Tejon #7 - 1990 Crown Supercoach

[Tejon7]

Originally Posted by Iceni John

I'm following this thread closely. There's not many of us doing serious conversions of Crowns, and I may be the only fool / Crown nut doing so to a Super II. My conversion after twelve years is approaching completion, but the wise old farts on the BCM forum always say that bus conversions are never truly finished, so maybe I'll be busy with it until the day I cark.

I left all my ceiling panels in place because A) I'm too lazy to take them all down and/or put them back up afterwards, and B) I don't plan on being anywhere brass-monkey cold or fry-egg-on-sidewalk hot. That's what wheels are for. I will cover my ceiling with white FRP with a half-inch of polyiso behind it, to give a modicum of insulation and to make it look nice without needing to be painted (I just HATE painting!). Together with the magic pixie-dust I mixed into the roof paint that may help slightly (or maybe not), and the fact that the entire roof is shaded by the walkway between the roof hatches and by the eight big solar panels, even on a hot SoCal day the ceiling inside never gets much over ambient temperature. If it's crazy hot, I'll go north or higher, and when it gets cold I'll migrate south or lower - easy!

It's good that other Crown converters are encountering all the little vicissitudes and hiccups that I've encountered! At least now I know I'm not alone in my misery. Rubber flooring, check. Remaking the windows' inner seals, check. Making side walls perpendicular to the floor, check. Dealing with the simple fact that nothing, and I mean nothing at all, is truly and perfectly square, flat, aligned or consistent - check. Crown did a fine job of making the best damn school buses in this spiral arm of the galaxy, but you can't blame them for not envisioning that some fools would want to make something else of their buses! Add to this the inconvenient fact that my bus leans like a drunken sailor because the RV storage yard's ground isn't level and my bus has two fewer leaves in its right rear spring than the left, and that makes a spirit level useless to determine true vertical or horizontal. Just another little challenge.

I recently put the first of my two Chinese diesel air heaters into service, and I'm very impressed with it so far. I did however slightly increase the fan's minimum speed setting to get a cleaner burn, and after last weekend's trip to my friend at almost 4000 feet ASL it didn't produce any soot buildup in the exhaust after two nights' continuous use. One day I'll properly fine-tune it with a CO meter, but I think I've got it pretty close so far. It will probably never be stoichiometric, but as long as there's no carbon buildup I'm happy. When both those CDHs are running I hope to not need my 12K minisplit's heatpump function, but it's always good to have a Plan B just in case.

If any other Crownaholics are in the Socal area I'm always more than happy to give tours of my work in progress - just PM me if you're anywhere near Orange County.

John

I'm impressed with your commitment! I hope my marriage to my bus lasts as long

Since you're here, John, I have a little side project to share that you partially inspired (bear with me - the Inceni John part comes in at the end).

My bus only came with one Crown badge, and as you all probably know those things are unobtanium any more. I'd really like to have one anyway, so I made a 3D model and had it printed in ABS plastic. I briefly looked into CNC and casting techniques, but they were so prohibitively expensive that I decided 3D printing would be 'good enough'.

My first attempt came out pretty good, but I destroyed it by trying to smooth out the printing lines with acetone vapors:

First pic: real badge alongside raw 3D print. 2nd pic: FAIL!
Acetone vapor smoothing has promise, but I left this one in a weee bit too long

The second attempt is still in it's raw form from the printer. Hopefully I'll get around to fiddling with it again sometime this summer and end up with a reasonable facsimile of the original.

Second attempt raw print alongside real badge. This one is gray, but it's still the same ABS plastic

IF I eventually figure out a decent process, then I'll print another model that's inspired by your (Inceni John's) signature on the BCM forum:


Hehe, I dig that "hecho en Chino" bit. I'm curious if anybody will even notice once it's on my bus.

[Tejon7]

Originally Posted by Rwnielsen

I could be wrong but...I've never needed a scope to measure a heating element. A decent meter but not a scope. You can't try to measure them with a field type meter, you'll need an old school Fluke or something similar that will actually measure ohms.

