bus (again) and tried to figure out how we could quickly dry the floor in near freezing temperatures. I used a push broom to shove as much of the water out the back emergency exit as possible, and then she came behind with a leaf blower. We had it dry enough to start grinding off rust within about 30 minutes!

We spent the next SEVERAL hours with a pair of angle grinders and some twisted knot wire wheels. We ended up covered in grimy rust dust, and blowing black stuff out of our noses despite the masks we were wearing, and had to stop to blow the extra dust out of the bus with the leaf blower a few times. (I cannot believe how useful that leaf blower was today!)

We came in to warm up for a little while, and then I put the prep & etch into a sprayer and sprayed down the floor. It was so cool to watch white patches of clean metal appear before my very eyes, although the smell was intense! I called it a day and headed inside to take a shower and wash all that rust grit out of my hair. When I checked on it just a little while ago, it appeared that a white residue was covering the clean metal, while the really rusty areas were coated in a black rust-mud. I'm going to let it keep drying out overnight, then brush off the residue tomorrow and do another round of prep & etch - at least on the worst areas.

As for those pipes that were attached to the hoses for the heaters we removed - I couldn't find a decent way to loop them back (the rubber hose kinks if I try to use it, and I can't find a suitable fitting that would stand up to the heat), so I just plugged them for now. Any suggestions? I'm not sure if it's ok to leave them plugged; I want to make sure that coolant doesn't leave the engine without a way to get back.

Also, I bought some Rustoleum professional primer to go over the floor once I get the rust neutralized, but after watching some more youtube videos today, it seems that the prep and etch should leave the metal primed and ready for paint. Should I return the primer and just get some Rustoleum enamel paint instead?
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Old 11-26-2016, 10:02 PM   #5
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Originally Posted by WanderWoman View Post
Awesome! Your bus seems to be coming together quickly. Those wooden floors are so pretty!
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Old 11-27-2016, 02:15 AM   #6
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Any good plumbing supply store or an old time hardware store should have metal barb fittings that can thread onto the end of your pipes onto which you would connect the hoses.

If the end of the pipes are not threaded you may have to get a little creative if you don't have a way in which to cut thread in the ends of the pipes.

Somewhere in the heater circuit there should be a hot water shut off valve. It may work but it most probably won't work if it opens and closes via a cable. Carpenter used the same cable operated valve for more than 20-years and I can count on one hand how many of them actually worked after being in the bus for more than five minutes. If you close that valve it will shut off the flow into the loop but you will need to put in a valve on the return line or you will still lose coolant.
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Old 11-27-2016, 11:37 AM   #7
Skoolie
 
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My mom suggested a radiator hose, maybe? I was planning to reuse the hose that was already in the bus, but it kinks pretty badly when you bend it - I'm not sure if that's due to age or if it just the type of hose that it is, but I worry that the kink would defeat the purpose of looping it. We'll check at a plumbing supply store, an auto parts store, and maybe chat with our mechanic. (He does all sorts of auto mods, and probably has some ideas. Also, when I'm not working on the bus, he's letting us store it in his parking lot for $20 a month.)

I'm heading back to Georgia tonight, so unfortunately I can't make any more progress for a while, but I'll be returning in just a few weeks.
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Old 11-27-2016, 11:45 AM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mysty View Post
My mom suggested a radiator hose, maybe? I was planning to reuse the hose that was already in the bus, but it kinks pretty badly when you bend it - I'm not sure if that's due to age or if it just the type of hose that it is, but I worry that the kink would defeat the purpose of looping it. We'll check at a plumbing supply store, an auto parts store, and maybe chat with our mechanic. (He does all sorts of auto mods, and probably has some ideas. Also, when I'm not working on the bus, he's letting us store it in his parking lot for $20 a month.)

I'm heading back to Georgia tonight, so unfortunately I can't make any more progress for a while, but I'll be returning in just a few weeks.
Disclaimer: lots of book knowledge, no experience here. If the bus is designed to run without heat (as in, "shut valve") then a kink is no problem unless it weakens the hose itself. You don't care about flow: you just want the coolant to stay inside. If a radiator hose, some metal barbed fittings, and hose clamps are watertight, it would seem that you're good to go...
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Old 11-27-2016, 12:10 PM   #9
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the later carpenters... 1986+ use manual shutoff valves and the heaters are connected in PARALLEL.. so CAP those 2 lines that came out of the driver Bergstrom console going to the back of the bus... dont loop them or you'll likely lose the right hand side (and maybe all) of the heating system completely...

in My carpenter (1991).. there are 2 valves under the hood, and a single valve on the floor of the Bergstrom driver heater.. that driver heater has 3 fan motors in it and a SINGLE heater core connected in Parallel with the 2 lines coming from the engine compartment.. NOTE! the lines from under the hood do not go through the driver heater core.. there are 2 copper pipes in which 1 inch hoses connected and went off to the rear heaters.. the dron driver heater core got coolant via a 'Y' on each side of that copper tube inside the bergstrom box.. thats whyyou should cap and not loop those lines.

