Barnaby the Bus Conversion

[Barnaby]

Hello all, here's my build thread! About five years ago my wife and I took a six-month sabbatical and toured around the country in a motorhome we bought for the occasion. RV people sometimes ask me 'was it a class-B? a class-C?' I have no idea. It was intimidatingly big and incredibly ugly. It appeared to be made of cardboard and rubber bands, and while nothing major failed, everything felt like it would break at the slightest touch. We sold it almost immediately after returning to our home in New Orleans.

The trip itself was awesome, though. We started in Louisiana and made a clockwise circle around the perimeter of the country, visiting tons of parks, museums and roadside attractions. We would love to vacation like this again in the future. Just not in an RV. So we're going to build something ourselves, and earlier this month we took the first step and bought a bus. The previous owner removed all but one of the seats and 'de-schoolbussed' the exterior, which is perfect. It gives me a head start on the interior demolition, and the painted exterior will hopefully throw off my neighbors enough to not complain to the city about a school bus sitting in my driveway.

Ok, time for some pictures:



Here it is, a 2005 Freightliner FS65 handicapped bus with a Thomas body and a Mercedes engine. His name is Barnaby. He's in good shape and rust-free, at least on the outside. I'll likely encounter some surface rust inside around the wheelchair lift but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.



Plugging the holes left behind by the missing lights is going to be my first order of business. It's going to be a combination of new clearance lights and metal covers. The second order of business is going to be the tires. They date from 2014 and are as bald as racing slicks. They are 255/70R22.5s but I want to try and put something slightly bigger on there. I think I will want to stick with a matching set of six all-position tires for ease of swapping, and I'm looking for an open-shoulder design. Do you guys have any suggestions?



Barnaby currently looks very tan, like he just came back from a vacation. That's going to change. I wanted to paint him British Racing Green but my British(!) wife nixed the idea. Instead we'll go with a vintage-inspired white roof and blue body.





Here's a picture of the interior I have in mind. In a year or two you can look back here and see how much of my design actually survived the build. I'm planning to keep structural changes to a minimum, and skip a roof raise for example. We're just going to be using Barnaby for vacations, and there's enough room inside the 6.5' interior for a modest amount of insulation. I do want to delete the front door though, and promote the handicapped door on the side to Entry Door. The rear door and all the windows are going to be replaced with sheet metal.

This is going to be the first major challenge: I'm comfortable enough with woodworking, but I have no experience at all with metal. I'm looking forward to learning metalworking skills as part of the build process but I also know my limitations, and I don't want to experiment with new skills at the expense of Barnaby's build quality. Instead, this is an area where I will want to work together with others. So, if you have the expertise and experience to sheet over a bus and have a shop anywhere from East Texas to North Florida, or want to come out and spend some time in New Orleans, I would love to talk to you!

 

[nikitis]

Not sure your front seat couch is gonna make it in your build. Not a lot of room for what you got planned there. The rest looks doable.

Though you could make a fold down seat that's up so people can walk up the steps, but fold down, but almost no matter how you engineer it, they won't be able to sit next to you.

 

[Barnaby]

Hi Nikitis, it's going to be a tight fit for sure, but no worse than, say, getting into the front of a Sprinter van. Some deft foot placement should get you in your seat without injury.

The couch seatback is going to be of the throwover type, not uncommon in old school motorhomes and boats, but in our case a nod to the throwover seats of the New Orleans streetcars which, although made out of wood and brass, are set up in a similar way to enable the streetcar to just reverse at its terminus without turning around on a loop

 

[Ozbozz57]

Bus Brothers

Hello, and congratulations!

We have the exact same bus, '05 Freightliner/Thomas 7 window, MBE 906, Allison 2000, handicap lift door.
I bought it from the Etowah County AL school district in August 2017.

Great size for two people, as long as they aren't too tall, like my wife Marcia and myself.

I'd be happy to share some details on my build with you. I've put some pics on here, but I haven't taken the time to completely document the build.