I'll definitely try this out next time I dig into the coolant heater problem, but for now warmer weather has sidelined that project

As an update on the coolant heater, I ended up calling Hotstart. They're pretty great to deal with - customer service isn't email or online chat, it's just calling their local Eastern Washington phone number, where a real human being picks up the phone. I talked to Ted, who's worked there for 40 years and knew their products like they were his children. He said the part number on my cast aluminum housing indicated that the element was between 1500 and 2800 watts. Unfortunately, they don't make a replacement for that element any more, because they stopped making 2" NPT threaded elements years ago in favor of bolt-on models.

So I can either look for an old surplus element on Ebay, or buy a whole new heater. I think I'll just put it off until next fall. For anybody out there with this exact problem, the replacement Hotstart heaters are either SB 115100-000 (~$415, with thermostat). Those are their more industrial models - for my purposes they might be overkill.

[Iceni John]

Originally Posted by flattracker

If you wish to install FRP on your ceiling maybe consider the following insulation:


US Energy 5mm reflective foam core insulation.


It is advertised with an R value up to R15.62 (1 layer)
It is spendy but for your ceiling, glued and covered with FRP it could work, and not lower your ceiling much. I got that for my conversion.

Sounds good. I'll research it and find where I can buy it. Thanks for the tip.

[Iceni John]

Originally Posted by Tejon7

IF I eventually figure out a decent process, then I'll print another model that's inspired by your (Inceni John's) signature on the BCM forum:
Attachment 54863

Hehe, I dig that "hecho en Chino" bit. I'm curious if anybody will even notice once it's on my bus.

I've always been amused by the Spanish version of "Made In China" that's on so much these days. It's definitely something only a Crownaholic would appreciate. I wonder what the Crown Coach Junkies folk would think of it! (Are you a member of the CCJ forum? Their Facebook page has lots of interesting threads.)

Have you called Zachers Bus Salvage in Harbor City CA about getting another Chino badge? Josh Zacher scrapped some Super IIs last year, and I went to his yard and bought some Super II goodies - a complete spare DDEC computer, another storage cubby for above the windshield, and a Chino nameplate to replace the Los Angeles plate that I bought after I got the bus (it came with only one Chino plate) - for all these years the front of my bus has been made in Chino and the back has been made in LA, making it a hermaphrodite bus. His yard is well worth a visit.

I wonder if you could make nameplates to sell to the CCJ folk? The supply of decent originals is fast drying up, but not everyone wants to put an expensive irreplaceable original plate on their bus. A good copy may suit some folk just fine.

John

[Tejon7]

I'm not part of the CCJ group. I severed my Facebook ties as best I could and now I live a happier life It's too bad though - sounds like a good group to be involved with.

I feel like selling replica/custom Crown emblems would be lots of work with little reward. I'm happy to share the 3D models if anybody wants to make their own though. If there's interest, I'll start a new thread and folks can collaborate on the best techniques for making these things.

Thanks for the Zachers tip. I'll contact him to see if he has anything available.

[Tejon7]

Follow-up from last progress update: I got the window foam painted and installed. They look really good – even in bright sunshine, it just looks like a blacked out window. I used Rustoleum Charcoal Gray, which will be used for most of the interior metal painting later on and I already had it on hand. I initially wanted to use flat black paint, but with the tinted windows anything dark would have looked fine.

First Pic: painted window insulation. Second pic: regular windows on the left, blacked out windows on the right

Progress: Bathroom and hallway puck lights installed
Useful Tools: The right size hole saw

Before starting the whole ceiling re-attachment project, I ran wiring for all my planned in-ceiling lighting. I think I forgot to mention that at the time. Anyway, now that the ceiling was back in the bus, I cut holes for little LED puck lights in the bathroom and hallway areas. I didn’t have the correct size hole saw, so I used one that was ~1/8” too small and had to ream out the holes with a file. There were only seven holes… how much extra work could it possibly be? A lot, that’s how much. Please learn from me and get the right size hole saw!

Another self-inflicted problem was that I had run a positive wire past every light location, but my ground wire skipped one of the lights. I’m sure I had some fuzzy, incoherent reasoning for this, but it was wrong and caused a big headache. I really mangled my hands trying to fish a new length of ground wire to that one pesky light.


In the end, it was all worth it and we really like these little lights. They’re “Acegoo” brand recessed ceiling lights in warm white from Amazon.

