Juicy Lucy, where all my hopes and dreams lie

[TAOLIK]

Nice work. How will the weight of the metal framing compare to 2x3 wood framing? I think it could be less because less steel is need for the structure to be strong.

I'm have never been recognized as an engineer, but I believe per foot it is lighter. A 2x3 is 0.94lb per foot, and a 2x4 is 1.28lb per foot based off this source.

Per foot of 16 gauge 1" square tubing is about 0.827 pounds I believe. According to this source

So I believe per foot it is lighter, smaller, stronger and considerably more expensive. Once I start welding, sometimes I have too much fun and throw some redundant framing in. The main 2 reasons I went with steel is because of 1. I wanted to learn how to weld and work with steel. 2. I wanted to gain the extra 10-20" or so of space by framing with steel instead of chubby wood. I have had many many times when I thought "wow it sure would've been easier just to screw this wood into the bus rather than bring this giant metal box in and out of the bus 10x a day to make sure everything fits mostly right. I think framing with steel studs is a nice middle ground between tubing and wood.

Looking great! Nice work. Love too see builds like this. Keeps me working on mine.

Your kind words help keep me on this grind! It definitely feels nice to get to this point after 2 years of working on this with no finish line in sight.

 

[ol trunt]

Steel, steel, steel. No better way to do it and it's so much fun to play with the sun! Great progress--keep up the good work! Jack

 

[ben2go]

I'm have never been recognized as an engineer, but I believe per foot it is lighter. A 2x3 is 0.94lb per foot, and a 2x4 is 1.28lb per foot based off this source.

Per foot of 16 gauge 1" square tubing is about 0.827 pounds I believe. According to this source

So I believe per foot it is lighter, smaller, stronger and considerably more expensive. Once I start welding, sometimes I have too much fun and throw some redundant framing in. The main 2 reasons I went with steel is because of 1. I wanted to learn how to weld and work with steel. 2. I wanted to gain the extra 10-20" or so of space by framing with steel instead of chubby wood. I have had many many times when I thought "wow it sure would've been easier just to screw this wood into the bus rather than bring this giant metal box in and out of the bus 10x a day to make sure everything fits mostly right. I think framing with steel studs is a nice middle ground between tubing and wood.



Your kind words help keep me on this grind! It definitely feels nice to get to this point after 2 years of working on this with no finish line in sight.

Seems to be lighter and stronger.

 

[dopamine16]

Looking goood man, you look like you can be a union ornamental ironworker with those metal skills. Hope you get everything works out for ya.

 

[TAOLIK]

Steel, steel, steel. No better way to do it and it's so much fun to play with the sun! Great progress--keep up the good work! Jack

Looking goood man, you look like you can be a union ornamental ironworker with those metal skills. Hope you get everything works out for ya.

Thank you Jack & Dope!

Little bits of progress this week, but I'm throwing an update up anyway.

I got this conveyor runner off amazon

Originally I was planning to cut it up, but on the spot I decided to drill holes into my lower bed mount. Turned out much better, featured below.

Then I made this gigantic drawer, I have 3/4 Angle iron which slides on those skate wheels featured above. Then there's a small drop for that extra 1" of storage space. I have wheel mounts for the front and back to mount these wheels to it.

Here we have them nested together in the bus

Here I am pulling the drawer out, I had some fun with this. Though the photo doesn't really illustrate this well.

Not great, not terrible. It works. I did have to spend about 3-4 hours cutting it up and reassembling the drawer correcting some poor measurements i took to reduce unnecessary abrasion.

I added a few extra bars for bed support/ to keep the drawer on it's track on bumpy rides. I send the exterior piece to the paintshop to get sandblasted and powder coated. I'll send the drawer over once I get the panels cut out(lower priority)

Cut out some plywood for bed support. Sanding this down today, hoping to get the first coat of finish on it after I finish work today.

