The Good Ship Anne Marie

[gusbus]

I looked @ your thread early on; then lost track of it. Glad to see you' be made some good progress on your skoolie. It looks good too. Keep up the good work.

[White99z]

This is an awesome bus?!? I know it's been a while. Any updates? I love the ceiling you did!

[somjuan]

Originally Posted by White99z

This is an awesome bus?!? I know it's been a while. Any updates? I love the ceiling you did!

Thank you! Unfortunately, no. It's been a cold winter, and we didn't get the woodstove in before the freezing temperatures hit.


DSC01070.jpg by somjuan, on Flickr

That photo is from a couple weeks back, and most of the snow has melted. We're actually going to be putting in some work tomorrow, despite the temperature still being just above 30 for the most part. There have been a few days up in the 50s, which is really all we need, and they've been enough of a tease for us to just get going regardless.

[White99z]

Ha! Awesome pic. Not too long ago it looked like that here in Michigan!

[somjuan]

Hello! It's been a while. We had some major setbacks with our conversion this year, which I'll get into shortly. The lack of progress to share, combined with the board's spotty uptime kept me from making any updates to this thread. But the board's future is looking brighter, and I return! Yay!

So the snow melted, and the air got warmer, and this last spring we got back to work on our bus. Things were moving pretty smoothly, and we had a new bench built in short order. We were starting to move on, and we started to notice something.



Those spots look bad.



WHY is there MOLD?



We yanked everything up, and found that our windows had begun to leak over the winter. We had a few leaks last fall, but we sealed them and waited a long time before we were comfortable calling it fixed. Some windows were more problematic than others, but there were more letting water in than keeping it out.

When we pulled up the plywood and insulation on the floor, we found a very moist environment. Bad times. We scrapped much of the plywood floor. We also took this opportunity to scrap the insulation we were using in the walls. It never fit quite right, and was making construction unnecessarily difficult. Our floor insulation was fine once it had dried a little.



So we tried a few things. First, we yanked out the windows and completely resealed them with new caulk. This really should have been enough to do the job, but it wasn't. We still had some water coming in (less, but any amount is too much). We tried slowly resealing the windows from the outside only, and this actually proved most effective.

I'm glad to say there is no more water coming into the bus. It gave us quite a scare.

[somjuan]

So at this point, we've got our bus completely gutted again, in the quest for a dry cabin. Though it didn't look too pretty, she still ran just fine, and we figured our big metal tent with wheels was still up for a few adventures.

First, we visited our favourite bluegrass festival. The deck made itself useful.



It's strength continues to impress me. I don't actually know how many people we had up top all told, but I no longer worry about the deck.



Around this time we got our window situation figured out, and we started throwing things back in. No progress pictures here, it was identical to the first time around. We went with 1.5" polyiso boards for our walls. They sit much more snug, and we can actually start building things square again. As you can see, the ceiling is still in great shape even though we've yet to actually seal it.



Starting to look a little better inside, we took our pooch out for a spin at a friend's wedding.



I had to replace the lift pump prior to the wedding, and on the return trip discovered I'll need to replace the glow plugs as well. Otherwise, she's still running strong, and the interior is starting to come together.

At this point, we're basically where we were in the springtime, except without any leaks, and it's October .

[somjuan]

We reinstalled everything that we yanked out when we had the water scare, and things were feeling normal again. Except the weather was getting colder, and we'd lost a lot of time. No way we're sitting this winter out. Priority #1 is now heat. We set to work building our hearth.

Our hearth is almost purely for aesthetics. The Kimberly woodstove we’re using has ridiculously tiny clearances, and we have given it much more room than is necessary. In addition, the vent pipe we’re using only has a 1? clearance to combustibles, so let me preface all this by saying the space we’ve allocated is overkill.



This is the 1/4" cement board to which we'll be attaching our thin cut brick. Though the cement board is fire and heat resistant, I don't think we'll be using any of those properties, and mostly will be happy it doesn't expand and contract, popping our mortared joints.

That hole in both the cement board and the floor is for external combustion air. It's probably not necessary, but it's easy and safe.



This is the thin cut brick we're using. They’re smaller than standard bricks, which works to our advantage. The thinner/smaller the building materials we’re able to use the more space we appear to have inside. We attached them to the cement board with Liquid Nails.



Little wood strips served as our spacers for the walls.



It all looked really good with bricks alone, but the mortar really is the finishing touch.



We tried a couple methods of applying mortar before just giving up and using the finger-painting method. The space between our bricks is far less than standard spacing, so normal tools wouldn't help us. Just using our hands went really quickly and cleanly.



Here's what it looks like without/with the stove.



We had a little leftover brick, and made an accent wall along our counter. It all came out really well.

We're still waiting on the last few pieces of stovepipe to arrive, so we haven't had any fires yet. It looks like we'll be able to work through the winter, and should have no trouble keeping warm. Though nothing is moving as quickly as I hoped or planned, it is all turning out exactly as I hoped it would.



