A nICE Bus - Blue Bird CS RE 3904 - Full-Time Home

The seats are hollow stainless steel single frames bolted together, with pretty sturdy upholstered fiberglass inserts that can be removed with just two screws. Frankly it's a pretty nice assembly that will suck to just throw away...

They're not particularly comfortable as is, but with a better seat cushion they could make for a decent little bench. Maybe I can make use of these frames for some of our seating in the bus, but I'll probably just end up carting them off to the scrapyard to see what I can get for the weight.

Obligatory "If anyone wants one or more let me know."
 

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More pics from today attached.

Pulled a single section of the bulkhead down and the wiring looks pretty immaculate. The more I spend time with this bus, the more I'm thinking we made a solid investment.
 

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I don’t know … I think you should keep the toilet - one less thing you have to install later … maybe even open it through the floor -kind of like on European trains…
 
Modmail:
ENOUGH - stop stirring the pot.

Thanks.

After I had been trying to get through to them to understand what is and is not acceptable. Covid deniers totally fine. MY B. Giving 'school principal can only be bothered to act when someone is fighting back'.

@heimlich
You've been here for what 3 months? You are the only person I can remember for the last few years that brings up these conversations. Doesn't that say something?

Yeah you know what man, you win. Obviously I'm in the minority here. Sorry for disrupting your conspiracy theorist safe space. Cheers to all who actually contribute here. I'll try to circle back with an update someday. Probably not. I abandoned social media long ago for this very reason.✌️
 
My own coping mechanism is to block anybody who spouts extreme (usually right wing) views. Otherwise I'd abandon this site like all other social media and not get to see the cool stuff that people are creating. I know it's not the best method, but it's the only way I can avoid going through life constantly frustrated.

Please keep on sharing your journey and do whatever you have to do to filter out the noise.
 
My own coping mechanism is to block anybody who spouts extreme (usually right wing) views. Otherwise I'd abandon this site like all other social media and not get to see the cool stuff that people are creating. I know it's not the best method, but it's the only way I can avoid going through life constantly frustrated.

Please keep on sharing your journey and do whatever you have to do to filter out the noise.

I've thought on this a bit. The value of this community is not lost on me, but I'll admit I'm conflicted. There are just lines that were crossed so long ago that feel fundamental to what is true and good, and some things are intolerable to me these days. I'm not too shy about it either. I'll be real about where I'm at:

My mother lives very far from me. Absent our usual 'meet-halfway' travel plans for Mothers' Day, we talked on the phone for a good while. Of course it's hard to stay off of the subject of our bus conversion; she and her husband have been into tiny-homes for some time. I'll admit that except for a close group of people, I've largely kept our project to myself since its inception. I filled Mom in on our progress, but also talked to her about selfishly guarding the space to do this project on my own terms and how I wasn't really broadcasting it much. The bus will bring enough attention to itself regardless. She gets it. And I'm sure she'll love this build thread as a way to tag along (she's still mad I deleted IG).

Then we got to talking about her intellectual pursuit of choice: Genealogy. It's been a bigger part of her life recently and eventually she mentioned Rootschat.com, the Skoolie.net of Genealogy as I gather. She joined over 10 years ago but stopped using the site after a couple years due to "inactivity," as she put it. I can't say what engagement on that forum was like from 2010-2015 but I looked while we were talking, and almost every forum subheading had postings from only hours prior. So this was an exciting sort of rediscovery of what I imagine is a fantastic resource for her... I found myself really trying to sell her on this Rootschat forum. At some point during that conversation I guess I came to the conclusion that I place more importance on this resource than I had perhaps realized. Maybe I just didn't want to acknowledge it because I was frustrated. If I was on the fence about how I wanted to proceed here well, I had just unintentionally made the case for staying.

This build thread is really the only place I ever considered posting publicly at all. Reddit, Facebook, etc (even IG in my opinion) just aren't organized for this sort of intellectual shared space over time. The overwhelming majority of content here is totally above-board and productive, and I have consumed a not-insignificant portion of it in the last few months. To come across individuals who are clearly just disrupting a conversation because they feel politically threatened by the subject matter was not surprising, but still disappointing. I recognize that I should not let the "bad apples" poison the bunch.

To that end, @Tejon7 I appreciate the sentiment and as a sort of middle path, I will maintain the build thread and go back to lurking the other sections of the forum. It seems there are already enough opinions going around for the lot of us, and I'll be better served by focusing on progress.
 
There are many topics and subheadings to explore with this bus, so I'll do my best to address one thing at a time. I know that's a pipe dream but we'll try. As a show of good faith I'll introduce an idea I wasn't going to bring out just yet, but which is fundamental to the overall layout of our bus.

Raise the Roof?

No. Sorry roof-raise enjoyers. Not knocking the practice at all, but I've studied up on it enough to weigh it against other options. I haven't been convinced it's the only way. I'm going to try something else, inspired by some of the LF Gilligs I was eyeing while bus-shopping.

I'm going to drop the floor into some portion of the storage bays. This bus should allow for this with relative ease as compared to cutting the roof off. There will be minimal re-routing necessary by nature of them being wide open storage bays spanning most of the area between the axles. The thing is, we really only need to create more comfortable headroom where we are going to spend time standing. Kitchen, shower, erc. You get the picture.

Once I have the full subfloor out I can dive a bit deeper. Started on that this afternoon.

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First drive since parking at home

Took the bus up to Westminster, MD to finish up a project for a friend that was interrupted by our trip to buy the bus. Still not a sprinter despite the seat & partition weight being removed, but the bus made the journey without a hiccup.

The juxtaposition of the Kei Truck was priceless. Driving both on the same day was a even more of a trip. I'm not superstitious, but I figured I'd let my buddy hit the bus with a sage burn just in case...who knows what kinda juju is stuck up in this thing

The carport project went well and I think I've built up some good confidence with welding having seen this through. Just in time to get cracking on my own projects.

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Started disassembling the shitter.

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Nice rainy day to spend on the creeper up under this bus...damn near took some remnant sewage to the face while disconnecting the drain. Thankfully I was wearing full goggles, 2x glove layers and respirator for this task.
 
Your plan of lowering the floor. Unless that bus is even more different than an average school bus this cannot be done continuously throughout the floor. Will be ups and downs.

Also you'll be cutting into an important substructure which contribute to the strength of the bus. Usually the storage compartments are welded onto that same substructure, and if removed could make the body more wobbly.
 

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