Advice: Next steps for addressing floor rust in a 1991 35' Ward/International

[rcmcdonadl91]

Greetings!

I have a 1991 35' Ward/International that I have been working on for a few weeks now. This bus already had quite the life as a very bare-bones AirBNB flip, it was basically just a shelter with beds for campground camping. So it needs a ton of work to be off-grid and suitable for really living in long term.

We wanted to start over from scratch so I have been working on gutting the inside...removing the existing build, removing the ceiling panels so to remove the 33 year old insulation and address some leaks, etc.

Attached is a ~3min walkthrough of the bus where I focus primarily on the floor.

Any suggestions on what to do next regarding the rust?

General consensus here seems to be sand, ospho, prime, and paint.



Thanks in advance!

 

[FawnaFox]

I am currently dealing with the floor in my 1998 FS-65, and here's my advice.
Use naval jelly or a rust remover, then sand.. does a lot of the work for you.. Naval jelly would be the best.
Either weld or have someone weld in new parts for where you have holes, plus take a screwdriver and stab the floor, if it goes through, replace it.. it will rust through soon.
After that, use some paint, I'm going to use rubber coating, but regular paint will work.
Use subfloor OSB, it's called subfloor for a reason!
do the flooring of your choice.. I advise against any tile (ceramic stone etc) It's heavy and can crack.
But that's my advice, if I'm wrong, feel free to correct me!

 

[nikitis]

Listen, this is gonna be a hard conversation to hear but.

I like to tackle rust projects but this one I would honestly walk away from. You can literally buy a whole new bus for less than it's gonna cost you in materials to properly fix this one.

First the floor on the sides needs to be all ripped up, cut. You could buy a few 10x4 sheets of metal to replace the foor and weld the new floor panels into to correct that, however, under that the I-Beams used to hold the bus up are nearly rusted through.

I'm inserting a picture I took from your video to explain.

Those I-beams are what hold the whole top end of your bus up. It's barely holding up the cab as it is, if you add weight onto it it's gonna end up breaking and sagging. Replacing those is WAY too much work. Requires removing the cab completely, and buying I-Beams to have to cut them out, and weld in and bolt new ones, then you have to mount the top cab back onto it.

If this was the last bus on earth and you wanted to save it. Maybe, but since there are a few hundred thousand buses in better condition for cost less than it would be for materials to fix this one, I'd say this bus is scrap.

I'd take the engine and transmission out salvage that, and take the rest of the bus to a scrap yard. Get about $1-2k if you can, and use that money towards a new bus.

This is NOT a simple rust clean up job. Your supports are compromised.