General Floor Questions

[Kota Fox]

Hey yall, just bought my first full size bus (1998/99 Bluebird TC2000 RE, Cummins 8.3 MFI, Allison 3060) and Ive taken out the seats, vinyl, and nasty plywood to reveal that sweet rusty sheet metal. Nothing too bad. Today I'm going at it with the steel brush on an angle grinder and plan to treat the rust, caulk the corners, insulate, plywood, and paint. Some things I could use experienced suggestions on:


1. Filling Holes. JB Weld? Superglueing pennies? Plain old silicon caulk?


2. Treating rust. Will plain old rustoleum convert it or should I use another product? Is there anything I should do after grinding and before applying? I also spilt a little coolant getting the heaters out and I dont want that ruining the bond. Whats the best way to clean up coolant? Because god knows that stuff will sit forever.



3. Sealing corners/wheel wells. Some of the old grey sealant/caulk was peeling off. Should I use the same stuff they used 20 years ago or has material science advanced beyond that?


4. Diesel tank accesible panel/diesel fill up cover. I'd like to keep it accesible. It looks like no ones been in there since it was built. Just clumps of dirt around the wires and whatnot. Whats the best way to clean in there? Or is it actually protecting anything or even worth messing with? Im also curious about insulating there, as well as the fill up cover which I took off to get the plywood up. Should it be sealed with special caulking that is diesel proof?


5. Heaters/coolant lines. Im debating putting the rear heaters back in, one is a few feet long and the other about half the size. I atleast want the heaters by the driver to be functional. There seems to be no way to route the coolant lines easily under the bus do to under storage compartments so they'll be inside along the drivers side. Has anyone replaced these with say, smaller diameter copper tubing for easier concealment? Is condensation an issue if covering?


6. Insulation/plywood. Im not worried about the floor being to high so Im going to go with some thick foam sheet insulation I think. What kind of glue would you recommend? Could I also use it to glue down the plywood to the insulation? Treated plywood or no?


7. Paint. I just plan on doing a couple layers of all purpose killz on top of the plywood. Should I use another sealer on top of that? Any other tips or anything I missed?

 

[musigenesis]

2. You don't need to kill yourself physically grinding a bunch of rust off your floor. Ospho (which is basically phosphoric acid) will chemically convert iron oxide (aka rust) into iron phosphate, and then you can paint over that with Rustoleum rusty metal primer, and then some enamel.

3. I've used Dynatron-550 seam sealer for {drum roll} sealing seams, both on the inside and on the outside.

4. I assume you're talking about the top of the fuel tank, after you've lifted off the cover. You can just leave the fuel tank alone. It's good to preserve that hatch access after you build your subfloor, with a removable block of foam board over the hatch and then a cutout piece in the plywood over that.