Jacuzzi bus - a tribute

[Jarlaxle]

Originally Posted by whitey

The motorcycle helmets works great for a combination of eye protection and hearing protection!

Curiosity got the best of me when I removing the rubber linings around the inside edges of the bus. I wanted to just pull a little corner of the flooring up to have a look at the plywood. That turned into tearing up the entire linoleum type floor. Some of the plywood sheets are pretty wet. I was hoping to get straight into applying the wood laminate I bought, but we may have to pull up the wood, treat the metal floor, and put new wood first.

Oh well, can't win em all.

That looks like my brain bucket (also a full-face HJC), except mine is chartreuse with no graphics. But I never used it that way!

As you probably know by now: floor removal is one of the worst parts of converting!

[Jarlaxle]

Originally Posted by whitey

Well we did a bit further inspection of the plywood sheets. They are not as bad as I thought they were with the exception of about two square feet behind the right rear wheel hub. We got heaters on it now hoping to dry it out in a couple days. If it looks like it will be good once it is nice and dry, we will throw a coat of sealant down and then install the flooring.

In the mean time we are going to look at a hot tub in about half an hour. Tomorrow will be an interior paint day. We already did a test spray and am going to pick up some more paint and a new spray gun on our way back from the hot tub place.

Here the final pic of the day.

Whoa, STOP, RIGHT NOW! You NEED to take up that plywood! If it's wet, something is wrong...I would bet you have a small hole in the (metal) floor. You need to fix it before continuing! I took my entire plywood floor up; you can just cut out the affected section, patch the metal, then replace the damaged wood with new.

[whitey]

We didn't rip up the old plywood. Were hoping the majority of the wetness was due to us pressure washing the vinyl floor before we realized we wanted to rip it up. The floors look like they are in good shape so we are not too worried about it.

We broke down the frame of the hot tub and removed all the spray foam insulation. The entire insulation was infested with ants, spiders, and ear wigs. The first piece we pried off using a pointed shovel revealed the extent of it; Ants were literally raining out of the hole. We eventually removed all the big chunks and then pressure washed the remaining little pieces. We are left with just the tub and all the plumbing. We filled the tub up and did not find any leaks, but the wiring is not working at all.

We are about to go put on the second coat of sealant on the bus floor and then sand down and use rustoleum on the exposed wheel hubs. Once that is done we will get the hot tub up and running (hoping we can fit it through the side door of the bus).

[whitey]

Pulling the windows out:



Windows out and rub guard removed:



Interior sheet metal removed. Cutting through the exterior sheet metal and the supports to make a square cutout:




Making the final cuts on the inside:



Theres a mother effin hole in this mother effin bus!



First beers in the tub!




planning to seal it up back up on Wednesday.

[Malkieri]

Rub a dub dub,
Three fools in a tub,
And who do you think they be?
The butcher, the baker,
The candlestick maker.
Turn them out, knaves all three

[bansil]

cool

[crazycal]

Originally Posted by Malkieri

Rub a dub dub,
Three fools in a tub,
And who do you think they be?
The butcher, the baker,
The candlestick maker.
Turn them out, knaves all three

Too funny.

[syke]

when in doubt... put a helmet on! Nice work guys.

[cschlessman]

One thing you may want to think about is mold! Black stuff on wood is not normal. I found when I removed the wood there was a mold universe on it, the moldy smell left the bus the same time the wood left. Just saying

Chuck

[whitey]

Got it registered as a motorhome. No questions asked.

Going through GMAC for insurance. Quoted around 320 for the year for liability only.

Were going to get the side sealed back up, throw in a pop up plexi window in place of the removed window, and take her out for a road test!

Question: What has to be removed to make it street legal? It is still yellow but all the school bus markings have been removed. It still has the stop sign on it and the flashers, do those have to be covered up?

[Redbear]

Originally Posted by whitey

. . . .
Question: What has to be removed to make it street legal? It is still yellow but all the school bus markings have been removed. It still has the stop sign on it and the flashers, do those have to be covered up?

It all depends on the laws of the state you are registering it in. Here you have 14 days to make it not yellow. Other states don't seem to care what you do. Reciprocity should let you drive through other states if it is legal in the state of registration. But there have occasionally been one or two random stories posted about being pulled over and talked to while in a yellow bus traveling through a not-yellow state.

[bansil]

N.C. is a straight up....beotchhh...the only reason I swapped the red/yellow lenses front to rear...and changed stop sign to a "faux" yeild sign...any neighborhood can "makeup" caution signs.....errrghhh...the governmental
-bastigized-eeessss (I think that is a new wiki-pedia word)
.
.
So has been said....everyone is different...make it easy...no yellow...no "red or blue" lights to front.
You should be good to go

[whitey]

GMAC didn't come through today with my approved policy so ill just keep waiting.

In the meantime we welded the side back together and framed out an area for a plexi pop up window in place of the windows we removed.

We also sanded the whole interior and masked and taped 85% of it. Hoping to paint the interior flat black tomorrow. Any issues with me laying down a coat of primer and a coat of flat black rustoleum?

