Big, long-overdue update here. Life has been and continues to be busy, so here's approx. 6 months of progress, barfed out in one massive post. These are my rough, unedited notes that I jotted down as I went, so there are probably a few misspellings and other errors.
Couch frame
This is the standard slide out couch design that everybody seems to use. I kicked around several other more clever ideas (at least I thought they were clever), but none of them fit our space well.. The only significant difference is that ours is steel framed. It slides out to make a double sized bed for guests. I tested it out one night and was really impressed with how well I slept. This isn’t the old backbreaker hide-a-bed!
We’ve decided that the couch looks like a diner booth for giants. It’s a little ridiculous, but is much more comfortable than our current couch in the house! I think it will look a little less awkward once we finish the ends and toss a few throw pillows on there.
Seats
Seats are all in. One of our requirements was proper forward-facing seating for 4 people. I kept the original air-ride driver’s seat. I fixed some broken parts, replaced the shock, painted a few scuffed up places, replaced the aging seatbelt and tethers, and replaced the old, slightly rusty grade 8 mounting hardware. For now, it’s covered with a $6 office chair cover from Amazon. I may try my hand at reupholstering it in the future.
The passenger seat is a Craigslist find. I believe it was in a Chevy van of some kind, but have been unable to find out who makes this seat or exactly what van model it was from. It has a swivel base and is very comfortable.
The two rear seats were from an airport shuttle van. The pattern isn’t my favorite, but it’s slowly growing on me. They are fairly narrow, but recline and are comfortable enough. Most importantly they’re safe - heavy steel frame construction with all grade 8 hardware and integrated seatbelts.
Engine hatch hinge and latches
There isn’t much under the engine hatch that I need to access regularly, but in the event that I do need to change the water pump, fuel pump, starter, etc., I did not want to have to find a place to store a gigantic, dirty, heavy piece of wood. My solution was to install a big ‘ol aluminum piano hinge and some nice stainless boat deck hatch cam latches. The finish flooring will go underneath the hinge, but be flush with the latches. I’ve already had to use this hatch several times to diagnose a starter problem (more on that later).
Engine bay start panel
Our bus came with an empty ignition panel. At some point, the school district had removed the panel switches so that the only way to start the bus was from the driver’s seat. With guidance and pictures from Crown_Guy, I got the panel working again. The starter button is decent quality, but the toggle switches are just some cheapos that I had laying around. Now that I understand how it works, I will be looking for some more robust toggle switches.
Engine bay start panel. The blue switch is for the 12v priming pump (see below)
12v priming pump
I installed a 12v Facet Purolator priming pump between the primary fuel filter and the gear-driven fuel pump. The design is very similar to that described by Iceni John elsewhere on this forum, and I talked about the whole process in another thread if you’re interested. So far I’ve used it to re-prime once, and it was a dream.
Battery disconnect
Added a coach battery disconnect. There was no perfect mounting spot, so I ended up sticking it way back inside the air filter side of the battery box/air filter hatch. You can’t read the writing on the switch, so I asked a 3-year-old to draw a diagram for me (it’s actually my handiwork).
Edit: I guess I intended to put a picture here?? Can't seem to find it now...
Tires/wheels/shocks
All of my tires are 9 or more years old, so I wanted to replace them. I’m switching from 12R22.5 to 11R24.5 in the process to gain an inch of ground clearance, a few mph of top-end speed, and perhaps a slightly more common tire in case of blow-out in the middle of nowhere. I was going to buy all new rubber, but have been looking for used wheels.. Nothing but severely rusted steel wheels has popped up in my area in the past 6 months. Then a few weeks ago, I saw an ad from a guy who was switching his newly-purchased 1983 Kenworth project rig from 24.5 to 22.5. I had to drive 5 hours each way, but ended up with a very good deal on nearly new steer tires and aluminum wheels and 4 “new” first-time recaps on rusty steelies for the drive tires. The steers were a good deal and the recaps were essentially free. I’m not keeping the rusty old “made in West Germany” drive wheels, but I think I’ll use the recaps for a few years until they age out.
