Quote:
Originally Posted by cadillackid
every school bus factory lock ive seen is simply one dowel that goes into a hole at the top of the door frame.. it doesnt protrude a bunch.. ,aybe only 1/2 to 3/4" into the frame.. its not terribly hard to pull out on the bottom of the door and get in..
a friend of mine did it without even cracking a window.. we were out and he lost the keys to his bus... well we thought he did.. busses are easy to hoitwire so he figured if he could get in the bus we could wire it to run / drive.. we pulled out on the bottom of his bluebird door and it came right open.. then we found his keys.. inside my bus  |
There are 2 reasons people replace their bus doors, and you'll need to weigh these reasons against your desire to keep the original doors.
Reason 1:
Insulation. Bus doors have a lot of wide cracks. Though this can partially be solved with adding additional rubber edging around inside of the doors. The glass and doors are still pretty thin however, and is a good source of temperature transfer into the bus (Hot or cold).
Reason 2:
Ease of entry. One of the iconic things about a Bus is the original bus doors, but it presents a problem for living in a bus. The swing arm that opens and closes the doors. However there's no easy way to unlock it, in swing arm's closed lock position, without going through the back emergency door which will be blocked by beds, and storage space once built out, you won't be able to unlock it from the outside.
By removing the swing arm contraption, it leaves two doors that are loose but tied together still by the rods above the doors. The Swing arm has to be removed, and then a custom lock can be added to hold the doors together. This is a lock you can use with rounded head bolts if you want a ready made type of lock. Or you can use bars to hold them together, plenty of youtube videos of people using this method with the bars.
https://www.amazon.com/Master-Lock-M...92&sr=1-6&th=1
Opening the lock you can use hands or install a handle to more easily swing the doors open from the outside. (from inside you just push out to open).
I plan on keeping my original doors, and making an insulation pad and belcro that can fit in the door area when parked to resolve the insulation issues.
I also plan on keeping my iconic swing arm, but that presents an engineering challenge most people don't want to bother with or spend time to engineer a solution to unlock the swing from the outside. Whatever I come up with, I will definitely document how to do it for those wanting to keep the bus doors and the swing arm as I want to keep both.
But those are the two current valid and practical reasons to consider.
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