Cutting the roof & skinning the sides

[lornaschinske]

This may help you. It's a roof raise that was done on an Eagle but it should be similar (except for the caps). I know that it would be very, very similar if you were raising the roof of a Blue Bird. Use care as this is very dangerous. I believe Gene used a sawsall to cut thru the metal tubing.

http://users.cwnet.com/~thall/gene_lewis.htm

Another option would be to use a clerestory running down the center of the roof... like what you see in trolley cars and some train cars (I think it looks neat). If we were needing to raise the roof, we would do the clerestory but David & I are short so the original ceiling height is fine. I posted in a thread about this....

http://www.skoolie.net/forum/viewtop...p=71175#p71175

[Griff]

You will find a lot of information on a well done roof raise in "The Millicent Chronicles" here:

http://www.skoolie.net/forum/viewtop...1709&start=645

[lornaschinske]

I've yet to see a skoolie with a Cap. Gene's method was written for highway coaches which have slightly different skins on them but the Eagle frame and the Blue Bird frame have very similar tube dimensions (except Blue Bird apparently doesn't have the cross bracing that the Eagle has) Coach caps are a PITA. We've had both an Eagle and the current Blue Bird. Many coach self-converters have used Gene's method of a roof raise with no problems. Caps are big, huge bulky things that are metal and you replace with fiberglass (lots of $$$). Seems like everything on a highway coach involved lots of $$$. We simply don't have the time to raise the roof. We don't want to raise the roof. Like I said David & I are both short (5'8" and 5'4"). We like running the back roads and have done that for a few decades, enough to realize that we need to keep the overall height down. We don't want any "carbuncles" on the roof either. The only exception may be a low profile folding sat antenna (Winegard TRAV'LER DISH 1000 Multi-Satellite TV Antenna folds down to under 10" in height). No rooftop airs (noisy beasties) and no "luggage racks" on the roof (current Class C RV had one... we did a roof repair for the leaks). We are using a center aisle layout and David has already stood in the shower to make sure the height was okay.