Also ordered 2" Lux HD Queen, 2" HD-36 Queen, 3" 5lb memory foam topper, 1" latex topper for the bed via foambymail.com

Cut out this wall panel thing, I should've done this months ago

4th fit's the charm! I'll sand this down and put some finish on it later, I feel like having a woody feel in the cockpit. Seems like a nice spot for storage though.

I recently decided that I did a terrible job trying to assemble the kitchen counter. I've thought about it a lot and have decided to ditch it and replace it with one big piece of butcher block. I was going to make it myself but it looks like for the same price as the raw materials via home depot. I can pick up a premade counter...So I'm going to take a 7 hour detour through port angeles on my way home on Monday. Should be a pretty drive.

I just over a month left left until my "liveable" goal, 6 weeks to my move in goal and a pinch over 8 weeks until I need to get the f*** out of my house. CRUNCH TIME!!

 

[TAOLIK]

Seems like a good day for an update. Been a wild few days, weeks or months, something like that. Today marks my original "get it done by" goal. Looks like I'll be cutting things closer than I was hoping. Here's whats happened since my last update.

First off I got absolutely sick of finishing all my wood in my bus, it was way too claustrophobic. So I got me one of these nifty 10x20 carport tents from costco.

Much much better, finishing bed frame wood.

Got me a nice foldup table with some hideous graffiti on it for $10, featured in the back.

Took an 9 hour detour home through the olympic penninsula to pick up this beautiful piece of alder

Cut some holes in it for sink and stove

Dryfit

Traded a 11 day work week for 2x 3 day weekends, during the first 3 day weekend I made a couch and a cabinett to go above it.
Progress pix

Here we have one of my pull outs for the couch. Neighbors were not pleased about me welding and grinding to 3 in the morning.

Couch is assembled (mostly)

Pull out demonstration, I have 4 of these for full on customization. Is it a couch? a Bed? an L section couch? a C section couch? yes, yes it is. At 90" (or was it 92"?) this bed is almost 20" longer than my bed...But that's how it goes I guess.

Not comfy at all without wood panels..But I was incredibly relieved at this point to not have to haul this couch in and out of the bus anymore for awhile..Well I had to take it out again for the paint shop..

A pretty terrible picture of my couch shelf/cabinet, but the only progress pic I bothered to take..Next day I take this crap to the paintshop and begin my 11 day work week.

Some wood paneling for my bed frame/guitar storage box

Here we have my setup for my countertop. 4 layers of tung oil for color spaced 24 hours apart. Enter into my 2nd 3 day weekend. I wanted to try out an epoxy finish, on this but from what I heard epoxy is a delicate beast so I need to follow instructions to a T. One of which is to maintain a temperature between 70-80 degrees Fahrenheit. I hung up 3 heat lamps to a temperature controller (inkbird, $30ish on amazon), I checked the hourly forecast for the coldest few hours on the night to check on it periodically. at 67 degrees I concluded that I needed more heatlamps before proceeding with epoxy setup.
The next day was warmer, I setup an additional 4 lamps and ended up not using the original 3 at all, but i kept them handy in case the temperature couldn't keep up with my target. I also have the counter leveled and resting on 1inch square tubing scrap to avoid pooling at the bottom.

I didn't expect epoxy to take up my entire weekend, but I had to check on the curing process every 20 minutes and pick out bugs with toothpicls and then apply gentle heat via heatgun to smooth out the cure. After 3 days of neurotic babysitting, I got 1 base layer, 2 flood layers, and 2 touch up layers, maintained between 75-78 degrees fahrenheit.
Looks great! (in pictures atleast)

A few quick notes about my experiences with epoxy. 1. Keep toothpicks around 2. Clean up epoxy icicles vigilantly before it cures to avoid a headache alter (I had to sand them down and refinish my bottom with spar varnish). 3. If you sand epoxy, it will turn foggy, you'll need to throw another coat of epoxy on or throw on a topcoat of something to fill in the tiny cavities and return the shine (I used spar varnish). Overall I wouldn't recommend sanding epoxy unless it looks really bad. That said, I sanded down my sides to 320 and put two layers of spar varnish on the sides.

