Raising the roof on a Skoolie

Abbott-SKO

Senior Member
Joined
Aug 13, 2007
Posts
758
Hello John and welcome to Skoolie.net

I raised the roof 14" on my 1990 International Harvester bus with a Carpenter body. I have welding and construction experience so I didn't find the job to be all that difficult. It is a bit labor intensive but re-skinning the bus was more work then the actual roof raise itself. The roof actually went up pretty easy using a couple of floor jacks and 2"X4"s with myself and two other guys helping me. We got it up and secured in about a 10 hour day. I had a weeks worth (maybe 40 hours or so) of prep work into it and my wife spent a day or two adding a 36" splice to all of the wires in the main wire harness which is a bundle about 2" thick. Probably about 30 wires. We added 3' of splice just to make it easier to place inside the wall after the lift.

There are a few other guys on the site that have also raised their roofs. Elliot and Smitty come to mind and I think Reprobate raised his roof but he took off after he completed his conversion and I haven't seen him around here in quite awhile. There are some photos on the website here in Elliot's Milicent thread and Smitty's conversion thread and I have plenty photos and a step by step guide of my roof raise written up but unfortunately it is not online at the moment due to an ISP issue. However if you want to e-mail me I could send you some photos and information or feel free to ask questions here.
 
Use airbags? When you get parked where you want to serve, lower the entire bus to the ground. I have seen several cars that do it. Maybe have a lower-able walkway on the side to elevate people the last foot or so to serving height.

Just please dont try to make one of those "Bouncing" Buses. :LOL:
 

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