I started with the driver’s side steer wheel and found two cross-threaded studs, leaking shock, sparklies in the hub oil, and what felt like lots of end play in the king pin. *sigh*. The brakes look good, so that’s a small win. The passenger side had one cross-threaded stud. I replaced the studs and shocks, painted the hubs, and put on the new wheels. I then took the bus to a local heavy truck shop for the bearings and king pin assessment. They strung me along for several weeks, after which I got fed up and took the bus back with no work being done. I’ll do the bearings myself, and a little sleuthing with a dial indicator showed that the king pin end play is actually within spec.
I eventually caved in and bought new wheels for the drive tires. Two new inner steel and two outer aluminum. I swapped them out myself so that I could paint the hubs and change the shocks at the same time. (this part is a little out of order time-wise, but it made sense to talk about it in the “tires” post). Just as a side note, it turned out that changing the rear shocks was just as easy with the wheels on.
When I took off the stock wheels, I was very surprised to find out that the inner thimbles on both sides were extremely loose. About ¼ were appropriately tight, ½ were finger tight, about ¼ were completely loose and backed off several threads. The studs were caked in anti-seize, which I have to believe played a part in this.
I then greased every fitting I could find and covered each with a yellow plastic cap. I also checked and topped off the differential while I was under there. I’ll pull the axles, check wheel bearings, and put in fresh gear oil before we take any big trips, but for now I’m rushed to get the essentials done so we can go camping.
Dash rehab
My wife is mostly done cleaning and painting the dash area. The change is pretty amazing. I’m not sure if it is because it looked horrible before, it looks excellent now, or if it is a mix of the two. In keeping with our theme (“this is a school bus and we like it that way”), she painstakingly painted around little accents like the 30-year-old embossed plastic labels and the shift pattern sticker.
Car wash and first camping trip!
Over two years later, we’re finally starting to use this thing. Took it up to the lake for 5 days, with a stop off at the local dam. Had some hail with a few stones up to ~1.5 inches (very loud, but no damage). Several 6-7% grades went pretty well.
One the way home, a deer jumped out in front of me out of a ditch going down one of those grades. It was one of the few stretches of that entire road where visibility is pretty good off to both sides, but this deer had been hiding *just* out of sight in the ditch until I came barreling down the hill at 65 mph. I touched the brakes a little too hard and they locked up for a split second. The rear of the bus shimmied sideways every so slightly, I said “sorry deer” and let off the brakes, expecting to smoosh him, ruin my irreplaceable bus front panels, and possibly mess myself up pretty badly. Luckily, his little hooves gained traction on the pavement at just the right moment and he barely made it off the road as I wizzed by. My adrenaline caught up to me ⅓ mile later and I pulled off to check my pants and do a quick walk-around
Started painting
We started painting at the rear window. The color scheme was supposed to be black and green. The Adirondack Green is exactly what we were hoping for, but the “Black” is decidedly gray. The Benjamin Moore name for that color is literally just “Black”. I am assuming they mixed it wrong somehow, but luckily, we love the gray, so we’re sticking with it. The paint is Benjamin Moore Super Spec Urethane Alkyd Enamel. Apparently the local Hutterite colony uses it to paint their tractors, and I’d trust those people’s opinion above most.
I had high hopes of spraying the bus with single-stage urethane, but I realized recently that with my current work schedule, spraying would have to wait until next summer. That’s not soon enough, so we resigned ourselves to rolling. I’m still a little sad about that, but there are some benefits. For one, we can prep and paint small sections at a time, as we have time. For another, rolling means we can paint where the bus lives, sandwiched between our garage and fence. Lastly, the slight texture of rolling isn’t my favorite, but I feel like it distracts from small imperfections. And lastly lastly, touch-ups can be done easily.