[Tejon7]

Progress: Ceiling prepped and painted
Useful Tools: Respirator and a high quality 3/8” nap roller

This was a painting job, so as usual, prep took much longer than painting. First, we washed the whole ceiling down with soap and water, since the panels had been sitting outside for 6 months and had accumulated a bit of grime. Next, we scrubbed them down with TSP to get rid of any remaining grease, oil, and solidified kid breath. I was amazed at how much accumulated gunk there was! The antiseptic green color of the ceiling is actually not so bad once you clean it up.

Next, I sanded down the whole ceiling. I’m glad to have had a well-fitting respirator, since I was immersed in a cloud of fine sanding dust for more than 8 hours. I have a half-face model, but a full-face version would have been better. I then vacuumed for a couple hours to remove all the dust I could.
There were some places with bare aluminum, so I wiped these down with a tack cloth and painted over them with aluminum primer. Brush-on aluminum primer is weirdly hard to find in my area, but I eventually got a quart at Ace Hardware. It’s their store brand acrylic “Galvanized & Aluminum Primer”. I used it before on the bus roof and it seems to do the job well enough.

For paint, we decided on Sherwin Williams Industrial Enamel. I’m no chemist, but I’m pretty sure this is basically the same kind of oil-based enamel as Rustoleum, but we could get it tinted to any color. We chose “Krypton”, which is a light gray. One gallon almost was enough for a single coat of the ~38’-39’ ceiling, with a tiny bit left over.

I changed out my respirator cartridges for fresh carbon ones, then rolled on the first coat with a cheap 3/8” nap roller from Lowes (wiping each panel with a tack cloth just before painting). Overall, the first coat looked great, with a subtle texture that breaks up the light well and seems to deaden sound a bit. Unfortunately, the cheap-o roller covers left thousands of tiny little lint hairs throughout the paint. Aaargh! Oh well… The rivet heads could probably use a second coat of paint anyway....

I waited the full 7-day cure time, then sanded the whole ceiling down again. This sanding was very light – just enough to scuff up the paint a bit and whisk off the little lint hairs. I bought another gallon of paint and some Purdy White Dove 3/8” nap roller covers. Even though these Purdy rollers are supposedly “lint free”, I followed YouTube’s advice and vacuumed them and rolled them up and down on a piece of duct tape. Some lint did come off, but not a lot.

The second coat went on well with no lint hairs – hooray! It looks exactly like I’d hoped. Now I just need 6 months for the paint to stop smelling like an olfactory version of a Prop65 warning (This ceiling contains god-awful chemicals known to the state of California to cause….)

I also painted the emergency exit and the fan trim rings in Rustoleum Gloss Smoke Gray, which is another of the grays in the palette we’ve decided on. Oh, and I also reinstalled the map light over the driver seat. I used the aluminum foil and water technique to remove some rust and shine up the chrome. So far, that was the most gratifying 3 minutes of the whole project - that aluminum foil trick is like magic!

Ceiling in SW "Krypton" Industrial Enamel, while front upper compartment is still the original green. This will eventually be painted the darker Rusto Gloss Smoke Gray like the emergency exit.

[Tejon7]

This isn’t exactly a progress update, but it an important step that I haven’t documented yet. We’re getting closer to actually putting things IN the bus, so we really needed to get some decent measurements of the interior space and see what will fit, where to put it, and how to build it. We started drawing the interior up as a 3D model, and I seriously wish I would have done this on day 1.

Measuring and drawing the bus was an iterative process. First, I physically measured as many dimensions as I could with a tape measure and an inexpensive laser measuring tool. Then I drafted all that up, and found some measurements that didn’t add up. So, back to the bus with the tape measure. This process repeated several times until the 3D model and the real bus mostly match each other. There are some imperfections of the real bus that will never make it into the computer version because it would be too much work to measure and draw them all. I’m confident that the 3D floor plan measurements are within 1/8” of reality (mostly within 1/16”). The tilted walls and curved ceiling are probably a little looser, but good enough for general planning and making materials lists.

This was a lot of work, but it’s already paid off simply because it possible to share ideas. After all, I’m not doing this project alone. Before the model, my wife and I were never quite imagining the same things when we talked about the bus. We both think in 3D pretty well, and we had separate little 3D models floating around in our heads. Now we can actually sit down together and draw something up to see if it fits, if it looks good, etc. and be sure we’re both seeing the same thing.

