Wildcat Lodge

[RUskoolietailgater]

It's looking good!

[crazycal]

Man, that's a nice big back door you have.

[jkindt]

Great job on skinning in those windows. Now that there is primer on there it looks like the windows were never actually there to begin with. I would almost think it wasn't a school bus to begin with. That is the kind of look I like. Can't wait to see the finished paint job on this one. Keep up the great work and your attention to detail.

[browncrown]

Wildcat, the body work looks fantastic! It's really looking nice

[Wildcat]

Thanks for all the comments. Smitty - as to the antenna we want something that works going down the road so that limits us to a boomerang type or the winguard 2000. I haven't decided yet. Any thoughts on over the road off air antennas are appreciated from the group.

I purchased seatbelts from http://www.gotbelts.com for about $14 each. We bolted them into the existing seat rail and ran them through the back of each of the couches. We will add the dinettes later, but had to get the couches done as it is going to the upholstery shop tomorrow. We also had to add the keyed lock to the back door.

[Wildcat]

We are taking the bus to get upholstery tomorrow and should have it done by the end of the week. Given that, we had to put all the stuff back on the exterior to get it to go down the road. Here are some pics of the first coat of rolled primer ready to go down the road. The mirrors turned out pretty nice with just some black spray paint.

[Wildcat]

Back from upholstery.

[Wildcat]

more upholstery shots.

[Diesel Dan]

Very nice!

[crazycal]

Originally Posted by Diesel Dan

Very nice!

Ditto. Are those cork tiles?

[Jarlaxle]

Nice color...hadn't thought of khaki, but I like how that looks. Are you going to black out the bumpers or keep them matching?

What about the wheels? Cheap tip: hitting the drums with flat black helps them throw off heat faster. (See, I DO remember something from HS physics class!)

[browncrown]

Wildcat, everything looks so nice!

[Wildcat]

It's been a couple of days, but here are some additional exterior paint pictures now that the bus is back from upholstery. The name of the color is "sand" and we used a flat metal primer (3 coats) and an enamel with some gloss for the finish coats (3 coats). We will eventually do a chocolate (or black) two tone including the bumpers, but for now, we are going to get to some camping.

[Wildcat]

Here are some pics with all the tape pulled off and accessories put back on.

[browncrown]

That looks really, really nice. Congrats

[Wildcat]

Here are some additional interior shots of the curtains for the back windows in the bathroom and for the bunk beds that my mother fashioned up.


And another exterior shot I forgot to post earlier.

[Stuff]

i agree! it looks really good! the two tone will give it some character for sure!

[Wildcat]

Smitty - we used 5 gallons of metal primer and 4 gallons of Porter enamel. It was fast drying gloss enamel and the paint store mixed the color. If we did it over again we would have sprayed all coats instead of rolling the primer which created many imperfections we had to sand or just live with. We chose the color sand as sometimes the bus will be a mobile hunting lodge and this color should match nicely with corn fields in our part of the woods and "desert tan" is much less offensive at the ball game than "real tree" camo when the bus will be in tail gate mode.


We let the queen loose last night on the bus and after a thorough cleaning she waived her wand and did her thing. There's nothing like a mother's touch

[Wildcat]

Here's the one with the touch

[RUskoolietailgater]

It's very sharp looking. Congrats on your success.