fron under the hood the right side heater is in Parallel with hose 2 valves under the hood...

the foot valve on the driver side controlled all the heat on the LEFT side of the bus.. and the 2 valves under the hood control ALL of the heat in the bus.. most people shut off the 2 under the hood for summer...

having the 2 under the hood open and the driver foot one closed allowed you to toss a little heat into the door-well without roasting the driver...

the only Cable in the later carpenters is one that handles the outside air scoop open or closed... and its usually jammed and frozen by rust...

for my use I bought some 1 inch fittings to reroute some of those coolant lines and then proceeded to gut out and rebuild that driver heater box.. (for heat AND A/C).. I fpund the 1" fittings on flea-bay.. I think someone like schoolbuspartsco may have caps and fittings for those..

you CAN loop those lines you just may not get much heat .. esp at low engine RPM's..

-Christopher
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Old 11-27-2016, 12:19 PM   #10
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That etch n prep stuff you got is the same stuff as Ospho- so good stuff!
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Old 11-27-2016, 02:31 PM   #11
Skoolie
 
Join Date: Apr 2016
Location: Marietta, GA
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Holy Moly! You're not kidding! I mopped the floor this morning, and it's been drying for a few hours. I went outside to check it just a few minutes ago and the difference is like night and day! So much rust is gone! I am loving this stuff, and it's really inexpensive, too. I'm thinking of buying another gallon and spraying the underside of the bus to protect the metal frame from future rust.
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Old 11-28-2016, 11:39 PM   #12
Skoolie
 
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I've got a preliminary mockup of the bus floorplan! The T-rex is for scale, naturally.
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Old 11-29-2016, 12:01 AM   #13
Skoolie
 
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Let's see... left to right, that grayish blob in the lower left corner is the driver's seat. I threw some storage bins and such up there to illustrate that we plan to use this area for storage and as a mud room. I'm not sure if we will eventually add a co-captain's chair or not; if so, it should fit just behind the stairs (not pictured because I couldn't figure out how to cut out a section of floor in the software I was using).

The bathroom is pretty straightforward - I added a washing machine (pictured with a gray basket on top - I plan to install cabinets up there, but it gets the idea across), and a large storage cabinet for things like towels, medications, paper goods, etc.

Next is the kitchen, which is tiny, but we can live with that. The dinette is really cool in that it turns into bunk beds. The table top fills in the gap between the chairs for the lower bunk, and the upper bunk sits above the dinette when not in use and can be lowered from the ceiling for sleeping. That's an rv sized fridge over the passenger side wheel well, and a propane stove/fireplace thingy over the driver side wheel well for heat.

That big black thing across the living space is actually a projection screen. Ours won't be on a tripod as pictured, but pull down from the ceiling instead so it can be rolled up out of the way when not in use. The projector will be mounted at the back of the bus. There's another cabinet behind the wheel well on the driver's side for our xbox and other miscellaneous electronics. On the passenger side, we have a small pantry area and then I'd like to cut out a second door. Our bus didn't have a side emergency door, or even rooftop emergency exits, so I'm hoping it wouldn't be too difficult to remove a window back there and then cut a narrow doorway between two ribs. This would generally serve as our "front" door since it goes right into the living space. I put a small awning over that door, but ideally, the awning would extend much further up the length of the bus, like a typical RV awning. We were debating whether or not the roof could support an inflatable hottub. (They hold about 200 gallons of water, so that's about 1700 lbs.!) If not, I suppose we could set it up outside the bus as pictured. ;)

Finally, the big seating area in the back of the bus is made up of 4 expanding storage benches that can be rearranged as desired to accommodate everyone and serves as seating and workspace by day, and a couple of beds by night. IF we feel confident enough to do a roof raise, we would also like to put a loft over the seating area in the back that we could lounge around or sleep in.

Finally, a bike rack just seems like an obvious addition.
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Old 11-29-2016, 11:35 AM   #14
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I found a 1" metal barbed coupler fitting in the sprinkler supply section at the local big box. It was intended for the black poly irrigation tube but fit the bus coolant lines nicely. Use hose clamps too of course; don't depend on the barbs. If a straight coupler causes uncomfortable kinks in the tube then use elbows instead. In that case buy a little extra heater hose, or cut some off the lines you already have, to join between the two elbows. Or use barb-to-thread elbows with a short threaded pipe nipple between them. In any case, the point is don't limit yourself to the plumbing supplies found at the auto parts store.
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Old 03-28-2017, 08:23 PM   #15
Skoolie
 
Join Date: Apr 2016
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I'm probably long overdue for an update. We had a few family emergencies over the winter - I gained a teenage daughter (long, complicated story), and she needed to be hospitalized for several weeks. I rushed back to Georgia to deal with that situation, and then my mom got really ill and ended up in the hospital in Ohio. She had been taking care of my youngest daughter while I was dealing with the older two, so I felt very torn needing to be in two places at once.