Dry fitting my dickinson P12000 propane furnace

I made some boxes to go in my closet to protect my propane and pex plumbing.

I had one of my old employees come over and help me sand at a generously low hourly rate. This coming week I have 30 more hours of sanding labor coming in from some great co-workers.

Picked up my couch and a new chest freezer, dry fit the new sink, thought it would be a good time for a photo.

Some of my couch utility being demonstrated. Also I started running some wires about.

Hairy foot for reference

Staining/Finishing more wood

 

[TAOLIK]

Next up we have the temperature controller to freezer install. I did this before on my other freezer I got, not too hard (though I haven't tested it yet). I found a youtube video showing a temperature controller with my EXACT same freezer so this time was even easier.

Here's a picture of the stock setup. Brown wire (hot) goes into the existing temp controller, comes out and goes to the "run" light and goes to the compresser and tells it to do it's thing. The light is only one when electricity is coming out of the controller. The blue wire is a neutral that goes to the "run" light and the "power" light. The black is a hot that goes to the "power" light. This light is on all the time.

Here's the new controller wired in. I spliced brown to go to #1 and #7 on my inkbird controller. #1 and #2 keep the controller operating, #7(hot in) and #8(hot out) is for temperature control (which is the substitute for the existing controller). the old brown out is now plugged into #8. The neutral was spliced to go into #2. Voila! Except I forgot to plug in the thermostat line into #3 & #4.

Now putting all this crap back together., The back of the controller made a good stencil for the controller cutout..except it was a little small.

Cut, file and sand the hole down to 60 grit

Still haven't tested it, it was on it's side for about 30 hours, I plan to leave it upright for atleast 72 before plugging it in...but since I don't have ac wired yet, I'm probably not going to plug it in for awhile. It looks good though yeah? It should be fine.

I made a sliding refrigerator base.

I have a gate latch which goes into these two holes to lock the sliding "mechanism"

Base without the sliding base

Sliding base dry fit to refridgerator

Bus pic

Picked up the couch cabinet/shelf from the paint shop, got it bolted to the touch and screwed into the wall via two screws. More screws will be screwed in after I ensure everything looks good.

Most up to date front back pic.

Over 100 days sober and 2 weeks until my next and more strict completion goal...I think I can do it!! That first beer in the bus is going to be an absolute delight.

Meanwhile, back to the hustle. Thanks for following.

 

[dopamine16]

Good job on the goals, longest i went without smoking pot i the last 10 years is 2 weeks, horrible maybe onday i can doit like you. Butt the steel is looking awsome for sure your should totally be a union ornamental ironworker. Looks like you do pretty well fabin.

 

[EastCoastCB]

Good job on the goals, longest i went without smoking pot i the last 10 years is 2 weeks, horrible maybe onday i can doit like you. Butt the steel is looking awsome for sure your should totally be a union ornamental ironworker. Looks like you do pretty well fabin.

Me too man. Enjoying the herbal refreshment steadily since 1993!

 

[dopamine16]

Me too man. Enjoying the herbal refreshment steadily since 1993!

Hooly hell man you been stoned almost as long as i been alive. Lol

 

[EastCoastCB]

Hooly hell man you been stoned almost as long as i been alive. Lol

I do my best, man!
My wife was born in 1992, FTW lol.

 

[dopamine16]

I do my best, man!
My wife was born in 1992, FTW lol.

whaaaat **** man she younger than me, eccb is a pimp, aslong as she was over 18 when ya met, or is 16 legal age in flordia.? Sorry my bad taolik went off topic again. Lol.

 

[EastCoastCB]

whaaaat **** man she younger than me, eccb is a pimp, aslong as she was over 18 when ya met, or is 16 legal age in flordia.? Sorry my bad taolik went off topic again. Lol.

Yeah, sorry man for the OT!

It was all legal, man!
We've been together 8 years, she's 26.
But I knew her before then, she's my friend's wife's cousin. I was actually kinda buds with her dad before she and I started dating. We're all one big family now!