Rough description: 3/4 full size bed adjacent to wheelchair lift door, for access to large under-bed storage and emergency egress. 84 gallons fresh water storage and pump under bed. Tool box on right side houses 4 six volt FLA deep cycle house batteries, 420 Ah capacity, directly above that is the compartment (under pull-out couch) containing solar charge controllers, inverter, shore power charging and all switches and fuses. Two grey water tanks on left side- one behind axle for shower, and one in front of axle for kitchen sink.

29 gallon propane tank under floor on right side between stairs and house batteries. Propane cooktop, water heater, furnace. 12 VDC compressor fridge, composting toilet.

I lengthened the body sides (skirts) to cover the tanks.

I treated the interior build like a big cabinet job - no framing - all bulkheads are 3/4 inch plywood, saving space. Two closets on top of rear wheel wells were in the perfect place to divide the "front" living area from the "rear" bed/bath area.

A trip to New Orleans is definitely in our future someday.

Shoot me your email and I can send you pics, if you're interested.

- Ross and Marcia in Bellingham WA

 

[Barnaby]

Hey Ross,

We are indeed Bus Brothers! It sounds like we have the same use case as well: two adults, not too tall, occasional vacations.

We're going to put in a bunch of solar too, but I think we'll skip the propane and try an induction cooktop instead. At home we cook on gas and love it but on the road we usually end up eating pretty simple meals like salads anyway.

I'm with you on the wall framing: my plan is to make my own structural panels from a sandwich of two 1/2 inch plywood panels with another 1/2 inch core of a plywood latticework, to save weight.

My wife and I are hosts on Boondockers Welcome; you can always stay in our driveway if you're ever in the New Orleans area.

 

[DeMac]

Driver Placement

Not sure your front seat couch is gonna make it in your build. Not a lot of room for what you got planned there. The rest looks doable.



Though you could make a fold down seat that's up so people can walk up the steps, but fold down, but almost no matter how you engineer it, they won't be able to sit next to you.

--------------

How will the front passenger be safety belted?

I've seen similar co-pilot seating on RE buses where the entry door has been relocated. I very much like the concept. One difference with flat-front buses, is that the location of the driver seat is much farther to the driver side. The steering shaft of REs are placed where a wheel & tire exist on a conventional bus.

On conventionals, the left steer tire & steering wheel shaft pushes driver seat more toward the center.

add another driver seat for the co-pilot and the whole family could ride upfront. Five seat belts in the front row.

in the photos above, note the wheel well directly inline with the driver's seat.

(standard 3-kid seat frame shown)

The rear bedroom entrance leaves some distance to travel from the driver seat to the engine bay, yet each time the door opens, the outside temps & humidity will soak into the in the bedsheets. Why this design?

The illustrations you provided are terrific. I dig the multi-color blue in the barnaby logo. That logo, added to the exterior somewhere, would be sharp. I'm looking forward to seeing more. Please keep posting photos.

 

[Barnaby]

--------------

How will the front passenger be safety belted?

Hey DeMac, The front bench will have a lap belt hidden under the cushion, bolted through the floor directly into the bus frame. I'm also planning to put a shoulder belt on the wall that will clip into the lap belt buckle. The bus came with an arrangement of belts and buckles like that to hold one or two wheelchairs. Hopefully I can re-use some of the hardware although I will likely replace the webbing for safety's sake. The shoulder belt-that-clips-into-the-lap belt buckle system incidentally is also used in the Bell model 206 JetRanger helicopter, which I think is a nice touch.

--------------

The rear bedroom entrance leaves some distance to travel from the driver seat to the engine bay, yet each time the door opens, the outside temps & humidity will soak into the in the bedsheets. Why this design?

Locating the entry door at the rear, in the bedroom, is a compromise, for sure. It's less than ideal to be entering your house through the bedroom. But it's the kind of compromise you have to make when you're working within a tight space, not unlike combining your shower and toilet into a 'shooper'. I think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks though. Eliminating the front door will allow me to properly insulate and sound deaden the front part of the bus, and having a forward facing passenger seat is going to be a key part of enjoying our trips, I think. It will allow my wife and I to share the experience. Also, as a side note, I think it's a lot safer to be in a forward-facing seat as opposed to a sideward bench.

