Meet our new bus... Mr. Beefy!

[TheHubbardBus]

Sadie doesn't like the inside of the bus much. Probably because it's yet to be completed. Most of the time you can find her hanging around in the undercarriage somewhere, or lounging between our rear drive tires. She's a bit of a wall flower. But when family night comes... watch out! That's when Sadie comes out of her shell!

[TheHubbardBus]

Just the other night Sadie went on her first real date! They sure grow up fast. Her suitor for the evening was a fine young man - err, critter - who goes by the name of MilaGmail. Save the last dance for me, Sadie! Save the last dance for me.

[Polarweasel]

You’ll be super surprised to find out that Sadie and Sophie are related…

[TheHubbardBus]

Originally Posted by Polarweasel

You’ll be super surprised to find out that Sadie and Sophie are related…

I have to admit, I found their mutual mastery of the english language quite the coincidence. Thanks for your erradication efforts

[TheHubbardBus]

Alright, round... I don't even remember... of insulation in. This time the last layer of ceiling insulation, filling in-between the longitudinal runners upon which the ceiling wood will mount. We reluctantly used 3M Thinsulate for this, only because we could no longer source any more rockwool AFB. Not that it's a bad product. It's great... but it's expensive. They're almost interchangeable functionally speaking (thermal + sound absorption) the only significant differences are 3M's a little lighter, and AFB's a little better R-Value. Probably didn't need to tape this but had tape left over and went a little OCD-overboard.

Also started prepping the ceiling panels. Today we treated what will be the interior side with FR Clear (fire retardant). Don't have much room to leave them out so most are drying inside the bus with fans on.

[TheHubbardBus]

Since last post we did a lot more prep on the wood panels that comprise the roof. Intumescent paint on the back sides, plus sanding, staining, and finally two coats of polyurethane on the interior side. All cut-outs for ceiling puck lights, emergency hatch, A/C, propane heater vent, and fan were made after meticulous measurements. The 1/8" was not enough meat for the puck lights to install into, so we made backing plates to double the thickness where they mount (secured with polyurethane adhesive). I figured out this trick of drilling holes into surfaces you want to bond with polyurethane, and it works awesome. Sharon really did the bulk of the work on the panel prep, so mucho kudos to her. It was a ton of work, but the results were well worth it. The panels look amazing (take my word for it I guess, my phone's pictures are lousy).

Putting them up was a bit more challenging that anticipated, but we completed it in a day. My genius idea of routing out a channel in the 2x3 runners above the windows for them to fit into didn't work out as well as planned. The panels did NOT want to easily fit into it! But we managed.

Next step is forming the trim pieces to cover the gaps between panels. We got a bunch of walnut strips cut for us that we need to bend to conform to the curves and then seal with poly. Once those are up the ceiling should look incredible.

[Kentucky Dreaming]

I love the looks of that ceiling!! Cant wait to see it with the walnut strips on the joints.


Great work!

[Buster Junior]

Looks great. Very impressive work!

[TheHubbardBus]

Thanks to everyone for the compliments. We're pretty stoked (and a bit surprised) with the way things are turning out ourselves. Still a long way to go.

I've seen a few posts recently of people struggling with the realities of the times we're living in. I want to make it clear, we'd be struggling too if not for the fact we sourced pretty much everything we need for this conversion a long time ago. The bus we purchased pre-pandemic, and when we saw the way the tides were turning (product pricing / availability) , we bought everything we could well ahead of time. Here are a couple pics we took of our living room during the peak of our 'hoarder' stage. The piles are shrinking now, but not fast enough. Most of this stuff has been waiting on us for over 2 years, with the more recent additions evoking memories of our childhood. Any of you 'old folks' remember the mail-order standard of "Please allow 6-8 weeks for delivery?" The 2020's are proving to be a re-education in patience.

[JA6net]

Originally Posted by TheHubbardBus

Thanks to everyone for the compliments. We're pretty stoked (and a bit surprised) with the way things are turning out ourselves. Still a long way to go.

I've seen a few posts recently of people struggling with the realities of the times we're living in. I want to make it clear, we'd be struggling too if not for the fact we sourced pretty much everything we need for this conversion a long time ago. The bus we purchased pre-pandemic, and when we saw the way the tides were turning (product pricing / availability) , we bought everything we could well ahead of time. Here are a couple pics we took of our living room during the peak of our 'hoarder' stage. The piles are shrinking now, but not fast enough. Most of this stuff has been waiting on us for over 2 years, with the more recent additions evoking memories of our childhood. Any of you 'old folks' remember the mail-order standard of "Please allow 6-8 weeks for delivery?" The 2020's are proving to be a re-education in patience.

Smart to get it when getting was good. Our UPS driver stopped to chat a few minutes the other day... Started pointing to everything he'd delivered... Lol.

Our Skoolie storage has gone from living room full, to dining room full, to big pile in the shop...

Here's the last of it to go!

[TheHubbardBus]

Color me unimpressed, JA6. You've got it all organized. Where's the challenge in that? (jk. seriously impressed).

Yeah, one of the very, very few things we didn't source ahead of time was a crucial component for our home automation / security system. No bueno when chips are involved. We've been on a waiting list for that bit for 4 months. It just got restocked yesterday and I almost wet myself with excitement.