Based on the 3D model, we have solidified our overall floor plan. I re-taped the new plan in a different color tape on the bus floor. It’s not vastly different than the old conceptual floor plan we’d taped out at the very beginning.

[flattracker]

I looked over the cad drawing of your planned conversion and found it interesting. I haven't read all of your posts but I had a couple questions for you.

1. Where do you plan to put your fresh water storage tank(s)?
2. Are you planning to put any of your fresh water plumbing underfloor?


I asked these question based on finding out the hard way with my "old Crown". I placed hot/cold fresh water pipes under the floor and ended up with frozen and broken plumbing from wintertime usage.
I put my fresh water tank under the sink, which was close to the bathroom sink and the toilet. This part worked OK. Your placement of your toilet is the same as my "new Crown", as well as the "water closet". In my old Crown I built a dividing wall between the kitchen and front room. This allowed for overhead paths for wiring in the kitchen. I also built a dividing wall between the bathroom and the kitchen. When I refurbish the "old Crown" I will run plumbing overhead for the shower. You have an interesting plan for you bed in the rear. It looks like it will be placed higher than mine, to the right side of the bus.

[Tejon7]

Originally Posted by flattracker

I looked over the cad drawing of your planned conversion and found it interesting. I haven't read all of your posts but I had a couple questions for you.

1. Where do you plan to put your fresh water storage tank(s)?
2. Are you planning to put any of your fresh water plumbing underfloor

Thanks for sharing your experience. I'm pretty concerned about pipes freezing, so I appreciate the warning.

Fresh water tank will be underneath the bed in the back. I'm planning on 100 gallons, which is why the bed looks tall. All plumbing will be on the starboard/passenger side of the bus and the pipes will be inside. The gray water tank will be outside of the insulated space, hanging in the basement in front of the rear stbd wheels. I'm toying around with the idea of putting a Girard water heater down there too, since there's no good place to put it inside the bus. If I go that route, I'll make a separately-insulated compartment that holds the water heater and exchanges warm air with the rest of the bus.

I also have a couple redundant freeze-proofing ideas in mind that I'll share when the plan is fully baked. It'll be a mess of thermostatic switches that start up a hot water recirculation system, the diesel air heater, and some heat tape for the gray water plumbing.

PS we're not planning on spending much time below freezing temps. All my anti-freezing anxiety is for when our plans fall apart

[Tejon7]

Originally Posted by flattracker

If you wish to install FRP on your ceiling maybe consider the following insulation:


US Energy 5mm reflective foam core insulation.


It is advertised with an R value up to R15.62 (1 layer)
It is spendy but for your ceiling, glued and covered with FRP it could work, and not lower your ceiling much. I got that for my conversion.

You may want to dig into those R-value claims. It sounds to me like that company is trying to pull the mineral wool over our eyes

5mm thick at R-15 per layer would work out to ~R-75 per inch. That's almost 4x as good an insulator as Aerogel at R-20 per inch. I'd be very surprised if that stuff is actually four times better than the best insulator known to man.

My most generous guess is that they're playing some funny business with their tests. Perhaps they're mostly measuring it's reflective capability? If that's the case, its reflective properties would be negated when sandwiched inside of a bus, so you'd end up with the thermal protection of a 5mm piece of foam. That would certainly help, but regardless what kind of foam it is it'll get nowhere near R-values claimed.

[84chevyguyid]

https://youtu.be/hw1UpnSjLV0

Dont know if you have seen this or not but this is a good video on insulation.

[Tejon7]

Progress: Side walls finished
The side walls are now vertical, insulated, covered with wood, and painted!

First, we took the stainless trim pieces that were originally underneath the windows, inverted them, and re-attached them above the windows. These trim pieces are a little dented and beat up, but that all adds to their charm. I really like how this turned out and am glad we found a new home for these.


To secure the covered-up windows and keep them from jiggling open, I ran a 2” wide piece of ½” plywood across the top of the window. This was screwed into the window columns and into the metal window clasps. Then everything was covered in ¼” plywood. My walls are finally vertical from the floor up to ~59” high! The trim pieces at the ends of the blanked-out windows and around the rear exit door are pine 1x board (¾” thick). We then primed and painted. The gray color is a bit darker than I imagined, but nearly all of it will be covered up by cabinets and such by the time we’re done.