--------------

The illustrations you provided are terrific. I dig the multi-color blue in the barnaby logo. That logo, added to the exterior somewhere, would be sharp.

Thanks! That's a good idea. I might put it on the bumper in the back.

 

[nikitis]

The chair is too much in the way of your stairwell.

Though it looks like you could get away with a seat half the size because your driver seat isn't typical and is further over to the window than on most buses. Usually there is a large heater there.

 

[Barnaby]

The chair is too much in the way of your stairwell.

There is no stairwell

 

[Ozbozz57]

Hi, looking at your pictures, I'm wondering if you have a "no wheel wells" bus. It also appears that you have the high roof version of that body. Cool if that's the case. Will help with your plan.

I went from 10R 22.5 to 11R 22.5 tires, because they're more common, and cheaper too. Been very pleased with my Toyo tires. M920 on the drive axle (high traction, open shoulder, great in snow or dirt) and M122 on the steer axle. About $500 each. I doubt that size would work for you if you have a flat floor. As purchased, the bus had steer tires all around. Plenty of tread, but the bus WOULD NOT MOVE ON LEVEL GROUND in 4 inches of snow. They were probably OK in Alabama. We boon dock in the Southwest in winter, and have to cross mountain passes to get there. I carry chains because it's legally required, but I hope I never have to use them.

Your idea of 3-layer plywood bulkheads is intriguing. Not sure it's necessary, though. One 3/4 inch piece has been sufficient for our build. Well fastened with MANY screws using a KREG jig. But your build, you do you, man. The hardest thing for me was finding really FLAT plywood. One thing I found very useful was a homemade "big" square to measure and align things with. Made from some scrap but straight plywood rips - about 3 1/2 ft by 5 ft, using the 3-4-5 rule.

I was very glad that Thomas used a zillion screws instead of a zillion rivets to put the body together. The Thomas "side-wall tilt" is an interesting thing to work with.

For blanking out windows, I had a sheet metal shop make me shallow pans (1 inch deep) the size of the windows I removed. Primed them with epoxy primer, put 'em in with screws, snugged right up to the outside vertical jamb pieces from the inside, and caulked with urethane autobody sealant on the outside. Painted the bus with single-stage urethane automotive paint. No peeling or leaks in 6 years and 15,000 miles.

You have the perfect spot for the Armebe or Flame King 29.3 gallon horizontal LP tank under the floor between your stairwell and the storage box on the passenger side. If you're going to be hooked up to shore power, it won't matter, but for boondocking, electrical power requirements become an issue, especially for any heating application (cooking, water, or space heating) Just one burner on a gas cooktop is 7500 BTU - that's about 2200 watts. Wattage adds up quickly in an off-grid electrical system. I ran my gas piping with 1/2 inch iron pipe under the floor, as well as the 120 VAC wiring in conduit. Plenty of room underneath for stuff like that.

I would be happy to take you up on your offer of "mooch-docking" in NOLA sometime. I've been a jazz fan forever, and a late-in-life jazz drummer. As I get older, (68) a trip to New Orleans is something I realize I ought to get around to sooner, rather than later.

Consider yourselves welcome on our property in Northwest Washington too. Bellingham is a fun not-so-little-anymore town.

Looking forward to seeing what you do with your build.

 

[Barnaby]

The chair is too much in the way of your stairwell.

Oh wait, I just realized you're commenting on DeMac's post. Nevermind!

 

[Barnaby]

Hi, looking at your pictures, I'm wondering if you have a "no wheel wells" bus. It also appears that you have the high roof version of that body. Cool if that's the case. Will help with your plan.

