Valentino

[UnicornWizard]

Hello and welcome everyone to my official bus build thread! First of all, thank you to the entire skoolie community for inspiring me to build my own skoolie! I could not have started this project without the people who contribute to this forum and I hope my build inspires others. Second, I want to thank my family for supporting me during this build. Suddenly, deciding to park a 40ft bus in the driveway and spend months rebuilding it would test any family! I especially want to thank my father who was immediately on board and whom I dare say is more excited than I am!

On to the build!

Meet Valentino! Teaser alert...there's going to be a surprise paint job at the very end.

[UnicornWizard]

I bought my bus from the NC state school system and overall I had a very pleasant experience. I had no problem calling the state bureaucrats who oversee the surplus buses and they were very helpful. For anyone interested in purchasing a surplus bus from NC, I have included the url below. You can search/sort through all 100 counties in the state and see what buses are up for sale. If you are after an activity bus, those are sold by individual school districts not through this state portal.

Just for your information *most* of the surplus buses currently for sale have the AT545 transmission. If you have any questions feel free to PM me, I did quite a deep dive into their system.

Link:
https://itre.ncsu.edu/ncbussurplus/how-to/

P.S. I am not 100% competent with uploading images yet. Bear with me as I figure it out.

[Native]

Thank you for posting the link to the NC surplus sales. Folks here can use it.


I am pleased you have started your build thread. Valentino looks like a fine project!

[musigenesis]

Convert your pics to PNG (and ensure they're rotated to the correct orientation in that format) before posting to fix the orientation problem. JPEGs usually contain EXIF data that includes an orientation flag that messes up how they're displayed on web sites (EXIF data also often includes personally-identifiable information like location etc.).

[UnicornWizard]

Test of the PNG file type... and to show you the most popular picture thus far of the bus. Everyone seems to love this picture; I was just trying keep out the rain after removing the windows. I bought this giant tarp at Harbor Freight if anyone is curious.

[Native]

The PNG format does work!


That is a strange picture. All cocooned like that your bus sort of looks like a large worm or caterpillar. I know, it has a Caterpillar in the rear.


I must say, that is one LARGE tarp!

[UnicornWizard]

Phase one of the 21 inch roof raise went smoothly this past weekend. We had perfect weather and the new welder worked great! I decided to bolt strapping around the lower half of the hat channel during the lift. This kept everything nice and secure while still allowing vertical movement. Once the desired height was reached, I welded the bottom half and removed the strapping. Two of us did the raise with a jack, 2x4s scabbed together, 1" tubular steel, welding equipment, and patience. I leveled the bus first, and then we went slowly and watched closely for shifting, but there wasn't any.

I'll post a few pictures here and if anyone has questions feel free to ask.

[Native]

I see ... the straping gives you a little piece of mind that the 1" tubing will not move too far out of alignment before you have it welded in place.

[Maligator.]

Hehe at the welding pic, it looks like you're just a beard under a helmet bro!! Beards ftw!! Also, nice job on knocking that raise out so quickly, you got skills!

[Mountain Yawp]

Thanks for posting and good luck on the build. Nice job on the roof.

[UnicornWizard]

Originally Posted by Maligator.

Hehe at the welding pic, it looks like you're just a beard under a helmet bro!! Beards ftw!! Also, nice job on knocking that raise out so quickly, you got skills!

Thanks! I guess nearly 20 years in construction comes in handy every now and then. Plus I hate metal work, so I like to get it done as quickly as possible.

[UnicornWizard]

Originally Posted by Native

I see ... the straping gives you a little piece of mind that the 1" tubing will not move too far out of alignment before you have it welded in place.

Exactly Native. It was great for peace of mind. It also served as a visual indicator when the roof wasn't going up evenly on both sides. You could watch the gaps between tubular steel and the strapping/H channel and see any unevenness.

[UnicornWizard]

While waiting on materials to arrive, I've put together a rough draft CAD drawing of my skoolie. I've been using a program called FreeCAD and I like it a lot! Here's the link for anyone interested.

https://www.freecadweb.org/

[dan-fox]

FreeCad works great on Linux! Thanks for the pointer.

[MacC]

You hate metal work... Guess I won't be hiring you to do mine!! lol

[UnicornWizard]

Originally Posted by MacC

You hate metal work... Guess I won't be hiring you to do mine!! lol

Haha nope! There are companies out there that will.