Thomas Minotour Build

[AlphaHare]

I’m renting the corner of an old equestrian barn. All my tools are portable and I’m working off sawhorses and a single 15A receptacle. It’s unheated, ambient, and wicked dusty with the doors open at both ends but it sure beats being outside! Makes a difference in New England winter when there might be a few feet of snow outside….

KiCAD is a fun drawing tool - so easy compared to NanoCAD or AutoCAD and using blocks. It’s all simple AC/DC so I can ignore all the annotation required for SPICE simulation and just make it readable. SPICE would be nutty overkill - I just want a pretty drawing.

I’m going to end up with about 8 - 10 sheets of schematic - this really helps keeping it logical with the hierarchical sheet organization. I think I can output the net list to .csv so I can tie it back to my wire run list for each individual conductor. Geek fun for winter nights. ;>)

 

[nikitis]

As I get better with it myself, I want to run simulations on it too just to learn it better.

 

[AlphaHare]

This compartment has turned into a detailed time-suck, but it's almost there. My heavy cables arrived today and I'll finish moving the big stuff over including the switch and Anderson connector.

One thing I'm really pleased with is using the front of the tray as the retainer for the hatch latch. I needed the headroom and couldn't accommodate a fixed 1.5" lower lip in the way.

The drag chain is out of the picture - too much complication. For now anyway. The middle space will hold service loops. This thing is going to have a very limited duty cycle.

Last pic is where the rub rail will go to line up with the rear original. It is just at the right height for an internal armrest, and the lower frame will have a fixed window for visibility, the upper frame something that can open for air flow (and emergency.)

 

[Mr. Beefy]

That's the purtiest battery tray... ever.

 

[AlphaHare]

Yeah, this kinda got out of hand. Creeping Elegance, or perfect is the enemy of the good, and good enough is good enough. I wish it was the first time this has happened to me. ;>)

 

[Mr. Beefy]

Yeah, this kinda got out of hand. Creeping Elegance, or perfect is the enemy of the good, and good enough is good enough. I wish it was the first time this has happened to me. ;>)

I dunno, you seem to knock out things like this in a fairly short time-span, all things considered. Not that I can't see the hours (days? weeks?) of processing time that went into your decisions.

It only took a few months down this path for me to realize that I'm way too detail-oriented to be building anything bigger than a toaster. Old, slow, and arthritic doesn't help either

 

[AlphaHare]

This thing considered: I'm almost done building this deck we kicked off the end of July. I did not want to build it, but we couldn't get anyone to bid on it. It's been a huge effort from the footings up. And I'm in New England - code is 48" frost line and the footings are below that.

 

[bertha the bus]

Where I'm headed with this....

I've been doing a lot of sketching and as things start coming together I commit them to Fusion360. My background is Engineering - my first job out of High School was drafting - I love this stuff.

I've been obsessing about a trolley roof for a couple years. I think it's easier than a full roof raise, and IMO looks prettier. There are basically no other examples, so I'm either doing something stupid, unpopular, or new. Time will tell.

This is a the layout that works for my GF and I. We love the dinette for eating across from each other and planning the next day's adventures. Queen sized bed - 100% must have. A functional shower/bathroom shown here about 44" x 32". The space in front of the sink will mount a Ford passenger seat facing forward.

Two 30 gallon water tanks under the bed over the axles, black and grey water nestled between the floor ribs, and I'm adding in a slide out battery tray. 12 gallon propane tank is HW and cooking; heat will be a higher end Chinese diesel heater.

Starting to rough out the electrical showing two LiFePo batteries and about 10,000W of power. I think it may be too much already but still tuning the power budget. The biggest power consumer is presently an espresso machine, but I haven't placed AC in it yet...

Now just to build it. ;>)

Hi there,

This looks like an awesome build, and I've read through all the pages.

My fiancé and I are currently building out our 2003 G3500 Thomas Minotour on a GMC 3500 Savana 139" chassis, and I'm having some trouble trying to find a good space to under-mount our water tanks. We're hoping to do roughly the same size tanks you've got in your plans, but I can't seem to find tanks that are the right size for the space we have.

My question is - how do you plan to get the tanks under the floor ribs, the way they are in the plans? I see that you're raising the ceiling height for this project (which we are not in our build), but I was wondering if you had any resources or suggestions.

Thanks!

 

[AlphaHare]

@bertha the bus - thanks!

I have waste and grey tanks under the bus between the Thomas channels. They're generic tanks from RecPro on Amazon: Amazon.com. There are a lot of 'standard' waste tanks from manufacturers near Elkhart, Indiana if you poke around online.

I'll be welding up angle iron supports to bolt to the channels - actual design TBD. If you look at the RV world, they're generally just clamped up flush to the RV belly - nothing special. I think I'll end up with a space between the tank and the Minotour floor pan for plumbing routing, but I haven't really worked it out yet.

