Hello, I recently acquired this vehicle from a church for $1300. it doesn't have much rust and has good tires. It was bought in 1994 by a school for $75,000 and sold to the church in 2012. I have all the records and manuals for it which I have enjoyed looking through.
I'm an organic farmer/permaculture enthusiast primarily, but I am capable of doing research and it has been fun learning about buses.
The dude who started it up and told me about it was one of several people who went on a church camp trip and got baptized in a creek during the last trip the bus went on before ending up in my hands. So that's where the current name comes from, kind of doubt I'll end up calling it that but it's good enough for now.
It is in an offgrid location and I don't yet have a generator, I didn't have hardly any tools going into this so I am buying everything as I go.
he had no problem jumping up into the bus from the back door, yet gives me the puppy eyes and makes me pick him up to load him into my pickup... silly pup...
Tools used so far:
4.5" Ryobi Angle Grinder
18v Ryobi Compact Drill
Estwing handy bar
72" 16lb pry bar/digging bar
Locking pliers
The plan
I have removed the seats by grinding off the bolt heads and loosening the bolts on the side rail then just pulling them out and stacking them outside and covering with a tarp for now, going to try to sell them.
I am now in the process of removing the existing floor, I started out trying to break the rubber floor at the seams of the plywood but soon realized that by getting my big 72" 16lb bar underneath and just using my power the rubber floor will rip along the seam and long as I make a small starting cut by using the small handy bar to break it. This is going pretty well and I'm about halfway done. I need to get these heaters out and I guess my plan is to just cut it off up near where the two houses come out near the driver's seat and then loop them into each other, then drain the coolant into buckets and take it away. Is that a good plan? Do I need to check the coolant level in the bus afterwards and do anything to bleed out any air? in the lines? Again I am no mechanic, I just saw someone say something about that somewhere and read something about that in the owner's manual when refilling coolant? Anyone have advice here?? Then I will have to remove the wiring too somehow which I don't know where it is but assume I can figure it out later...
this has got to go too I suppose, I can probably use it for something else somehwere...
anyone know what this is?
I then plan to use a
knotted wire wheel to clean up the rust as much as I can, this floor doesn't look very bad compared to some of the stuff I've seen in other human's buses on the site here but there is definitely a fair amount mostly concentrated near the wheel wells and back door. I will then use
ospho or
naval jelly or something like that (any advice on this? please) to treat whatever remains. I will then use
rustoleum primer and
paint. Then I need to seal up the holes from the nails and seat bolts, would this be a good thing to use to do that?
Black Window Silicone or should I use epoxy and some pieces of metal? My plan after that is to mostly follow what JakeC did in
Project "Brutus" which is to use
Red Rosin Paper on top of the primed/painted metal floor followed by 1" (which is the only size available at my home depot)
Owens Corning FOAMULAR on top of this I am unsure whether or not I should use OSB or plywood and then I am also unsure of whether or not I need an underlayment or vapor barrier? (advice please
) then on top of that I plan to go with the
TrafficMASTER Allure Vinyl Plank Flooring
I have a
Englander 1,200 sq ft Wood Burning Stove being shipped to me that I am going to put up in the front of the bus and vent it through the roof following these instructions
Quote:
Originally Posted by nat_ster
Yes, many of us have installed wood stoves in our buses.
You need to go read as many build threads as you can. That is where the real info and experience is.
Without knowing anything about how you converted your bus, it's hard to give advice. If your bus is anything more than a steel tent, please read the following.
You will need a two or three foot piece of insulated pipe like used to pass through the ceiling in a house installation. These pipes are expensive. I payed over $200 for mine, but it is stainless steel inside and out. You will also need the hanger kit for it. The hanger kit also finishes off the cut opening in the ceiling.
Pic of the pipe. This is Super vent, sold by Lows
Then you will need a silicone rubber roof flashing to seal up the outside.
Like this one. Just be sure it's made for wood stoves, not plumbing.
Nat
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Once I get the floor and woodstove in I plan to move into it, I don't really plan on doing too much else, I have a propane oven but that's about it, I want to have maximum floor space... the japanese live on floors (foolish statement?
), I think that's what I will do.
I don't have experience doing anything like this so I hope no one would follow this and do things how I am choosing to without researching first, I have found that using google and typing skoolie.net; (insert search keywords here) is a good way to search the site. I am mostly making this thread in the hopes that I can get advice from those of you who have done this stuff before. Thanks!