No Coast '05 RE300 Conversion

[nocoasty]

Got back on it this morning. Wife and I tackled different projects and got them both completed. We're one step away from spray foaming the bus.



She tackled cutting and mounting the remaining wall furrings. I normally wouldn't use 2x4's, but they were straight and I'm also not about ripping plywood to the depths we need to get a wall over the chain rail.











The rails are superstrut. I've got social panel mounts specifically designed for unistrut or superstrut. I much prefer this method over overpriced rails marketed for home solar installs. This stuff if inexpensive, readily available, and very high quality. No need to wait for shipping. I'll end up 3D printing end caps for these rails, but that's a project for another day.





I'm contemplating putting rails back here for one additional panel. I've got the space, but I just don't know. For reference, this is at the very back of the bus.


This is how they're bolted down, through multiple layers of metal, Grade 8 hardware and washers. I've bolted through the rib structure with carriage bolts before, but this method works just as well. The forces required to pull these through, to shear them off, or to stretch them would be a rather difficult task even if the bus were upside down on its roof... toes crossed we don't test that out.



I also upgraded my headlights. I used these on my first skoolie and I've used round versions on various projects and vehicles over the years. They're absolutely awesome upgrades over stock.



Tomorrow we're finishing our 12V wiring, cutting a few holes in the exterior for lighting and such, a few in the roof for solar wire inputs, Starlink, and flood lights. Then... we're turning the heat up in the shop to 75 and putting a floor heater aimed at our closed cell foam tanks in preparation for insulation.

We're going to foam before finishing our skylights, but I also need to clean and paint this roof at some point too...

See you next week with some more pictures.

 

[desrtdog]

Nice work so far.

Curious what you are planning to use for the finished ceiling and what your final interior height will be.

 

[nocoasty]

Nice work so far.

Thanks so much. Can't wait to actually start putting up walls.

Curious what you are planning to use for the finished ceiling and what your final interior height will be.

I'm looking into columbia forest products bendy plywood or 1/4" birch ply since it bends well enough for the bus roof. We've already got our lifeproof vinyl flooring purchased with is 7mm, close enough to another 1/4" as well.

My wife has this vision for a totally smooth, seamless, and uniform ceiling which means I'm going to have a good amount of work cut out for me.

I can take some measurements tomorrow to give a better idea of what we're looking at less about .5" and where we'll likely fall for overall ceiling height.

 

[desrtdog]

I'm looking into columbia forest products bendy plywood or 1/4" birch ply since it bends well enough for the bus roof.

Cool. I used 5mm underlayment for my side/interior walls...Also, painted the walls. If you're looking for natural wood finish, I can see using birch, but for me there was a significant (2x) price difference, and in the end it looked every bit as good as the 1/4" birch that HD had in stock...Not sure how well it bends, but at 5mm...?

 

[nocoasty]

Last I checked my local stores the difference was ~$6 or $8, if I remember correctly, but I'm by no means opposed to saving money. I'll check again when I go to pick some up.

It's all going to get some form of a limewash(ish) paint treatment anyway, so finish won't really matter.

 

[cadillackid]

you used the same LED headlight style I am using on all of my busses (3 so far..I havent started restoring the 4th).. they are super good..



they are the ONLY style LED's i would use as the yhave a distinct cutoff and a projection beam style which is necessary with LED headlights otherwise you waste light and blind other drivers..

 

[nocoasty]

Couldn't agree more. I tried a few different styles before landing on these a few years ago for that exact reason. Focused light, distinct cutoff, and unparalleled night time clarity. I've had them in several volkswagen vanagons (round style) and a Jeep TJ, and then my old Thomas bus. They're superb and I've never been falsely high beamed by other drivers.

 

[desrtdog]

Could you share a link to those LED lights? I would like to replace my headlights, but not certain how to do that as they are "molded" around the hood of my bus...would be great if I could get something that will more or less just drop in.

 

[nikitis]

Haha awesome! First chunk of videos are total and absolute trash, but I love them all the most because that's where I had to start. I knew nothing about well... everything I was doing.

That's why I watch them. It's fun to see someone's skill level grow, not just in the content they are doing, but also how they film things.

