Raising the roof on a Skoolie

[Abbott]

Hello John and welcome to Skoolie.net

I raised the roof 14" on my 1990 International Harvester bus with a Carpenter body. I have welding and construction experience so I didn't find the job to be all that difficult. It is a bit labor intensive but re-skinning the bus was more work then the actual roof raise itself. The roof actually went up pretty easy using a couple of floor jacks and 2"X4"s with myself and two other guys helping me. We got it up and secured in about a 10 hour day. I had a weeks worth (maybe 40 hours or so) of prep work into it and my wife spent a day or two adding a 36" splice to all of the wires in the main wire harness which is a bundle about 2" thick. Probably about 30 wires. We added 3' of splice just to make it easier to place inside the wall after the lift.

There are a few other guys on the site that have also raised their roofs. Elliot and Smitty come to mind and I think Reprobate raised his roof but he took off after he completed his conversion and I haven't seen him around here in quite awhile. There are some photos on the website here in Elliot's Milicent thread and Smitty's conversion thread and I have plenty photos and a step by step guide of my roof raise written up but unfortunately it is not online at the moment due to an ISP issue. However if you want to e-mail me I could send you some photos and information or feel free to ask questions here.

[Sojakai]

Use airbags? When you get parked where you want to serve, lower the entire bus to the ground. I have seen several cars that do it. Maybe have a lower-able walkway on the side to elevate people the last foot or so to serving height.

Just please dont try to make one of those "Bouncing" Buses.