Fiberglass floor

[Styxs]

Hey everyone, so I'm new on here and I want your opinions. So I want to start by saying I have no interest in selling my bus and starting over. That's the response I got somewhere else. I'd also like to say I have no experience welding. So here it is, I bought a bus about two months ago. I've had a lot going on preparing to be homeless in a little over a month. But I am officially going full speed into converting. When I ripped the floors up the rust was bad. I'll include some pictures. It wasn't so bad in the back, but right behind the drivers seat there is a big hole and most of the plate is thinned out from rusting. I've debating on how to solve this issue and I was considering fiberglass. I plan on using fiberglass on the other holes and around the tire wells. But the hole behind my seat is big. So I was wondering your opinions on using fiberglass instead of welding a new plate. Also sorry I'm not sure why the pictures rotated

 

[ewo1]

Hey everyone, so I'm new on here and I want your opinions. So I want to start by saying I have no interest in selling my bus and starting over. That's the response I got somewhere else. I'd also like to say I have no experience welding. So here it is, I bought a bus about two months ago. I've had a lot going on preparing to be homeless in a little over a month. But I am officially going full speed into converting. When I ripped the floors up the rust was bad. I'll include some pictures. It wasn't so bad in the back, but right behind the drivers seat there is a big hole and most of the plate is thinned out from rusting. I've debating on how to solve this issue and I was considering fiberglass. I plan on using fiberglass on the other holes and around the tire wells. But the hole behind my seat is big. So I was wondering your opinions on using fiberglass instead of welding a new plate. Also sorry I'm not sure why the pictures rotated

If your not comfortable with welding, which really is not hard to do, you can cut out the rust, treat the surrounding areas with a rust treatment, I like using Ospho, lay down a patch of fresh sheet metal and either use self tapping screws or rivets.

On my bus I did both.
On the riveted patches I also used a combination of pl400 construction adhesive and also seam sealer on the edges.

Lots of us here have had to fix the rusty floors on our bus.

Check out the big holes I had to fix on my bus -> 9906 build thread

 

[PhilipE-SKO]

Fiberglass on rusty metal isn't going to work very well. Glass needs clean metal to work best. If the metal depresses under any weight applied. Glass will crack. Then you back into a leaky floor.

Like ewo1 said pop rivets is one option.

Another one is cut the bad section out and have a mobile welder come in and install new patch. Most mobile welders are equipped to handle that type of job from start to finish if you don't want to tackle it. If you do the tear out and prep where he has the easy part. It saves money.

 

[musigenesis]

Kudos to you for sticking it out with your rusty bus. It's not necessarily smart but it is admirable. I also unintentionally bought a rusty bus and was similarly advised to dump it but I chose not to. You can check out my whole build thread for details on what I did to deal with the rusty floor, but here is an abbreviated album showing the work. Keep in mind that your floor does not look as bad as mine, but you should really beat **** out of your floor with a hammer and a pry bar to make sure you've identified all the areas that will need fixing. Healthy steel is not affected by that kind of treatment, only the badly rusted stuff will yield to it.

As PhilipE said, fiberglass is not going to work. Welding is really the way to go, but you will absolutely pay out the freakin wazoo to hire a mobile welder to do it. Those guys will charge upwards of $150 to $200 an hour (if not more) and many many hours of work are required to fix a rusty bus floor. You would be far better off spending $500 or so on a Mig welding machine and gear (helmet, gloves, bottle etc.) and learning to do it yourself. It's not really that hard, you will save tons of money, and you will develop a skill that will prove itself useful for lots of other projects on your bus.

Rivets and self-tapping screws are cool, too.

FYI I've found the easiest way to deal with the photo-rotation problems is to open my pics in an image editor, rotate them how I want them to display if they're not already that way, and save/export them in PNG format before uploading them to this site. There are never any rotation problems with PNGs.

 

[Timeline]

You would be far better off spending $500 or so on a Mig welding machine and gear (helmet, gloves, bottle etc.) and learning to do it yourself. It's not really that hard, you will save tons of money, and you will develop a skill that will prove itself useful for lots of other projects on your bus.

Thanks for all the help you continually contribute here Chris!



It's a good place to learn to weld by trial and error, thats what I did to patch some holes around the wheel wells. Got them sealed up well, it was fun to do!


I was given a couple cases of Quad caulk and used it in a off label way, I spread a 1/4" layer over the outside of the rear wheel wells over the original metal and the patches. One year latter and it is not failing in any way. This bus has mud and snow tires they throw a lot of gravel, the Quad acts like a rubber shield.

 

[DeMac]

Rusty 87 Wisdom

Kudos to you for sticking it out with your rusty bus. It's not necessarily smart but it is admirable. I also unintentionally bought a rusty bus and was similarly advised to dump it but I chose not to. You can check out my whole build thread for details on what I did to deal with the rusty floor, but here is an abbreviated album showing the work. Keep in mind that your floor does not look as bad as mine, but you should really beat **** out of your floor with a hammer and a pry bar to make sure you've identified all the areas that will need fixing. Healthy steel is not affected by that kind of treatment, only the badly rusted stuff will yield to it.