I went from 10R 22.5 to 11R 22.5 tires, because they're more common, and cheaper too. Been very pleased with my Toyo tires. M920 on the drive axle (high traction, open shoulder, great in snow or dirt) and M122 on the steer axle. About $500 each. I doubt that size would work for you if you have a flat floor. As purchased, the bus had steer tires all around. Plenty of tread, but the bus WOULD NOT MOVE ON LEVEL GROUND in 4 inches of snow. They were probably OK in Alabama. We boon dock in the Southwest in winter, and have to cross mountain passes to get there. I carry chains because it's legally required, but I hope I never have to use them.

Hi Ross, yep, it's a flat floor and a 6'5" ceiling height. The flat floor is great in terms of layout flexibility but does limit my tire choice somewhat. I'll look into the Toyo tires, and also maybe doing separate drive and steer tires instead of all-positions. I get off from work this Wednesday; a trip to the tire shop is going to be one of my first chores.

Your idea of 3-layer plywood bulkheads is intriguing. Not sure it's necessary, though. One 3/4 inch piece has been sufficient for our build. Well fastened with MANY screws using a KREG jig. But your build, you do you, man. The hardest thing for me was finding really FLAT plywood. One thing I found very useful was a homemade "big" square to measure and align things with. Made from some scrap but straight plywood rips - about 3 1/2 ft by 5 ft, using the 3-4-5 rule.

That's good to know. It didn't even occur to me that plywood could be off like that. I'm planning to use good quality Birch plywood from a proper lumberyard, but even so I'll be sure to double check for flatness.

I was very glad that Thomas used a zillion screws instead of a zillion rivets to put the body together.

No kidding! I was ecstatic when I found out my bus was screwed together instead of riveted.

For blanking out windows, I had a sheet metal shop make me shallow pans (1 inch deep) the size of the windows I removed. Primed them with epoxy primer, put 'em in with screws, snugged right up to the outside vertical jamb pieces from the inside, and caulked with urethane autobody sealant on the outside. Painted the bus with single-stage urethane automotive paint. No peeling or leaks in 6 years and 15,000 miles.

That sounds like a great way to circumvent the stress and difficulty of hanging large sheets of steel. I would love to see a picture of the side of your bus.

You have the perfect spot for the Armebe or Flame King 29.3 gallon horizontal LP tank under the floor between your stairwell and the storage box on the passenger side. If you're going to be hooked up to shore power, it won't matter, but for boondocking, electrical power requirements become an issue, especially for any heating application (cooking, water, or space heating) Just one burner on a gas cooktop is 7500 BTU - that's about 2200 watts. Wattage adds up quickly in an off-grid electrical system. I ran my gas piping with 1/2 inch iron pipe under the floor, as well as the 120 VAC wiring in conduit. Plenty of room underneath for stuff like that.

I'm not planning to put in gas, mostly because it's yet another system to design, build and maintain, but also because I've found what I think are good electric appliances for all of my needs. However, I do plan to get a small generator to charge the batteries on days when the solar array doesn't cut it.

 

[carleeno]

Locating the entry door at the rear, in the bedroom, is a compromise, for sure. It's less than ideal to be entering your house through the bedroom. But it's the kind of compromise you have to make when you're working within a tight space, not unlike combining your shower and toilet into a 'shooper'. I think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks though. Eliminating the front door will allow me to properly insulate and sound deaden the front part of the bus, and having a forward facing passenger seat is going to be a key part of enjoying our trips, I think. It will allow my wife and I to share the experience. Also, as a side note, I think it's a lot safer to be in a forward-facing seat as opposed to a sideward bench.

Firstly, welcome! I love your design!


If you do the rear door only, make sure to have an emergency exit window and/or roof hatch up front. If you get into an accident, or a fire, you don't want to find yourselves trapped inside.

How will you insulate and sound-deaden the firewall and windshield? I'm going to do what I can with dynamat and flexible foam sheet for the firewall; and curtains for the windows...but I'm probably going to have a heavy floor to ceiling curtain wrap around the front for when I'm not driving, it'll cover the original side entry door as well.


