92 Thomas International Navistar

[BurlKing]

Deconstruction of the bus interior

[The Nebuchadnezzar]

Have fun, angle grinder is your friend.

[Scooternj]

Originally Posted by The Nebuchadnezzar

Have fun, angle grinder is your friend.

So is an impact wrench on the bolts holding the seats to the chair rail

[BurlKing]

The bus as an ad before we bought it.
151k miles, Thomas built international 5.9L, 5 speed manual transmission
bought it for $2500.

[Tango]

Heck of a deal! --- Good looking rig and a great powertrain combo. Best of luck on the build out and keep the pix a'comin'.

[opus]

5.9 in an IH???

[Hvbuzz]

I would guess a DT360. The DT360 is also 5.9 liter.

[crazycal]

Originally Posted by Hvbuzz

I would guess a DT360. The DT360 is also 5.9 liter.

Ditto...........

[jazty]

It has the long nose, too. Probably no dog-house in the cab...

When you get the bus, could you post interior pictures of the front? I'm mighty curious

EDIT: actually.. maybe it has the typical nose. It could just be those nice lines messing me up.

[opus]

Originally Posted by Hvbuzz

I would guess a DT360. The DT360 is also 5.9 liter.

Possible but never heard it referred to as a 5.9

Pictures are in order!

[BurlKing]

Thanks for the advice! i was using the impact drill and angle grinder pretty much for everything, i found out using a cut-off well came in just as handy too. Yep says 5.9L right on the engine itself, didnt think to take a picture of it, will soon though. The engine sounds great, and everything works, not a single switch or light that doesnt come on. I have a couple of dashboard front end pics but they arent the greatest and kinda dirty. Also most of the seats were removed when we bought it, the guy who had it took all but two out so it saved quite a bit of work, and will post what we pretty much started with inside.

[jazty]

That's a crazy lense you're using.. Or maybe your bus is 80 feet long?

[BurlKing]

haha no crazy lense, it was just taken from an odd angle. its about 30' 4" up to the drivers seat from front to back, and outside from bumper to bumper is about 36'.

[BurlKing]

few more pictures.

[BurlKing]

Starting from the back.

[BurlKing]

Very rough sketch-up model to scale, doing in my spare time. Not completed but i am hoping for some ideas. i wont be doing any detail work (like upper cupboards, or the faces to the cabinets) in this model, just pretty much where things will go. We are leaving all of the water it will need in pretty much in one spot so we wont have to run long lines, so there will be no sink in the bathroom, it will be in the kitchen. The Bathroom will be split on opposite sides of the bus, the composting toilet on one side, and a standing tub/shower on the other. The kitchen sink will be right on the other side of the wall in the kitchen. any questions or ideas let us know!

[BurlKing]

About 4/5th of the floor ripped up. A lot of manual labor, but will be worth it. We used a mini-crowbar to peel up some linoleum (some were glued on pretty good.) The plywood underneath required a "torx" bit, pretty much all of them came out with ease using an impact drill. the rusted ones came out easy when prying with crowbars. Overall the rust isn't too bad, the worst is over the rear wheel wells.


We removed the rear heater as we wont need it later when we install electric heat and wood stove. This was easy accomplished with a 1" pipe fitting to get the huge thing out of the way for now. Emptied the coolant into a 5 gallon pale and it pretty much filled it up. amazingly was still a bright green color like it should be, then checked the levels and I needed to add a little back to it but not much.

Next up were the side panels. This one had a couple ways to go, but we chose the easy route and used a cutting wheel along the edge of the window to cut it off, then we will just file it down and fill it with silicone or foam. The chair rail underneath the side panels seems to be welding to the floor so we will be keeping that in. The insulation underneath was not in bad condition at all, but still needed to go to find the bad spots underneath or leaks(which was very minimal, but we can now know what is behind our walls. There must've been at least a thousand spiders in the insulation as well.

And then came the ceiling. We pretty much had it stripped in one day, but were beat. turned out to be around 900 screws in the ceiling. They were a phillips #3 bit, but with a thick coat of paint it was very hard to get the bit in, so after fooling around and grinding the heads down for a bit realized this would take a long time. swapped the grinding disc for a high-speed cut-off wheel and zipped a quick line in each screw so a flat head could fit in and it worked perfect, she would follow with an impact drill with a flat head on it and it worked 98% of the time. The other times it would chip off half the head which was still pretty easy to then cut off with the cut-off wheel. we were able to remove a panel + insulation in about 5-6 minutes.

BUS LOVE

[nat_ster]

Great job on the demo.

I will be watching.

Nat

[cowlitzcoach]

Your bus left the factory with an impressive list of options for back in the day--full length acoustical ceiling, tinted glass, etc.

It looks as if you found yourself a really great bus.

Your proposed floor plan looks like it will work really well for you.

I would suggest you lay it out with painter's tape and cardboard and take it out camping for a weekend. It is amazing how many changes you will make once you try "living" with your floor plan. Changing stuff when it is painter's tape and cardboard is a lot easier than when it is wood and steel.

Good luck and happy trails!

[BurlKing]

Thank you Nat ster. I will continue to update it as soon as possible, hard to find time with two jobs and building your next home!

And cowlitz, you are 100% right, came with tinted windows and acoustic ceiling. I had put my powerful computer sound system in there before taking the panels down and sounded like i was in a concert hall. lol. it was pretty nice, then afterwards it just echoed. but i feel better taking them down than leaving them up, as there was pretty much no barrier between those panels with the tiny holes and then bats of fiberglass insulation. I felt as if after 23 years of it being there it would probably shake down fibers all on our stuff as it drives down the road, didn't want to be breathing that in at all! We actually camped in our bus for 5 days straight, was out at my parents place and didn't want to be a nuisance so put up a tent and mattress and went to bed, was actually pretty convenient because when we woke up we could get right to work.