I also opened up the rear exit door and found it full of rust. It was lined with open-cell foam (i.e. a big soggy sponge), which I’m sure was the cause of the rust. I dealt with the rust and re-insulated with ½” EPS and 1” XPS. I also stuck in a 1” thick wood block up near the handle. I covered everything with ¼” plywood and painted. After the paint was dry, I installed a deadbolt lock (through the chunk of 1” wood for added sturdiness). Hopefully my rear door is now rust and burglar resistant.

[Tejon7]

Whoopsie... double post

[Tejon7]

It’s been four months since a progress update - been working for money instead of fun. Here’s what I have finished lately:

Bed frame done (mostly)
The bed frame is welded from 1/16” wall steel tube. Why steel? ‘Cuz Broccoli Bus, that’s why. The fabrication aaronsb did on his bus is inspiring. Plus I wanted to learn to weld. Plus I’ve seen some pretty warped, crappy lumber recently, while steel is reliably straight and true. Plus other reasons.



Anyway, the frame is finished off with a couple coats each of Rustoleum primer and Charcoal Gray paint. The voids in the frame will be filled in later with plywood, painted in a contrasting color. The 100 gallon fresh water tank fits beneath the center of the bed with a welded bulkhead wall that holds it snugly in place fore and aft. Not sure yet how I’ll secure the tank from sideways movement. The front and back sections of the bed platform are hinged to allow access for storage. I’ll add gas struts for these hatches later.

Rear cabinets and bunks framed
The main cabinets/closets/pantry and bunks are also welded mostly from 1/16” wall tube. Despite being a ton of work, I don’t have much to say about these. Pretty glad they’re done - it’s nice to finally start seeing the bones of the interior take shape.


Oh yeah - I also put down ¼” underlayment plywood down over the stock rubber flooring. This is just to make a smoother surface for finish flooring to sit on. I painted it with leftover latex paint. This wasn’t really necessary, but the inside floor of the cabinets won’t have finish flooring and I didn’t want them to be bare wood.

I also painted the area over the dash with the same Charcoal Gray Rustoleum that I was using for the steel framing. This was one of the last areas with the stock antiseptic green color. It hurt my eyes every time I looked at it, and I’m much happier with it now.


First of several luggage hatches finished
I cut a big ‘ol hole in the skirt a long time ago and just got around to patching it up. Eventually there will be a luggage bay here, but for now it’s just a hatch to nowhere.


I found the latch style that Crown used - they’re called “budget locks”. I couldn’t find any US sellers, but there are a few UK and Australian Ebay retailers that stock them. I looked at a lot of options to perfectly match the existing hatches, but in the end I saved a bunch of money and time by using boring, readily available materials. The hinges are plain aluminum piano hinges from Austin Hardware. The square tube on the inside of the hatch is 1.5” aluminum from the metal distributor 6 blocks away. I’ll go with 2” tube for the next hatch, but otherwise it worked well.


Side note - Austin Hardware is awesome, BTW. They have very reasonable shipping on 8’ hinges, while other places wanted hundreds to ship anything over 6’.

Driver’s seat removed, refurbished, and repurposed
My ‘real’ job has been mostly field work for a couple of years now, so I haven’t felt the need to invest in any office furniture. All of a sudden, I’m starting to get remote support jobs that mean I’m working long hours from home. The dining room chair was putting my butt to sleep and killing my back, so I pulled the bus driver’s seat out, fixed a couple broken suspension parts, added a schrader valve to the air line, and voila! The world’s first air ride office chair! It still needs a lot of TLC to make it look nice, but it IS comfortable!


Shopping spree!
I’ve reached the point where I need to know the exact size of stuff if I’m going to make sure it all fits in the bus. Sooo… time to buy crap on the internet! I started with fridges, then moved on to the shower pan, water heater, oven, and probably some other stuff that I’ve already forgotten. It was a pretty expensive day, but it’s nothing compared to the dough I’ll have to drop when it comes time to buy solar stuff. Ugh… trying not to think about that….

Edit: accidentally hit "Submit Reply" before editing and adding pics. Everything should be fixed now.