Going from forgetting to film whole sections of a part of the build to in later videos capturing most film. That's the toughest part of Youtube is the expectancy of content from viewers and upkeeping that, but if you do fail to film something people are feeling left out, so if you are going to be on youtube you should be present. That being said, sometimes you just don't film something cause <insert reason here> and it's understandable, and one of the worst mistakes you can do is explain to content watchers that you don't care what they think. They want to be involved, so the best youtubers are those who play on those critiques of their viewers, and ignore the negative ones. Don't even give them a mention. You are thinking about it a lot but the viewers are not and don't want to think about it. Best way to keep the negative comments down is to ignore them.

 

[nocoasty]

Could you share a link to those LED lights?

Here's the link to the exact lights I bought for this bus.

It might be worth looking into doing some type of projector retrofit from The Retrofit Source.

One of my buddies has been doing projector retrofitting with almost every vehicle he's ever owned. If the headlamp is plastic, you can separate the parts by placing them in an oven (temps and times I do not know)

 

[nocoasty]

Finished rough-in wiring today. I need to go through and place abrasion resistant sleeving on every section of wiring that touches wood and metal.

I also ended up placing an additional 50" of superstrut for solar at the rear of the bus behind the skylight. I've got enough space for 1 additional panel, so I figured I might as well have the option even if I decide not to use it.

In other news. I ordered 3 kits of Tigerfoam closed cell spray foam near the end of October, but just opened the boxes tonight (idiot move) to discover... I was shipped 4 component A and 2 component B, which means any plans for completely finishing foam within the next few days is near impossible.

Their Customer Support is off on weekends, so I've left a voicemail and an email explaining the situation and seeing if anything can be done, or if I can possible purchase one additional kit, but receive 2 Part B instead of 1 A and 1 B.

I'm curious to see how far I'm able to go with each kit. I typically use 2 kits of 220 FrothPak to spray an entire LWB Mercedes Sprinter Van.

I had plans out of town with the family and some friends, but snow and ice conditions here in Middle Tennessee have cause our friends to cancel the trip until we thaw out. My buddy made the call after he slid off of his driveway and his truck hugged a tree.

Maybe I'll twist these two kits open and get to work in the morning.

 

[cadillackid]

Here's the link to the exact lights I bought for this bus.

It might be worth looking into doing some type of projector retrofit from The Retrofit Source.

One of my buddies has been doing projector retrofitting with almost every vehicle he's ever owned. If the headlamp is plastic, you can separate the parts by placing them in an oven (temps and times I do not know)

those are the same ones I got.. I got a slightly different variation.. they definitely rock!!

 

[nocoasty]

Yep! These are slightly different than the first set I had as well. They've got integrated turn signals and vanity DRLs, which I never wire those up.

No kidding. They're awesome. We installed a set on my buddy's bus when I was rebuilding part of his interior and he text me after driving somewhere at night and was like "DUDE, these kick ass."

 

[nocoasty]

Today, despite the Tigerfoam mess up previously mentioned, I decided I would foam with the two proper kits that I've got. I sprayed the back section first and then moved forward.

So keep in mind. I've got another 600 board feet (one kit) to spray, possibly two kits if I decide to just buy an extra one, but I've got to wait on Tigerfoam to get back with me.

The back section, emergency doors backward, has significantly deeper foam than what I sprayed with the second kit from the emergency doors forward, but it's also smaller section of the bus.

Needless to say, I've got a lot of cleanup to do. Had some help keeping cardboard over my windows and still ended up with a bit of overspray on the windows. I wasn't entirely planning to do this today, so I could have prepped a little more tediously. Nothing a nice blade won't remove though.

 

[Kentucky Dreaming]

[The wife and I decided we wanted two large skylights, which meant patching one roof exit and extending one, while opening a much larger hole in the back. We've seen some pretty elaborate additions to skoolie roofs, and we really just want a fixed, non opening addition for light. We've already got plans for an insulated blackout cover for each and we're using 1/4" UV Nonyellowing Polycarbonate for the skylight.





Here I am, just 'miring the light and the view.




I used leftover sheet metal from the window deletes, automotive adhesive, stainless screws, and then painted them to keep them from rusting. I'll be going back over the patches with Dicor self-leveling lap sealant as an extra precaution in a few days.

Love the skylight! Natural light is da bomb!

 

[nocoasty]

Couldn't agree more. Love how it immediately brightened the space.

 

[nocoasty]

Found out recently that I really like making GIFs, (pronounced JIFs), so here are a few from parts of the conversion I have already tackled.

