The Roach Motel

[roach711]

I had a lawn service for a while then did building maintenance and IT support for a children's home until it closed down. Now I babysit a mostly empty building until it gets bulldozed to make way for another Walmart. I've always been a tinkerer and one of my favorite things is to find some old nasty thing and make it shiny and new, or close to it.

Jack - from a few of your comments I thought you might be LEO or fire department.

[ol trunt]

Love to do that too--ain't it fun?

[Tango]

It all makes sense. Converting skoolies is all about another life and another time being revitalized. Evolution can be a good thing if you manage it well.

Life is good...Onward!

[lornaschinske]

Originally Posted by roach711

...The sink we got had three holes for the faucet but I needed holes for the sprayer and the soap dispenser. Word on the 'net was that stainless was ornery stuff and hard to work with. Some suggested using a greenlee punch set to shear the holes and others said a hole saw would work but would generate a lot of heat and might discolor the sink. I tried my Sears 1" hole saw and it dug right through nice and clean. Sometimes the Internet guys over-think the problem...

We have used metal cutting drill bits & bi-metal hole saws on SS several times without discolouring. We have three 1/2 size SS steam table insert pans and a 1/3 size SS steam table pan in the food cart being used as 4" deep sinks. We put a 1/3 (6" deep) SS steam table pan in the bathroom as a sink (hard to find any sink to fit in a space that is only about 10") . All these thick restaurant pans needed holes in the bottom for drains. The key to drilling into SS and NOT having problems is to use bits made for SS. Unfortunately when we drilled the food cart pans all our good hole saws were in NM and we were in TX. David would not spring for another hole saw. Using a punch to "dimple" the metal keeps the drill bits from walking.

I REALLY like my sink in the bathroom.

Food cart "sinks"

The triple sinks are 1/2 pans, the handwash sink is a 1/3 pan.

[roach711]

Not getting so much done this month now that winter is closing in on Michigan. I also had both of our daily drivers down for service - growling front wheel bearings on my van and two broken rear springs on wifey's Rendezvous. Don't buy an early model Rendezvous, way too many problems there.

Our dinette is getting a standard bench on one side and the passenger captain's chair on the other; no room for another bench *and* the captain's chair. Lots of storage space under the bench. I bought an RV mattress to cut up for cushions but it didn't have normal foam inside. Instead the padding is some kind of plastic matrix that's a bear to cut. I went through three blades in my box cutter cutting the first piece. For the next piece I fired up the table saw and that worked way better.



The last upper cabinet is in.



I decided to keep the existing wheelchair doors. Here I've got most of the insulation board in. The edges of the window openings will be trimmed out with carpeting then covered with a naugahyde trim piece like the other windows.The existing door latches are in the way so I cobbled up some "L" brackets that will screw the doors to the floor and ceiling. Once they're buttoned up the doors will be caulked within an inch of their lives. After that some oak plywood will be screwed to the door frame so I can attach the table.



I'm still on track to finish this beast by Memorial Day. Not he Memorial Day I had planned, but I never said what year.

[ol trunt]

Roach 711, Your wood work looks great. I'm going to follow your lead and have the drivers Captain's chair face the table like you are doing on the other side.

What is this "magic foam" that is so hard to cut? Where did you get it and what is it meant to be used for? Jack

[roach711]

Originally Posted by ol trunt

Roach 711, Your wood work looks great. I'm going to follow your lead and have the drivers Captain's chair face the table like you are doing on the other side.

What is this "magic foam" that is so hard to cut? Where did you get it and what is it meant to be used for? Jack

The "foam" is more like plastic cotton candy than spongy rubber and is quite dense, kinda like quilt batting on steroids. It probably wouldn't be all that comfortable to sleep on. I bought the RV mattress from Bottom Dollar Surplus on ebay and the entire mattress cost way less than buying the foam at the fabric store.

That reminds me of a joke - "That was a real dumb move - you must be from New York." "Why do you say that?" "I hear the population of New York is very dense".

I didn't say it was a GOOD joke.

[Charley]

Originally Posted by roach711

Hello Roach,
Your bus is looking very nice already .
I was wondering a thing about such a lift.
Howmany KG or Pounds can the lift pull up?
I am thinking to install a lift to load my Harley in the rear of my bus insted of a loading ramp.
I think the Harley is too heavy.

[roach711]

My lift never did work so I have no practical experience, but at least one of the "shorties" on this forum have used their wheelchair lift as a motorcycle loader. I see 750 to 800 lbs. capacity on similar lifts.

[GreyEagle]

Looks like a good place to add a spare bedroom or such.....

[crazycal]

I like my lift and have used it about 2 dozen times already to load heavy things into the bus. My BIL says I should remove it because it takes up space. I want it for lifting a scooter or motorcycle too but not a Harley. I can't find a label with the specs so I'm not sure what the capacity is.

This is Rincon's website.

http://www.riconcorp.com/products_schoolbus.asp

Looks like 800# or 364 kg.

[roach711]

The wheelchair door is now officially buttoned up and the inside trim is done. Also got the dinette table mounted. I even built two more of those window storage thingy's for the wheelchair door windows.

Before


And after




Next project is to get some fabric and sew up some cushion covers.

[bansil]

What belt did you use for passenger?I have just a racing 3" lap right now and want a shoulder assy.(without the rollcage tubing )
The jy bus ones I've found are sun rotten

[roach711]

Originally Posted by bansil

What belt did you use for passenger?I have just a racing 3" lap right now and want a shoulder assy.(without the rollcage tubing )
The jy bus ones I've found are sun rotten

The sealbelt was one of the originals that came with the bus. I tried to mount the belt retractor on the seat but the belt wasn't long enough with the seat spaced out from the wall like it is. I ended up having to mount the retractor at the top of the wheelchair door frame.

[roach711]

It's too cold to do much on Roachie these days but wifey is keeping with the program and got us some nifty personalized storage totes. And here I thought she *really* didn't like the name I picked out.

[bansil]

classic!!

[ol trunt]

Ditto. How cool

[Tango]

Yeah...but that sez' it with STYLE! Very cool.

[magic_bus]

Sweet rig.
I can't believe how well you made use of the space.
Very inspirational.

[roach711]

Originally Posted by magic_bus

Sweet rig.
I can't believe how well you made use of the space.
Very inspirational.

Thank you very much!

I can't take much credit for the final floor plan (this one's probably version 5.3). The big stuff is where it is because it wouldn't fit anywhere else or would be really inconvenient to use in another spot or because the plumbing wouldn't work where I first wanted the thing placed. I originally had a much different plan in mind but reality intervened and this is what came about.

I lurked on this forum for almost two years before circumstances allowed us to finally pick up a bus, so I already had most of the mechanical stuff (furniture, plumbing, electrical) planned out ahead of time. Nonetheless, when I got to the actual construction phase every last plan was substantially changed or scrapped altogether. My original plan didn't take drains, frame rails and wheel wells into consideration and was totally unusable. Eventually, we got a usable floor plan, but the bus mostly told ME where stuff would fit instead of the other way around.