Conversion Estimates

[cheezypsnookle]

i am estimating about 10k over all...thats including the purchase price...... but its the small stuff thats killing us drill bits and hardware etc...if you can source those you will be set....

[lornaschinske]

Originally Posted by cheezypsnookle

... but its the small stuff thats killing us drill bits and hardware etc...

What happened to the price of drill bits, etc? And they are crappy too. But everything is going that way I think. David says it's to get us used to "settling for".

Most of you know we have a food cart. We buy our pickle relish in 1 gallon jars. They are nice, crystal clear hard plastic jars that are about 10 inches high. they would make nice storage containers for flour, rice, etc. Except for the pickle smell. I have been using Dawn dish soap for the last couple of years. I have washed pickle jars, made a paste of baking soda and left them out in the sun. Still the jars smell faintly of pickles and the lids are very strong smelling. We use a restaurant grade dish soap on the food cart. It is made by EcoLab. David told me it got all the onion smell of of the storage containers as well as the pickle smells (we do relish and dill chips). So I washed the jars (absolutely no smell left) and I've washed the lids twice (very, very faint pickle smell on the rubber gummy seal on the lid). So now I pissed. Why have I bought crappy dish soap for YEARS when there is dish soap available that gets things really clean, gets rid of smells on plastics and gets the grease off EVERYTHING! As far as the grease part... it puts Dawn with their "grease cutting" drivel to shame. why do we settle for???

[Seeria]

Wow... whole conversion costs. How do you know when you're done?
Guess I don't have a final tally. Most of what I want to put into the bus we already own, most of it for years. Wood and electric is about all we'll have to do and that's set at no more than $4k but also spaced out over a year of adding it into the bus. Bus cost is limited to $2k but who knows about tires, engine work.

[dirtygoat]

I'm just a newbie here... I've built a lot of vehicles and houses though...

I paid $1000 for my bus and plan on spending an additional $1000 to be where I need it... Not going to be a retirement live in type bus, but a recreational rig for camping and such...

There's a lot of ways to source materials for your bus...

Drill bits, hit the pawn shops... Garage sales are great as well...

Self tapper screws, bring some guys building storage units a couple pizzas... They have 50lb boxes laying around... They throw away more screws than it would take to build your bus... Stop by and ask where they get them, then ask what they do with the left over ones... Every time they start a new building they don't bring the stuff from the last site with them... Most of the time they throw it in the dumpster...

You can look for free camp trailers, a lot of them still have good stoves, fridges, tanks, lights, cushions, windows and so on... Take the rest to scrap and make a little money... Or post up the stuff you don't need on craigslist...

Paint for interior stuff can be found at the paint desk at any hardware store... They always have really cheap paint that was mixed just a little off that they sell for almost nothing...

Trading is my favorite... I've taken things that I thought about throwing away and posted it up for a trade and have done very well... Something totally unrelated to what you're looking for... I pressure washed a deck and re-stained it in trade for my wife's 1999 Pontiac Bonneville, 81,000 miles and loaded... There's a lot of people sitting on things you need that don't think they are worth anything...

Sorry for the long winded post... Hope this help some of you...

[JakeC]

I'm probably into mine about $5,000, including the $1500 purchase price. Electrical was over $1000, and then I have a laminate floor inside, and mostly knotty pine T&G walls. I could done it cheaper, but there were some things that my wife wanted a certain way, so I spent a little more to keep her on board. That also includes over $500 in bus maintenance. This does not include the A/C or a 5000 watt onan generator that I traded some stuff for... I think that even with using craigslist, ebay, bargain shopping, etc..., trying to do a conversion without cutting any corners, or at least as few as possible, for less than $5000 would be very difficult.