Another option you might consider would be to hinge the seat bottom of the front bench seat upwards to the back, and hinge the floor below it upwards to the front, and still have access to the original door and stairwell. You could still replace the door with something better insulated but keep it functional, and when the seat and floor and hinged down in place that'll add thermal and sound insulation to the stair well. Then if you do that and ditch the handi door (keeping a rear window exit) you could turn your bed and gain much more usable interior space, allowing you to shift everything back a bit, get more galley space and maybe a separate toilet/shower. Or just shift things back enough that the front seat doesn't need to hinge for access to the stairs, just the floor hinges.



Of course the beauty of skoolies is we have the freedom to build what we want, I just wanted to throw some ideas out there for ya :biggrin:

 

[Barnaby]

Thanks Carleeno!

Agreed, I would hate to be trapped up front in case of a rollover or fire. Both the driver and passenger side window will be of the push-out type.

I don't have a lot of experience with sound deadening but I want to give it a good shot. Hopefully I can bring the interior noise down with a combination of sound deadening paint in the wheel wells, a sound deadening blanket on the inside of the hood, high-temp butyl mats on the engine firewall, and a large amount of butyl mat on all the inside surfaces in the front third of the interior. To keep cost down I might try Amazon's house brand of butyl mats. Supposedly they're pretty decent. I'll also install a kick-ass sound system to mask the external noise Insulation for the windshield will be in the form of a nice wraparound curtain. Velvet maybe.

I considered the idea of a 'flipover' seat as you suggested but in the end I setled on my current design, with the entry door in the back. Eliminating the stairwell allows me to push the location of the couch towards the front by another foot or so, opening up space downstream.

Putting the bed sideways in the back reminds me of the 'box beds' you'll see in old European homes:



It's very cozy but verges on claustrophobic for me. Barnaby will be divided into two distinct zones, with a double-acting door in between. This way we will have a pretty decently sized bedroom with an ensuite bathroom, sort of, when the door is closed, and an L-shaped space around the bed which will provide both some breathing room and a way to easily make the bed.



The main downside is that you have to go through the bedroom to get to the living area, but oh well.

 

[carleeno]

Thanks Carleeno!

Agreed, I would hate to be trapped up front in case of a rollover or fire. Both the driver and passenger side window will be of the push-out type.

I don't have a lot of experience with sound deadening but I want to give it a good shot. Hopefully I can bring the interior noise down with a combination of sound deadening paint in the wheel wells, a sound deadening blanket on the inside of the hood, high-temp butyl mats on the engine firewall, and a large amount of butyl mat on all the inside surfaces in the front third of the interior. To keep cost down I might try Amazon's house brand of butyl mats. Supposedly they're pretty decent. I'll also install a kick-ass sound system to mask the external noise Insulation for the windshield will be in the form of a nice wraparound curtain. Velvet maybe.

I considered the idea of a 'flipover' seat as you suggested but in the end I setled on my current design, with the entry door in the back. Eliminating the stairwell allows me to push the location of the couch towards the front by another foot or so, opening up space downstream.

Putting the bed sideways in the back reminds me of the 'box beds' you'll see in old European homes:

View attachment 80313

It's very cozy but verges on claustrophobic for me. Barnaby will be divided into two distinct zones, with a double-acting door in between. This way we will have a pretty decently sized bedroom with an ensuite bathroom, sort of, when the door is closed, and an L-shaped space around the bed which will provide both some breathing room and a way to easily make the bed.

View attachment 80312

The main downside is that you have to go through the bedroom to get to the living area, but oh well.

I should have figured you already thought of escape routes haha.


Yeah I forgot about engine bay acoustic absorption, it's common in all cars now, I'll end up doing the same to ensure the engine bay isn't a sound box.