[cadillackid]

I bought a whole bunch of electronic pieces back in 2020 when they were so cheap no one wanted them thankfully.. .. so far i havent had any issues with home automation related Pieces luckily.. Raspberry Pi boards are hard to come by but we use them in my business so I have plenty of them.. from what ive seen, mechanically older parts are an issue.. manufacturers pressed with raw material shortages are making less older parts and more of the stuff that moves off the shelf quicker.. convenience shelf stock is great but when product that moves and keeps the lights on isnt available the lights dont stay on...



electronics.. communications chips are the big hangup right now.. but workarounds are coming.. a certain server board that we sell hundreds of a year has been defunct due to ethernet chips from Intel and broadcom, however both companies have new products out now which are made in factories that have suffered less.. ie factories in less covid-restrictive areas so production is moving along better. my server boardf maker sent me a couple prototypes this week.. once us beta-testers give him the all-clear he has the capcity to make 1000s with these new chips in 2022 alone.



we are starting to see the same aith automakers.. CAN comms chips and Bluetooth chips have been an issue.. and they are now ramping up production with alternative products.. the original chips are not EOL they are just not making as many...



with large industries making way toward new chips this will help to loosen the supply chains for the little guys and help with lower-colume electronics that may often be purchased for those hobbyists and small businesses that want them.. might help out for some of these out-of-stock electronics by end of year.. just have to be patient.

[TheHubbardBus]

Lots done over the past few weeks, though not very well documented in pics (my fault).

First thing was getting the front / rear cap areas planned out, mocked up, and built. That included mounting our (very heavy - 3/4" birch ply) speaker boxes in a manner that prevented them becoming high-speed projectiles in the event of a collision (I originally intended them to be removable, but that didn't pan out). Took a bit of doing, but they're not going anywhere now. As in ever. They're as much a part of the structure of the bus now as the bus framework they're bolted, adhered, & screwed to. I was hoping the space around them would be useable, but it ended up being so small that it made more sense just to fill in with insulation. So the caps went from being something I feared would be the least insulated areas of the bus, to some of the best insulated areas (the interior of the boxes themselves are insulated as well).

1/2" birch plywood was used for all the woodwork in the cap area, sanded, primed, then painted with 3 coats of a water-based cabinet urethane (which in retrospect I'd replace with oil-based, or better yet, a 2K paint). Having 3 pieces instead of one per end allows us to remove them easily in sections if we ever need to get behind them to access wiring, add things, etc. We adhered 1/2" polyiso insulation to the backsides of all the panels that were in contact with the metal of the bus. The fill insulation was primarily the left-over Thinsulate we had on hand.

The trim pieces added to the ceiling are walnut, recommended & cut for us by 'our guy' at Woodworkers Source in Tempe (you know who you are, 'our guy'... thanks so much for everything!). We bent them over a plywood form we created after soaking each in boiling water. Once dry they were sanded & hit with 3 coats of satin poly. We still need to create 'caps' for the points where the trim pieces join. All in all we're pretty stoked about the ceiling. As Sharon said, "It turned out exactly the way I pictured it in my head". Can't do much better than that!

We have some really cool custom-printed fabric speker covers going over the speakers in the very-near future (that's what those rubber recesses are for surrounding them). Sharon suprised me with one of them. I'll wait till they're up to post, but at least one is very, very special to us both.

Still need to touch up the paint, trim corners, and everywhere you see a screw head (excepting the trim, where they're intentional) will be covered by trim as well (the walnut scraps from our ceiling trim). And that ugly white 4-gang switch cover over the driver's seat... that's going to be in a cabinet built over the driver... so that won't be visible for long.

First set of pics were the (many lacking) work-in-progress pics. Next set will be where we're at now.

[TheHubbardBus]

And here's where we're at now, pretty much just needing to trim our recent work and do some touch-ups before moving on...

[Veloc]

That's a very pretty roof you put in. Great job. I hope mine turns out half as nice, not that we'll find out for several more years.

[peakbus]

Looks great!

[plfking]

I don't get to use the word "stellar" much anymore, so.......thank you for the opportunity.

[syntaxterror]

Excellent work.

[TheHubbardBus]

Thanks everyone! Really appreciate it!

So here's a problem I didn't anticipate. I knew my neurotic need for symmetry would bite me in the butt some day. The two subwoofers pointed at each other from opposite ends of the bus creates a null near the middle of the bus. You can walk from front to back, and at one point near the middle, the bass just disappears Walk a step or two further and it comes right back.

Any sound pros in here have advice for fixing this in a manner that doesn't require moving the subs? Can I just swap the +/- on one of the two subs (wired in parallel) to put them out of phase? If I do will that just change where in the bus the null shows up?

I'll still probably wait until everything else is in place before coming back around to this peculiarity. Might be a non-issue once the interior is built out. But I'd like to have a game-plan ahead of time.

[Oldyeller]

Originally Posted by TheHubbardBus

Thanks everyone! Really appreciate it!

So here's a problem I didn't anticipate. I knew my neurotic need for symmetry would bite me in the butt some day. The two subwoofers pointed at each other from opposite ends of the bus creates a null near the middle of the bus. You can walk from front to back, and at one point near the middle, the bass just disappears Walk a step or two further and it comes right back.

Any sound pros in here have advice for fixing this in a manner that doesn't require moving the subs? Can I just swap the +/- on one of the two subs (wired in parallel) to put them out of phase? If I do will that just change where in the bus the null shows up?

I'll still probably wait until everything else is in place before coming back around to this peculiarity. Might be a non-issue once the interior is built out. But I'd like to have a game-plan ahead of time.

Whatever you do DON'T reverse the polarity of either sub. If you do you will create a dichotomy in the multiverse and all of reality will collapse. The only thing you can do at this point is hold your breath . . . FOREVER. The fate of all of the universes depends upon you.