Building my windows deletes was almost a therapeutic process. I highly recommend it.

Removing the air intakes was a much more frustrating and laborious tasks. I drilled out the rivets and salvaged as much of the air scoops as possible because I'll be reusing them when I rebuild the doors for air intake. It was however cool to see just how many specific parts go into this design.

And skylights are just cool. That's all for now. More gifs and photos later. I'm contemplating washing the roof tomorrow and then painting it. I'm eager to do it because I want to install my solar panels and wire up my system. This is my absolutely favorite part of every build we do.

I'm also going to go ahead and cut my polycarbonate sheets and predrill / countersink my holes for the skylights using my CNC tomorrow or Tuesday, depending on how quickly I'm able to accomplish my other tasks.

Spray Foam Update: Someone from Tigerfoam got in touch with me and they're going to send me a B component so I can finish my foam job, hopefully this week and move on to walls and wiring up outlets and lights. They said it was a warehouse mixup and they're happy to get me what I need. Consider me impressed, but it also takes a lot to get me worked up. I understand mistakes happen and getting upset about things rarely ever helps a situation.

 

[nocoasty]

Two weeks or so have gone by and I've only spent a few days on the build, but I feel like I've tackled a lot of tasks on the to-do list.

I made my wife stay still for a picture. Figure I'll let it hang out here in the thread. She becomes a US Citizen on Tuesday and I couldn't be more excited for her. She's been dealing with Immigration since 2014 and I've been helping since we met in early 2015.

I backed the bus out after most of our snow melted and gave the roof a really good wash. Let it dry and then resealed the metal lap seams on the roof with Henry Roofing Sealant, Dicor sealed all of my screws and patches, and then coated the roof with 3 coats of Henry's Dura-brite non-siliconized elastomeric roof coating.

We used Tropi-cool before, which was truly a 1 coat application for us. I was a little surprised by how little dura-brite covered with the first coat.

I put most of my effort and energy into the areas I won't be able to access again easily once the solar panels go up, but I also went ahead and coated the sides, just not as well yet.

I mounted our solar panels, got them wired in series parallel. Two groups of 3 panels in series and then both sets in parallel using Y Branch connectors going down to our MPPT. They look absolutely beautiful up top. I've got 6 for a total of 2490 watts. I have 2 additional panels, but I'm going back and forth on whether or not to install them or add some type of storage area on the back.

While I was waiting for some components to come in for the solar system so I went ahead and used our CNC to predrill holes for our skylight polycarbonate and then cut them to shape on it as well. They aren't installed yet as I've been waiting the replacement and corrected closed cell foam kit. It arrived yesterday so it's in my shop getting heated up.

I designed, cut, and then assembled a sort of display area for all of my solar equipment to sit in one section of the storage bay below the bus. I prewired everything, used ferrules and heat shrink like a madman, but I prefer to do it right and I don't trust stranded copper to stay in place by itself. I've got 48V to 12V step downs on the left side below the AC/DC distribution panel, but I removed those and replace them with a single unit rated at 60 Amps rather than going to multiples at 15A each. It simplifies the system and I like that.

I kept everything as tidy as possible and opted for all Victron equipment up top to a 150Ah 48V LiFePO4 battery. I'm not a huge believer in the million and one additional victron accessories on the market, but for the primary needs of a system, there's nothing I've ever used that's better.

I've got room to add on if needed, but I'm fairly certain this will do what we need. We've been living and traveling full-time in buses since 2018 so I've got a good idea of our consumption.

I backed the bus out again today after wiring everything up and let the sun do its thing. Within 3 hours our 48V battery was at 99% SOC. **** Yeah. I love soaking up energy like that.

Oh yeah, we also went ahead and grabbed all of the lumber for our walls and ceiling (sans internal room dividing lumber), but we should be getting to installing it this week or early next.

See you another day with more updates.

 

[nikitis]

Love the animated Gifs.

You have space on the sides of your roof to add more supports.

You may consider doing like a fold out deck which resides over the panels, and can open up and fold outwards when wanting to use the panels and creating an awning out of the deck. I plan on doing this so I can have a deck + full solar panels on the roof.

 

[ewo1]

Some really nice work!

I'm getting a bit jealous!

Nice shop, great tools!

I see you took out the engine bay vents.
What does it look like on the inside now?

What are your plans for that space?