Boost gauge
I have more black smoke on acceleration than I should, so I think the engine isn’t getting enough air. The filter looks ok. I suspect that I have an exhaust leak at the manifold. It’s kind of a pain to get in there and inspect it closely, so I thought I’d gather more information first by installing a VDO mechanical boost gauge. There’s already a port on the side of my air inlet housing that connects to the fuel modulator, so I tee’d off of that. I’m excited to see what kind of boost we’re getting next time we take it out.
Mini Split condenser mounted
I initially thought that the mini split outdoor unit would only fit in the old spare tire compartment behind the front right wheel and right next to my propane tanks. Luckily, Iceni John described his over the front axle mounting setup on another thread at just the right moment. I picked his brain and he provided details and measurements of the space above the front axle. Our buses are different models, but in this aspect at least the 1990-era Supercoach and Super II are exactly the same.
Our buses have a main longitudinal frame channel that spans from the front bumper to (almost) the back of the bus. From the front bumper to just behind the front wheels, there is an additional lower frame channel stacked beneath the main one. This lower frame seems to be mainly used as a spacer so that the front suspension sits at the correct height. Anyway… long story long, I hung the condenser unit off of the bottom flange of this lower frame, using four ½” x 7” bolts, 5-1/4” spacers, and unistrut. The condenser is several inches above the front axle. Per IJ’s and my own testing, it appears that even the largest bumps cause the center of the axle to deflect by an inch or two at most.
This mounting location isn’t perfect, but I’m pretty excited about it since it frees up a huge and easily-accessible space in the old spare tire compartment.
Second Camping trip
Took 4 days off work and drove down to a local (ish) mountain lake for some camping. This forest service campground had paved roads and water + 30 amp hookups. Pretty ritzy! The adjacent site had a brand new aluminum-sided Class A. Those crazy people spent two full days washing their rig and toad. Is that how people camp at these high-falutin glampgrounds??
The new turbo boost gauge worked and verified that the turbo is underperforming. I got a max of 7 PSI boost up a steep hill. I understand that 20 or more PSI is what I should see. I’ll start taking things apart soon, looking for exhaust leaks and turbo issues. I also finally got a DD tune-up kit and some jake gauges, so I’ll soon try my hand at running the racks and making sure it’s tuned properly.
Painting continues
Whelp… brush/roll painting the bus was taking too long. With cold weather coming up quickly, we decided that if we wanted the bus painted this year, spraying was the only way to go. It took a month of very busy nights and weekends, but we finally got the bus prepped for paint. I found a 180 grit nylon abrasive bristle wheel to be very useful for prepping around rivets and irregular surfaces. It was probably a bit too aggressive, but at least it was fast.
We took the bus out to my parent’s property outside of town for the final spray. One full day was spent taping, then painting took about 3 hours the next day. We got very lucky with 70° F weather in early Oct.
Here’s a brief review of the paint we used: Benjamin Moore Super Spec HP (P22 - Urethane Alkyd Enamel). This was not our first choice, but I do generally like it. It seems very similar to Rustoleum, but a little higher quality. It levels out very nicely. They’ll tint it any color you can imagine (we chose Adirondack Green). It’s relatively cheap at $70 per gallon (we used about 1.5 gallons green and ½ gallon gray). The downsides are that it takes ages to dry and literally a month to cure. It also explicitly says in the instructions not to thin it, which may scare most people away from spraying.
I’m a complete novice painter, but after doing a lot of research, I decided that leaving the paint fairly thick and using an HVLP gun with a large tip would be worth a try. I got a Neiko gun with a 2.0mm tip from Amazon for $45. I tried thinning with both mineral spirits and xylene. 20% of either thinner layed down like glass, but since I was nervous about ignoring the manufacturers instructions, I ended up thinning with 10% xylene for the final paint job. The regulator at the gun was set to 40 PSI. The end result has some orange peel texture, but we’re really happy with it. The first coat went on pretty smoothly. I didn’t overlap my passes enough on the second coat since it was harder to see where I’d already painted. I think this caused most of the orange peel, but we’re still very happy with the final product.
There is some more gray accent painting to do. If the weather holds out we’ll get it done this year, otherwise it’ll have to wait until spring.
Linear Mode