As PhilipE said, fiberglass is not going to work. Welding is really the way to go, but you will absolutely pay out the freakin wazoo to hire a mobile welder to do it. Those guys will charge upwards of $150 to $200 an hour (if not more) and many many hours of work are required to fix a rusty bus floor. You would be far better off spending $500 or so on a Mig welding machine and gear (helmet, gloves, bottle etc.) and learning to do it yourself. It's not really that hard, you will save tons of money, and you will develop a skill that will prove itself useful for lots of other projects on your bus.

Rivets and self-tapping screws are cool, too.

FYI I've found the easiest way to deal with the photo-rotation problems is to open my pics in an image editor, rotate them how I want them to display if they're not already that way, and save/export them in PNG format before uploading them to this site. There are never any rotation problems with PNGs.

-----------------
Your detailed experience, starting your conversion, is quite similar to the OP's situation. Learning to weld while repairing the floors. (Now a 99.9% finished conversion.)

Would you have done anything differently along the way, with respect to a rusty bus? ie: repair methods, materials used, body steel, floors, frame, mechanicals, suppliers....

Stxys seems to have the will power to follow through. Surely, other members have floors like that, too. Was the extreme rust repair a simple, no skill process or did it require more determination than other parts of your conversion?

 

[musigenesis]

Thanks for the kind words, DeMac.

Would you have done anything differently along the way, with respect to a rusty bus? ie: repair methods, materials used, body steel, floors, frame, mechanicals, suppliers....

Honestly no. I think my methods and materials were about as good as I could have hoped to achieve given the state of the bus and my skill set, and I'm very satisfied with the outcome. The only thing I'd do differently is to not hire that schmuck at the beginning, but even then all he really did was cut the big hole so it's not like that had a huge impact other than lightening my wallet a little (and really that was very little - it wasn't like a Lone Star Skoolies level of screw job).

 

[musigenesis]

Thanks for all the help you continually contribute here Chris!

Huh? My name's not Chris. I'd say you're mistaking me for cadillackid but I don't think that's possible given that I know bupkis about the mechanical side of school buses and he knows literally everything.

 

[Styxs]

I'm going to look into welding. If I weld plates over the holes wouldn't that cause issues with water getting under the plate and trapped? I'm gonna have to reconsider the flooring. I'd like to have the floor done by the end of the month so that I can get to building

 

[DeMac]

How-to...

For details on the remove/replace process,
click on this
Rust 87 build thread/floor rebuild link,
follow the steps,
note the dates,
estimate manhours required.

 

[musigenesis]

I'm going to look into welding. If I weld plates over the holes wouldn't that cause issues with water getting under the plate and trapped? I'm gonna have to reconsider the flooring. I'd like to have the floor done by the end of the month so that I can get to building

After you weld the patches in place, you can go underneath the bus and prime and paint the underside of your patches and put seam sealer (like my trusty Dynatron-550) around the edges and that will seal everything off. Even without this treatment, though, the bottom isn't going to rust very quickly at all so it's not really something you'd have to do immediately. I still haven't done it on my repairs and the underside only has light surface rust.

Steel (even non-stainless and un-galvanized) actually rusts fairly slowly in atmospheric conditions, such that it would take decades to rust through even 16 ga. material. "Atmospheric" means it occasionally gets wet or damp but then has a chance to dry out, which applies to the underside of a bus. Bus floors rust so badly and so quickly because of interior leaks (and salty snow tracked in by kids) that soaks the plywood without any chance to ever dry out; being permanently adjacent to salty (especially bad) water greatly accelerates the rusting process, even with the galvanized steel that makes up a bus floor.

 

[musigenesis]

follow the steps,
note the dates,
estimate manhours required.

And then sell your bus! :biggrin:

 

[82Crown]

You can use POR 15 to seal the floor and convert the rust to a paintable surface.. easiest way to do it is to use a grinder with a wire wheel or sanding disc to knock off all of the loose rust then use por 15 liberally. It is designed to stop rust and you can apply it on both sides of the panels. Use por 15 also on your replacement panel you’re going to pop rivet or screw into place. You can use a bit of silicone around the rusted holes before you lay your new panels down and will prevent water getting passed those spots. And having panels screwed in will allow you to periodically lift those panels if needed to retreat (tho i doubt it will need retreating if done right) i saved my 82 crown the same way, it was hard to get welding gas mix in 2020..

 

[jayb-SKO]

I used ospho, Rustoleum primer, Rustoleum paint, and screw down steel.

https://www.skoolie.net/forums/members/22054-albums2049-picture25637.jpg