[inkblots84]

Originally Posted by whitey

GMAC didn't come through today with my approved policy so ill just keep waiting.

In the meantime we welded the side back together and framed out an area for a plexi pop up window in place of the windows we removed.

We also sanded the whole interior and masked and taped 85% of it. Hoping to paint the interior flat black tomorrow. Any issues with me laying down a coat of primer and a coat of flat black rustoleum?

Try Good Sam, they are one of the only places that will do conversions. I called a bunch of places a few weeks ago and could only get a yes from them. Your bus is going to be awesome, keep up the good work!

[whitey]

GMAC came through with the policy today; I was surprised to get that call on a saturday.

Shes fully insured and fully registered. Driving her down to the hardware store tomorrow to pick up some plumbing supplies to get the hot tub running.

Gonna go get some vanity plates for her too. I checked and "Hot-Tub" is available. "GetWet" is also, i think I like that one more.

So:

Vanity plates
Plumbing
Painting
Framing
Wiring audio system

and were done! simple. 14 days to go.

[bansil]

sounds good, what happens in 2 weeks?

[whitey]

14 days is our college homecoming. I dont even know if they are going to allow the bus into the tailgate lot haha.

We tore all the wiring guts out of the hot tub and removed the control box from it. We just had to replumb the pump and heater back into the system. They are gonna be hardwired to switches on the wall for now.

Were having a lot of trouble with our plumbing leaking, well more like squirting out. We started with thread tape and then found that wasn't enough, which we had already guessed. Then we used pipe dope and that slowed down the leaks. We just put epoxy over the leaking fittings and that worked great for the heater but it is still squirting out of small holes in the epoxy by the pump. I was gonna go pick up some more epoxy to get a better seal but a quick google searched brought me to something called Plast-Aid. Never heard of it before but apparently its the bees knees when it comes to fixing leaky PVC fittings, chemically bonds to the PVC to make a stronger connection than the PVC itself or something of that nature.

Running out to lowes and hoping they have it now.

Painting the interior a gloss back later tonight. The bus is trashed with tools laying all over the place, insulation, trash, beer cans , etc. Gotta clean that up and finish masking and taping as well. Gonna be a busy night.

But on a good note, we did take the bus out for a trip to Ace Hardware the other day. We even brought my buddies puppies with us. Everyone loved the puppies (obviously) and the bus idea too. We are now known as the "Hot Tub Bus" guys there. We even gave a little old lady a tour of it even though its got nothing in it but a futon and the shell of a hot tub haha.

[whitey]

Couldn't find any Plast-Aid so we just went with some more epoxy. One more coat around the leaky fitting and boom! she's been running dry for about 4 hours now. The heater heats up at around 5 degrees per hour.

There is still a small leak coming from one of the factory fittings. Its seeping out regardless of if the system is running or not. I'm confident a quick epoxy job will fix that. The good news is the floor is holding up well, the polyurethane is doing its job of keeping the water from soaking in. I think I am going to order a thin custom cut rubber mat to place under the tub just to add one extra final layer of protection.

Threw down a first coat of interior paint. A gloss black rustoleum type. Gonna put the second coat on in a few hours if it is dry enough.

[whitey]

Paint is gonna need a second coat, I'll knock that out in a couple hours when the condensation burns off the inside of the bus. Using a kit from harbor freight, 50 bucks for two spray guns. They are both top feed so it is a pain doing the interior roof.

All leaks fixed and we broke it in last night! It wasn't three dudes in a tub this time, it was two dudes and one girl haha. It does take forever to heat up. We finally broke the 100 degree mark around 11pm (we started running it at 9am where it was 49.3 degrees). Little math says that comes out to 3.6 degrees per hour. I am hoping the heater core idea that Lapeer uses will work for us.

One concern I had was the fact we removed all the spray foam insulation from the tub. I was thinking about buying some more spray foam to re-do it but the kits cost anywhere from two to four hundred dollars. I wanted to be sure that it was required before I dropped the cash so I went out this morning at 8am to test the water of the tub. It was only down to 73.3 degrees. Not bad for 9 hours of being shut off with the outside air temp in the low 50s and not having a cover on. So I have decided I dont really need to spray foam it.

I'm going to throw some standard fiberglass insulation around it. I'll do this when I frame out the hot tub in a few days. It is cheap enough that I'm not worried about the mold that is going develop after awhile of it being exposed to water. We are planning to do removable tops on the decking (so we have access to our sump pump, heater core, 55 gallons drums, plumbing, etc.) so I can just pull those up and swap the moldy insulation for new insulation twice a year or so.

We also wanted to plumb the 55 gallon drums into the hot tub system so all we would have to do is flip and switch and a ball valve and it would drain into the drums. We are running out of time so I picked up a submersible sump pump from Lowes and will just drop that in the tub with the hose going into the drums.

We can get all fancy with it over the winter. We gotta debut it 10 days. I just want it functional by then.

[bansil]

ya'll are insane

remember pics of chicks in hot tub required