After mom had surgery and recuperated a bit, she brought the little one back down to Georgia and then took a much needed vacation. When things here FINALLY settled down somewhat, we decided it would be best to just bring the bus down to Georgia. To get the bus road legal for the big trip, mom re-titled it as a motorhome (which only required a notorized form stating it was minimally converted), then registered (easy peasy as the title said motorhome), and finally insured. Since the title and registration both said "motorhome," we just didn't mention the word bus at all and it was insured for liability and uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage as a motorhome by Progressive - no pictures, receipts, or anything required.

My eldest, Gwen, drove with me up to Ohio just over two weeks ago. I topped off the fluids in the bus, did a pre-trip inspection, and trepidatiously began the nearly 700 mile journey home (with her following right behind me just in case). The bus is a little slow to accelerate, but could do 65 on flat or downhill terrain, and still managed a decent 55 going uphill. I put in earbuds covered by ear protection muffs, started up an audio book, and just kept the pedal floored the whole way down the I75. We spent our first night in the bus at a truck stop in the Smoky mountains of Tennessee. That's when we determined how important insulation will be - we woke up to a world covered in frost, and it was REAL hard to crawl out of our cozy sleeping bags!

We made it safely home with no problems, and now I'm finally back to work. I'm several months behind schedule, so we may not make our original goal of leaving right after the older two graduate this May. On the bright side, my sort of brother-in-law is a professional welder, my friend Jonathan is a licensed electrician, my friend Scott is a fantastic carpenter, and my friend Shane is a professional plumber. They have all generously offered their talents because they are awesome people! (and Shane agreed to let us park the bus on his property if working on it in our driveway turns out to be less than ideal.) Gwen is an awesome partner as well - she's eager to roll up her sleeves and get dirty, and has already gone on several bus related adventures with me.

I've been scouring the free section of Craigslist and we've gathered all sorts of odds and ends for the bus. This has helped us stay under budget so far!
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Old 04-03-2017, 10:41 AM   #16
Skoolie
 
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With a bit of help, I managed to get all of the ceiling and wall panels down and removed the nasty, rusty, moldy fiberglass insulation that was behind them. We have strong storms forecast for this afternoon, so I was happy to get the last of it out before the rain hit.

I've also been working on grinding off all of the rust on the underside of the bus so I can protect my frame. I bought another gallon of prep and etch to spray under there once I get most of the rust cleaned off.

We're still waffling back and forth on the roof raise. We really want the higher ceiling, but are unsure if we can pull it off. Anyone with experience raising the roof want to weight in?

And because I know everyone loves pictures, check out this naked looking bus!
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Old 04-03-2017, 10:48 AM   #17
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That's what we like to see. A stripped out bus. It's not for everyone apparently, but it insures you'll be warm when you insulate.

A bus sure is noisy when you drive it after it's stripped out.
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Old 04-03-2017, 12:04 PM   #18
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Congrats on getting that demo work done. Its nasty stuff but worth it.

Check out my thread, I just raised my roof and am an average diy-er.
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Old 04-03-2017, 06:12 PM   #19
Skoolie
 
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The rain cleared up so I got another hour or two of bus work done. Gwen and I moved all those panels to underneath the bus (for lack of a better place to put them), then we ground the paint away from the screw holes and rusted out spots in the floor and swept out the bus really well to start prepping for fiberglassing. Unfortunately, my husband took the car with my scissors in it (oops!) to go get dinner, and by the time he got home, I wasn't sure if there was enough daylight to do the whole job, so we'll get to that tomorrow morning. In the meantime, we took apart another pallet. Our lumber pile is growing as our pallet stacks continue to shrink!
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Old 04-03-2017, 06:22 PM   #20
Skoolie
 
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Check out my thread, I just raised my roof and am an average diy-er.
Looks really good! It sounds like you had some great folks to help, too.

I did have a few questions - from the pictures, it looks like you used c channels to fill in the ribs, but then suddenly there were flanges on them to match the hat channel. Did you weld another piece of metal on, or did I just miss seeing the flanges in the first picture and it was hat channel the whole time?

I'm not sure if I could get new hat channel fabricated, but I've seen video of someone using square tubing instead and then attaching a flat piece of metal to the outside to rivet the skin to.

Also, how did you actually lift the bus? You mentioned bottle jacks, but where were they positioned? How did you keep everything level? Any idea how much the roof weighed? (My welder asked about the roof weight and I'm not even sure how to find something like that out!)
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