And not back to Taolik's Juicy Lucy!! :hide:

 

[cycle61]

Tao, just read this whole thread, and it's been awesome watching your craftsmanship evolve and improve by orders of magnitude over the couple years you've been at this. We're about a half hour down the road and would love to catch up sometime after you get through your big push!

Nick

 

[TAOLIK]

Tao, just read this whole thread, and it's been awesome watching your craftsmanship evolve and improve by orders of magnitude over the couple years you've been at this. We're about a half hour down the road and would love to catch up sometime after you get through your big push!

Nick

Hey Nick, thanks for the kind words! I keep having the thought "man my next build is going to be so awesome", it's pretty wild looking back on my earlier posts and remembering how intimidating everything seemed, I half expect my bus to fall apart (knocks vigorously on wood), but worst case scenerio I'll just unscrew all my framing and throw it in another bus. If you're south of me I'd love to stop by and say hi while I'm southbound. I think the wife and I are planning on camping somewhere with water on our way down. If you're northbound maybe you can stop by my restaurant Tentenyu before then and I can get you a beer.

Good job on the goals, longest i went without smoking pot i the last 10 years is 2 weeks, horrible maybe onday i can doit like you. Butt the steel is looking awsome for sure your should totally be a union ornamental ironworker. Looks like you do pretty well fabin.

Thanks for stopping by and the kind words Dope, 2 weeks was probably longer than my PR prior to my current stint. But necessity is a great motivator, the sobriety has opened up 90 minutes in my evenings to work and my mornings are clear and consistent with reduced lethargy and better mental and physical consistency. The worst of the sobriety was probably the on/off alcohol withdrawel headaches. I have had some crazy dreams since it all went down.

Eastcoast: good to have you loitering about my build thread again.

 

[TAOLIK]

Hustle hustle hustle!

Holy crap my life is a mess.
I absolutely need to get the bus in a liveable state by 7/6. Then I need to get her to a shop for a tune up so I can make sure she's safe to drive with minimal chance of issue by 7/9. Then hopefully I'll get her back before 7/13, move all my stuff inside and GTFO!

Lots of progress, lots of late nights. Here are a few glimpses.

Drilled a hole in the roof

Got the vent on my P12000 installed

Cut another hole in the side and got my vent hood installed

Felt pads put on the couch for easy slide out action

Lots and lots of wire running, most of the terrible nooks and cranny wire runs are done.

Out of focus picture, of my bathroom fuse box to kitchen fuse box transition area, installed a water tank fill valve. Decided NOT to put in a gravity feed water system for now, since realistically I'd prefer just to fill in through the city water fill.

Aside from that I have a lot of wood paneling which has been in and out of my finishing tent.

Here's a picture as of about 24 hours ago.

What's left. Screwing down all my furniture, plumbing the kitchen and bathroom sink ins and outs, Making wire runs from fuse boxes, venting my grey water tank, replacing my unvented shower P trap with a hepvo valve, sanding the finish of my bathroom and kitchen drawers(not featured in picture). I estimate 50 hours of work. I think I can do it, I just need to cut some sleep out of my schedule.

hustle hustle hustle hustle.

 

[TAOLIK]

so tired..

Okay well there's more that's been done but between the craziness of running a restaurant (with a lot of help from a select few good workers), moving (with a lot of help from some great family and my lovely wife), and husting the bus together (with a lot of help from my cousin who came up to help), life's intensity has been steady. The short days are 16 hours and the long days are upwards towards 20. For the past few days I have been sleeping a bit in the bus, I'd love to sleep more but that will be something to look forward to soon.

Here's some pictures I took recently.
Front to back

Back to front

A few notes

the propane system is fully plumbed, tested for leaks via propane snooper and functional. Everything but the water heater has proven functional. The propane detector is installed and just needs to be fused. This and many other fuses are on my todo list.

Oil has been changed, oil, fuel and power fluid filters have been replaced. All existing diesel has also been drained and replaced with fresh fuel. 4 mile test drive showed good promise of success!