The breathing room around the bed is nice for making it for sure. If you've seen my floorplan you'll know that I'm really tight on space for everything I'm trying to pack into my full size bus (including a garage/workshop in the back) and it's very much a box bed, however I love small cozy spaces, I think I'd happily sleep in a coffin :biggrin:


I'm impressed at just how much detail you have in your mockup already, I still can't make myself sit down long enough to add that much detail, I basically just used it to dimension out the basic floor plan, then all the details are ending up on pen and paper (and eventually fusion 360 for some of the more complex mechanics).

 

[nikitis]

Oh wait, I just realized you're commenting on DeMac's post. Nevermind!

Oh so you are relocating the door. Should be fine then.

 

[Ozbozz57]

Barnaby, you asked me for a picture of the method I used for blanking out the deleted windows. I'm not the swiftest tech user, and I've posted some pics of my build here. But I had some trouble actually finding my build album.
Finally found it. It's "Miles" the bus in Conversion Projects. There's pics of the window blanks from inside and out, plus the body mods - skirts lengthened, doors skinned, etc.

 

[Barnaby]

I'm impressed at just how much detail you have in your mockup already, I still can't make myself sit down long enough to add that much detail, I basically just used it to dimension out the basic floor plan, then all the details are ending up on pen and paper (and eventually fusion 360 for some of the more complex mechanics).

Carleeno, I just checked out your build thread... wow. You're proceeding at an incredible pace and it looks really good. I love the nose of the C2, it reminds me of a Pinzgauer. Also, you get much better headroom with the C2 all the way up towards the walls. Nice. It's probably a good thing that you haven't had time yet to sketch out a floor plan in excruciating detail. It means you've been busy doing actual work on your bus. I'm the opposite; my bus is all finished already in my head, but in reality I haven't done much more yet than install a new license plate.

Ross, found your build thread. Your paint job is amazing!

 

[Ozbozz57]

Thanks, Barnaby.

 

[Barnaby]

Alrighty... time for an update. It's been a few weeks because I had to go to work. In the meantime the bus has been sitting at a nearby storage facility. Now I'm off for a couple of weeks and it's in my driveway. I'm starting off slowly, hoping to build up steam as I go along.




I pulled out the remaining bench seat and partitions and removed the two wheelchair restraints in the back. They made an unbelievable racket when driving the bus, clanging into the bare walls and echoing up to the front with every bump. It's much quieter now. Then I moved on to my first major project:



Fixing the grille... I'm building up steam slowly. The grille was in bad shape actually, severed in at least three places and being held on with rope. The quick and easy thing would have been to just buy a new grille and be done with it, but I'm suppressing that urge for now and fiddling with everything first.

I really want to learn how to weld. It's the major new skill I'm going to pick up in the course of this build but again, I'm building up to things slowly. So I'm starting with plastic welding.

I got a cheap plastic welding kit from Harbor Freight but found that the triangle-shaped 'shoe' of this thing was a little too big and unwieldy for the size of the fractures in my grille, so I stashed it away in my toolbox for a future project. Instead I just used my soldering iron. I gently worked the material together first, then embedded bits of reinforcing mesh into the plastic. The mesh isn't very deep in the plastic but it's all blended well enough together, I hope, to make a strong bond.




I also paid a visit to a local tie shop. Right now the bus is wearing255R70/22.5 tires but they are absolutely shot and woefully out of date to boot. They're there to accommodate the absence of a tire well, of course, but they look puny and I really want to put on something bigger. I'm in a pickle here, though. Maybe somebody can help.



This is a 295R70/22.5 on the back. The guy at the shop said this is the next size up, not something like a 10R22.5 or 11R22.5. I don't even understand tire sizes anyway. The internet is all over the place on them, too. At any rate, it fits... somewhat. Up front, it all turns just fine without hitting anything.



In the back, I've gone from about 4 inches of clearance to about 2.5 inches. And that's with the bus as light as it will ever be. It'll probably gain somewhere near 2,000 Lbs. of weight before I'm done. I'm tempted to raise the rear axle an inch or an inch-and-a-half with a spacer and see if I can get away with it. What do y'all think? Would that even be enough? Am I going to mess up my driveshaft geometry?