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Old 08-23-2020, 07:20 AM   #1
Mini-Skoolie
 
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Griffin, GA
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Year: 2000
Coachwork: Bluebird 72 passenger
Chassis: international 3800
Engine: DT466E
Rated Cap: 72 passengers
Demo question

I am working on getting our bus gutted and it seems like everyone leaves the bottom strip of sheet metal that sticks out for the seats to mount on. I was just wondering why? Is it structural?

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Old 08-23-2020, 07:54 AM   #2
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On standard school buses, the "chair rail" is not just a thing that seats are attached to, it is also a structural element that attaches the walls to the floor - the rail continues to the floor where it bends outwards to the edge of the floor and then down the outside a couple of inches. The ribs are screwed to the rail and the rail is screwed to the floor.

So removing the rail would actually be impossible without dismantling the body. It's possible that just the folded flange on top of the rail (the part the seats bolt to) could be cut off, but that would be a pain and it is sometimes handy to have that flange to attach stuff to.
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Old 08-23-2020, 09:14 AM   #3
Mini-Skoolie
 
Join Date: Aug 2019
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Chassis: international 3800
Engine: DT466E
Rated Cap: 72 passengers
I didn't realize that it actually attached to the floor! But I had a feeling that it must be structural if everyone left it on. Thank you for confirming my suspicions.
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Old 08-23-2020, 09:36 AM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rdrnek3 View Post
I didn't realize that it actually attached to the floor! But I had a feeling that it must be structural if everyone left it on. Thank you for confirming my suspicions.
It does depend on the bus (which you can indicate to users by going to User CP in the upper left and entering your details). A few buses (they seem to be all the van-style) have a chair rail that does not extend all the way to the floor, but is just bolted/riveted/screwed to the inside of the ribs. These are possibly "structural" in the sense of something that helps keep the body intact in a collision, but they don't play a role in attaching the walls to the floor. The chair rails in the larger buses like what I'm describing are "structural" in the sense of actually holding the bus together during normal operation, but also structural in a resistance to collision sense - they're an extremely ingenious and lightweight (not to mention inexpensive) mechanism for spreading out the force of a side impact and ensuring that the walls basically can't possibly separate from the floor in that situation.
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Old 08-23-2020, 11:15 AM   #5
Mini-Skoolie
 
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Griffin, GA
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Year: 2000
Coachwork: Bluebird 72 passenger
Chassis: international 3800
Engine: DT466E
Rated Cap: 72 passengers
I put the details in the user CP I never thought to do it before I was a lurker on here for a while before we bought the bus!
I would post some pics, but I don't know what a good free image hosting site is? Photobucket used to be good, but it isn't free anymore.
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Old 08-23-2020, 11:18 AM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rdrnek3 View Post
I put the details in the user CP I never thought to do it before I was a lurker on here for a while before we bought the bus!
I would post some pics, but I don't know what a good free image hosting site is? Photobucket used to be good, but it isn't free anymore.
You can post them here directly. Click the paper clip which will open up a popup window that you use to select and upload files; then close the popup and click on the paper clip again, and you can select the images you just uploaded for inclusion in the text of your post (any images you don't select into the text will show up anyway in a box at the bottom of the post).
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Old 08-23-2020, 11:22 AM   #7
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FYI here's a video showing how your bus' body is built: Starting at 2:27 they briefly show the chair rail in profile, before the ribs are attached to it.
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Old 08-23-2020, 12:53 PM   #8
Mini-Skoolie
 
Join Date: Aug 2019
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Coachwork: Bluebird 72 passenger
Chassis: international 3800
Engine: DT466E
Rated Cap: 72 passengers
48241
48242
Hmm
Now to figure out how to rotate the images.
Attached Thumbnails
20200822_192907.jpg   20200822_192905.jpg  
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Old 08-23-2020, 01:23 PM   #9
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I convert all my pics to PNG format before I upload them. PNGs never have the orientation problem (JPEGs have an optional orientation flag in their metadata which can be set [or not] by a smartphone and can alter how a pic is displayed).
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