Newly to the Skoolie

[hatt0710]

Hello everyone been looking into the skoolie world for awhile now and have been craving to build one. Unfortunately building one and living in one is not in the cards right now but we’re doing the next best thing, building a short bus for our camping adventures. Been searching for the right one for awhile now and finally found one pretty much in my backyard. Picked up this 2002 GMC Savanna 3500, 5 window built by Blue Bird. It’s got a 5.7 small block V8, auto.

[hatt0710]

First thing to go was the carpet which was very easy being not tracked down or glued. We got it as you see pictures so the seats were already removed which was nice. After carpet was the linoleum which wasn’t to bad to remove but made me sweat a bit haha. Then we proceeded with removing the plywood, which was the hard part. Not only was it screwed down from the top it was screwed from under the floor up into the plywood, made for some serious work. The goal is to remove all old wood and lay down foam board insulation the all new plywood on top of that.

[hatt0710]

Some more pics

[HappyInTN]

Originally Posted by hatt0710

Hello everyone been looking into the skoolie world for awhile now and have been craving to build one. Unfortunately building one and living in one is not in the cards right now but we’re doing the next best thing, building a short bus for our camping adventures. Been searching for the right one for awhile now and finally found one pretty much in my backyard. Picked up this 2002 GMC Savanna 3500, 5 window built by Blue Bird. It’s got a 5.7 small block V8, auto.

Sounds like a great start. Good luck on the build and welcome to the skoolie family.

[crashcarr]

Awesome start, congratulations! Looks like you have a similar mess of wires above the driver side that we do. Do you have any plans for changing out the ceiling?

[o1marc]

Hard parts out of the way. Floor screwed from below would have ruined my day in full size.

[Johnny Mullet]

Coming along! Looking forward to more updates!

[hatt0710]

The wires not looking forward to cleaning up and figuring out what I need and don’t. I can do electrical but takes me much longer then it should haha. As far as the ceiling I’m going to leave it alone, if I were to be living in it I would pull all of it out and insulate but since we’re just going to use it for camping I think we’ll manage. We’re use to tent camping all the time so hopefully we can handle it haha. Have you tackled the wiring mess I yours if so what did you do?

[hatt0710]

Yeah I was scratching my head when I had all the screws out from the top and the plywood still didn’t budge haha. Life saver and a great tool was the 48” pry bar I bought at Harbor Frieght, highly recommended.

[crashcarr]

The wiring is our next project, pretty much the last thing that we'll be removing before starting to build. Neither of us have a strong background but Blue Bird sent us a wiring diagram that is supposed to be similar to our bus; hopefully that will help.

[ol trunt]

Looks like a good start. Hang on to that pry bar---sooner than later you are going to want it to beat the crap out of the whole project. Just kidding, it looks like you have things well under control. Jack

[o1marc]

Originally Posted by hatt0710

Yeah I was scratching my head when I had all the screws out from the top and the plywood still didn’t budge haha. Life saver and a great tool was the 48” pry bar I bought at Harbor Frieght, highly recommended.

We used a 40" pry bar on top because most of the screws were fubar. If it were screwed from both sides, Ugh.
Once I had mine gutted and looked at the wiring harness it was not as intimidating as some have made it seem here. Once you have access to the backs of all the lights the wire colors make it easy to decipher. The wires off the big upper red lights will connect into the back up lights and the reds will get driving white lights. Speaker wires will get repurposed with better speakers. Harness runs down drivers side and all the way back up the pass. side mostly for dome lights. A lot can be used and some of the rest repurposed. Wire is not cheap, I'm saving every penny in wire I can.

[hatt0710]

Good start to the weekend. Brought the bus to my work and changed the oil and ditched the rear heater and the coolant lines running all the way back to it. Oil pan drain plug was stripped so had to get a new one, turned out good. And found a great place to cut out the rear heater lines and loop it back to itself to complete the cooling system.

[hatt0710]

Not sure why my some of my pics are sideways? Sorry. After doing a little maintenance, it was off to Lowes to get supplies. Finished a lot of work this Saturday, very pleased how it turned out.