This brings us up to the present date. Thanks to the new admins who will be keeping these forums afloat. I'll be keeping this thread updated again.

[sdwarf36]

Welcome back Juan!
When you replace your glow plugs-make sure you use only factory Ford ones. (you can find them online for $75 for the set). Its not a bad job. Also look real close at the wiring-from the harness-to the valve covers-to the UVC (under valve cover) harnesses. They are known to burn out. Make sure you use plenty of dilectric grease on the connections. I just did a set in my bus last week.

[The Nebuchadnezzar]

Hi, you bring up a good point with the insulation on the roof being in good shape, I have seen lots of folks here tear down ceilings and side panels, I am not opposed to doing this but I have to wonder if the the substitute insulation provides a better Rvalue? I love the wood look but wood adds weight so I'm not sure if I'll go that route? Nice work so far!

[somjuan]

Originally Posted by The Nebuchadnezzar

Hi, you bring up a good point with the insulation on the roof being in good shape, I have seen lots of folks here tear down ceilings and side panels, I am not opposed to doing this but I have to wonder if the the substitute insulation provides a better Rvalue?

I'm pretty sure the only thing that will add a significant R-value to the ceiling is spray foam insulation. The jump from batting to foam panels is minimal and awkward, and neither offers as complete a seal as spray foam. That said, it has obvious financial obstacles.

[Leftyclick]

It's looking good! I love the hearth.

[cschlessman]

On those glow plugs, check the relay just because it clicks doesn't mean it works.

Chuck

[cowlitzcoach]

The controller rarely goes bad.

Glow plugs are usually only good for 40,000-75,000 miles depending upon the number of cycles they have gone through.

Replace all eight at once or you will be continually replacing them one at a time.

[Hvbuzz]

That really sucks about having to redo the inside. But it is looking really good!! The windows in my bus leaked terrible before I started converting. Made my mind up pretty easy to remove and replace. Doing so I lost all the natural light though. Seems everything is a trade off. That wood stove is awesome!! I read up on it online after seeing your post. We don't do any cold weather camping, but that has me thinking about it... Keep up the good work.

[cschlessman]

Originally Posted by cowlitzcoach

The controller rarely goes bad.

Glow plugs are usually only good for 40,000-75,000 miles depending upon the number of cycles they have gone through.

Replace all eight at once or you will be continually replacing them one at a time.

Yeah that's right but I'm not talking about the controller. The relay in the middle of the engine does go bad, they used some from India and any time current got to high the contacts would burn up. Did about 50,000 recalls on them, relay would click no heat from the glow plugs.

chuck

[juliol]

when installing the boards on the ceiling, how do you know you are going to end up evenly at the other side, is there a special process when you start?

Juliol

[somjuan]

Originally Posted by juliol

when installing the boards on the ceiling, how do you know you are going to end up evenly at the other side, is there a special process when you start?

We don't end up even on the other side - our special process involves a router ;). We're actually in the process now of routing the boards straight instead of letting them come down between the windows. I'll post some pictures once we're done, it looks quite a bit cleaner.

[mad_wolf]

Originally Posted by somjuan

Thanks, all.

Normal #8 1.5" sheet metal screws, not self tappers. We pre-drilled our holes through both the wood and metal with a 1/8" cobalt bit, and used a #8 countersink bit to get the heads nice and flush.

I don't know whether this will be a problem for you or not, but very very occasionally, we'd drill through the wood right into a hole in the rib where a rivet had been. Sometimes, the screw we put in wouldn't hold at all, other times it would. Either way, at this point you're faced with either leaving the screw in and doing the next rib down the line to be sure it stays in place, or putting the whole board into the scrap pile for when a shorter piece is called for.

I know its been a while on this but if you look in the caulk area at Lowes ETC they sell Wood Filler That can fill in mis-drills and can be used to cover screw heads before staining painting Etc . It is available in several colors to match most woods

http://elmers.com/product/detail/E868

even can be used to fill cracks and minor imperfections there are several differant products in this area each used to fix specific issues with wood products .

[somjuan]

Thanks, though we've found the screw heads to be much less obvious when looking at the ceiling. It was a big concern of ours. We used a really knotty pine, and the screws are easily lost among the knots.

For the instances where we hit a rivet hole, it was rarely a problem to take that piece down and use it again when we had to cut a shorter length. There is just so much ceiling to cover, that barely anything went to waste.

[FreedomPanda]

Really enjoyed going through your build for the last hour!

I'm at the stage where I'm tearing off the roof, the side panels and the floors. You mentioned the construction of the side panels curling under the floor...I have a Gillig, so I'll have to check on their building style, but would you recommend taking the floor up before the side panels?

Also, kudos for such a beautiful job on the ceiling. I'm patterning my build off of that very same photo you shared in the beginning of your thread. It looks like you are achieving that same airy, woodsy, clean look. The knotty aspect of the pine is a great screw concealer...I'll keep that in mind when it comes time for the ceiling.

Again, thank you for such great reports and congrats on such a nice job all the way around!

Dug