[Tejon7]

I'm back to 'real' work, so I'll probably have at least another month without an update. I did manage to get a little more interior work done in the past week, which was exciting. Other than the pull-out couch, the interior steel framing is all finished! Woohoo!

Here's an overview shot looking towards the back of the bus. The new additions are mainly the two shorter pieces in the foreground. On the left (passenger side) is a basic rectangular frame for the sink/countertop area. On the right (driver's side) is an overly-complicated frame that will hold the RV range/oven in the center and chest freezers on either side.



Here's that range/oven frame up close:



The RV-size stove sits in the middle. The left (aft) side will house a 5.0 cu ft chest freezer-turned-fridge. The right (forward) side will have a 2.5 cu ft chest freezer-as-a-freezer. Both freezers will be covered by 1" thick hinged butcher block hatches/countertops. 1" is hard to find, but necessary since the clearance tolerances on the hatches is really tight. There are several random-looking nubs and cross-braces welded on to the frame. The nubs are supports for the butcherblock and the apparent cross-braces are actually just there so I have somewhere to attach gas shocks in the future.

Here's the sink side:



The larger rectangular frame is pretty straightforward. It will hold up a 25" x 48" chunk of 1.5" butcherblock with a sink in it and storage underneath. The smaller frame on the floor is going to be a sunken area where the water heater will sit. The water heater is a Suburban Nautilus IW60, and it's the white box in the pic. We went with this water heater for many reasons, one of which is the nice, unobtrusive vent. We only need one small (ish) hole in the wall, and the only thing you'll see from the outside is the reasonably-attractive stainless vent screen. The only problem is that I have to keep any holes in the wall below the chair rail to avoid the Crown wet-wall that the windows slide in to. All of that means that I have to sink the water heater ~4.5" into the engine bay for the vent to go under the chair rail. I'll probably probably be cursing myself when I smack my head doing an oil change, but for now it seems like a good idea

Lastly, here's the frame for some overhead cabinets that will go over the stove:



Each of the three 'bays' will have a downward-facing LED puck light to help see what we're cookin'

[TJones]

Looking good. Nice to see what others are doing for metal fabrication for their interior build.

Ted

[Danjo]

Originally Posted by Tejon7

I'm impressed with your commitment! I hope my marriage to my bus lasts as long

Since you're here, John, I have a little side project to share that you partially inspired (bear with me - the Inceni John part comes in at the end).

My bus only came with one Crown badge, and as you all probably know those things are unobtanium any more. I'd really like to have one anyway, so I made a 3D model and had it printed in ABS plastic. I briefly looked into CNC and casting techniques, but they were so prohibitively expensive that I decided 3D printing would be 'good enough'.

My first attempt came out pretty good, but I destroyed it by trying to smooth out the printing lines with acetone vapors:
Attachment 54860Attachment 54861
First pic: real badge alongside raw 3D print. 2nd pic: FAIL!
Acetone vapor smoothing has promise, but I left this one in a weee bit too long

The second attempt is still in it's raw form from the printer. Hopefully I'll get around to fiddling with it again sometime this summer and end up with a reasonable facsimile of the original.
Attachment 54862
Second attempt raw print alongside real badge. This one is gray, but it's still the same ABS plastic

IF I eventually figure out a decent process, then I'll print another model that's inspired by your (Inceni John's) signature on the BCM forum:
Attachment 54863

Hehe, I dig that "hecho en Chino" bit. I'm curious if anybody will even notice once it's on my bus.

Here’s another way. I’ve only done this with silver using Diet Coke as the electrolyte and vinyl sticker as the resist.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd4oQzYDyXE

[Tejon7]

Originally Posted by TJones

Looking good. Nice to see what others are doing for metal fabrication for their interior build.

Ted

Thanks! Wood framing would have taken much less time, but I'll rest easier with everything a bit sturdier. Plus I'm hoping all this welded steel squeaks less than wood on wood.

This project has made me appreciate how much work your drop ceiling must have been.

[Tejon7]

Originally Posted by Danjo

Here’s another way. I’ve only done this with silver using Diet Coke as the electrolyte and vinyl sticker as the resist.

That's super cool. I've temporarily abandoned the emblem project, but when I get back to it I may have to try out the etching route.