Two AC electric systems: My 1000w Inverter AC and "extension cord system" for hair dryer and convection oven, have both been tested and work! Though when my inverter is free range, I have a few issues that need a little trouble shooting because of a gfci and my inverter's energy saving mode.

The first 10 feet run of my DC system is 8 AWG, I would like to replace taht with 4 AWG in the future. Maybe after all the madness settled down, unless the wire gets really hot.

A vent has been added to my grey water tank, and just needs some pex crimped to it, then my water system will be ready to be pressure tested..fingers crossed!

My TV mounts and TV outlets were poorly planned, I will be drilling another hole for my TV mount very soon.

At this point, aside from adding fuses to my dc system, getting my tv mount up, and adding a pex vent for my plumbing system, I would say my bus is in liveable condition.


Another update will come up at some point, but I still got a lot of moving to do.. Tonight I think I'm going to drink a beer and try and sleep 8 hours. Tomorrow will likely be a long night after work.

thanks for following!

 

[TAOLIK]

Checking in

Hi all, it's been awhile. I've wanted to clean up the bus and do this update properly, but since I feel like dealing with it today, I'm going to dump this update here and bring some conclusion to this thread for the few future viewers who visit.

Life has gotten considerably better since I last posted. In fact I feel like a completely different person than I was before. My wife and I left Washington, took a little break from the daily grind and moved down to Oregon. We've been 3/4 timing in the bus, we have not been using the bathroom in the bus outside of laziness and emergencies and we have two storage trailers for tools and external storage as well as a few boxes spread out through garages among some friends and family. As far as I'm aware everything functions good aside from the batteries which need to be replaced..eventually.

We've had some opportunities to travel around the world a bit, and have made friends and enjoyed some nice beaches, sunsets, sunrises, culture and food in Alaska, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico and the oregon coast.

We have enjoyed a few backyards with our bus and are currently settled cozy not too far from the Hillsboro Airport.
I built a balcony, and awning and bridge for my entry way.
Cumulonimbus clouds preceding us being evacuated off some Vietnamese islands.

Hiking about some alaskan ridges

Figure A.

The bus is kind of constantly cluttered and is a mess, but life has been good.

After moving in, I have really really appreciated hooks, rings and carabeaners

Figure B.

Figure C

My heater and insulation were not able to keep up with the winter, so I added additional insulation curtains over troubled areas. Metal grommets installed in $10 wool blankets from harbor freight, hung with carabiners. My wife also installed velcro wool blankets which seal windows and vent seals during the winter.

Currently serving tables part time on the weekends and studying during the week to become a pilot.

Though the bus is definitely not done, mentally I think this phase in my life has concluded and I am now transitioning into the next phase. It blows my mind how different my life is now from when I started this bus project. I can't necessarily say I would reccommend this life for outsiders looking into this madness. I wouldn't say it was wise or worth investing dozens of thousands of dollars for tools I didn't know how to use, or parts I didn't need, or buying brand new utilities I would end up giving away because I didn't think things through. But I came into this project barely knowing how to use a drill, intimidated by plumbing, electrical, and anything that wasn't playing videogames and Japanese food related; I have come out of this journey with knowledge, skills and tools, patience and confidence empowering me to do anything and everything I want.

To those outsiders looking in, wondering if you should probably do it? Maybe you shouldn't. It really doesn't make much sense to try and build a house to live in out of a bus. To those who are already knee deep in this madness wondering if you should give up? Never lose sight of your goal, never give up, any progress you make today is a step closer to your goals and dreams. Procrastination is nothing but a waste of time, and striving for perfection will hinder your progress.

If you ever want to get in touch, you can gmail me at kamotai.

To everyone else, good luck on your journey!

 

[HazMatt-SKO]

Incredible post (And journey)! Thanx for sharing.

Happy trails to you both.

 

[dopamine16]

Words of honesty, stoked for you bud.
Flying is amazing isnt it ? Cheers.