Remington's 2000 International 7.3 Conversion

[Remington]

Hey, guys! I finally joined the club Huge thanks to EastCoastCB for pointing me in the direction of this fantastic lil shorty and answering all my questions! You rock! I flew from WA to CO and drove this baby home in record time, no issues whatsoever!

Here she is





Got home yesterday and already made some decent progress!





So is the general consensus here that I should definitely remove the floor? I took out the middle aisle strip and I'm unsure if I should rip it all out. I'm 6'6" and would like to not raise the floor, which leaves replacing the 3/4 inch plywood with something or putting something very thin over the current plywood/vinyl.

Also, are you guys insulating the walls and ceiling? I'm unsure whether this is necessary or if I can just paint over the walls. I live in WA but I'll be all over the map with this, I plan on a small wood burning stove for the cold nights.

Thanks for all the help everyone this is a wonderful community!

I will be updating this thread and video documenting my entire build. Be on the lookout for my videos! Cheers!

[cowlitzcoach]

Once you get all of the linoleum up you will be in a better position to determine whether to keep the current floor or re-do it. School buses by their very nature get a lot of water on the floor. A bus from CO is going to get considerably more in the form of snow.

All of that moisture tends to cause problems over time. It will be particularly bad in corners and around the wheel wells. Most of the time the buses never run long enough to get warm enough to dry all of the moisture out. Which over time will tend to rot parts of the plywood.

At 6'6" I think you need to seriously think about a roof raise. Even if you are only going to be running around the NW you are going to want something between your living space and outside besides what is there currently.

One of the buses I owned came from a mining company in NV or UT. They paid extra to have the entire underside of the passenger compartment to be insulated with spray foam. It was thick enough that you could not see any of the floor joists. It also covered up a lot of stuff that in order to work on it you just abandoned the stuff and re-plumbed or re-wired.

The problem for anyone doing it on an older bus is I don't know that you would ever be able to get it clean enough for the spray foam to stick permanently to the underside of the bus.

[Tango]

To my simple mind, it is critical to know the condition of any foundation you intend to spend time and money building on top of.

And until that rubber & ply comes up you just don't know. As Cowlitz noted, these things typically experience lots of moisture on the inside. Sweating (condensation), rain, snow, windows left down plus most get hosed out routinely to remove the puke and smashed jelly sandwiches.

Take a look.

[EastCoastCB]

Always worth doing, in my opinion.
I can say for sure these buses were NOT hosed out though.
The only real corrosion on them is from something in the rear like a window or something. There's a leak that rots away the passenger side rear in these buses. Why I'm doing so much body repair on the shorty. Otherwise it would be painted by now.

[EastCoastCB]

Here's the worst of mine-


Here's mine when it was picked up-


What number was your bus? I got bus 43.

[Remington]

Could an admin please remove this thread? I formatted incorrectly and missed the edit window. I started a new thread and would like to have the discussion over there.

[Sockeye]

where is the new thread? i would like to follow it as these are my questions too. I would say, living in the pacific northwest that I thought just having a little wood stove would be fine until I noticed how stinking hot my car is getting lately and think that maybe insulation is a good thing especially since I hope to put some solar on top which means not hiding in the shade.