I have the longer 158" wheelbase. My water tanks are inside the bus, over the axle, under the bed. I'm not planning on below freezing wet camping (at least I haven't committed in my head to insulate and warm the waste tanks), but having water inside might be useful. My placement was mostly for weight distribution - each tank (now 50 gallons each) will be 400 pounds of water when full.

 

[bertha the bus]

@bertha the bus - thanks!

I have waste and grey tanks under the bus between the Thomas channels. They're generic tanks from RecPro on Amazon: Amazon.com. There are a lot of 'standard' waste tanks from manufacturers near Elkhart, Indiana if you poke around online.

I'll be welding up angle iron supports to bolt to the channels - actual design TBD. If you look at the RV world, they're generally just clamped up flush to the RV belly - nothing special. I think I'll end up with a space between the tank and the Minotour floor pan for plumbing routing, but I haven't really worked it out yet.

I have the longer 158" wheelbase. My water tanks are inside the bus, over the axle, under the bed. I'm not planning on below freezing wet camping (at least I haven't committed in my head to insulate and warm the waste tanks), but having water inside might be useful. My placement was mostly for weight distribution - each tank (now 50 gallons each) will be 400 pounds of water when full.

Thanks for the help!!

 

[AlphaHare]

I've been quiet for a couple months, some travel, the holidays, and if I'm honest some intimidation about complexity of the process....

I'm pretty pleased with the results and it wasn't nearly as bad as I was worried about. A couple photos of what I've been up to in January. More to follow.

The original body mounts would have interfered with both the stairway on the passenger side, and the holding and grey water tanks on the driver side. This photo a nearly completed version. I'm replacing a total of six.

The stairs are fitted and tacked. The whole assembly lifts out and is presently on my welding table for final welds be on the underside, the tack welds will be ground out for square corners and easier fitting of the flooring.

 

[AlphaHare]

More details on the stairs.

I routed out the OSB for the 2" x 1/8" angle iron so that it would sit flush with the subfloor. I used the angle iron to guide a sawzall blade to make the final cuts to the metal floor plan, and then ground them out a bit for clearance.

My stairs are 12 gauge (.104") mild steel. I had the supplier cut all the parts a bit oversized so that I'd have some wiggle room. I'm using Dykem - a blue quick drying ink used by machinists - you scribe over it and it makes the line pretty visible. I carefully laid out the rise and run on each cheek (which is the front surface and top surface respectively).

I also had the supplier bend up two pieces to 90 degrees - then cut them down to the right size into stairs.

The rest is some careful fitment and then tacking them together. The scribe lines enable you to be remarkably accurate. Once tacked, I lifted the assembly out and put it on the bench for final welding. I'll grind out the tacks later when I fit the stairs with treads.

Guessing the thing weighs about 60 pounds? It's awkward, but feels easier than a bag of sackrete.

 

[AlphaHare]

And a couple more...

 

[AlphaHare]

The last little bit of fun. To fit the stairs, I had to trim back the upper and lower arms of the Thomas C channel. Most of the strength comes from the web, and the arms are (mostly) to keep the web from buckling under load. Just to be safe, I added a couple lengths of angle to stiffen the web. They're also welded to the door frame and hoop. It's probably overkill, but it will let me sleep better when I dream of hard bumps.

Interestingly - the bus shell is so stiff ( basically a riveted monocoque ) that when I removed the two frame mounts it didn't sag or move at all.

The hardest part of this process was not burning up the bus. The channel on the left has asphalt undercoating on the other side. If the welds went too long it ignites and burns quickly. That's pretty exciting.

 

[Bjorkinman]

And a couple more...

This looks amazing!

 

[AlphaHare]

Thank you! I am very pleased with how it turned out - I have thought it would be fun to build a second bus now that I have some idea how to do it.

 

[nikitis]

Maybe a 40 footer?

 

[AlphaHare]

More details on the body mounts....

They're designed around a generic urethane mount from Energy Suspension. The bolt through the middle is 1/2", and my parts are mostly 3/16", with the mounting platform being 1/4" steel. The angle will ultimately fit under the Thomas C channel drilled for the bolts going through the whole thing.

I laid out the parts with Dykem, using a utility blade as a scribe. I marked the parts for match drilling and then tacked together. Those little dots - completely obliterated by the final undercoating - LOL. I'll just see which fit together best....

Some pictures of the fixturing done for welding. I got one of the welding tables from Harbor Freight - this has been awesome for door frames, the stairs, etc - and came with quite a few fixturing bits.

I'm really pleased (and a little surprised) how well my Hobart 140 (120VAC) got into these parts, albeit at the very highest voltage setting. I don't think I could go any bigger, but it definitely penetrated here. (the assembly below not fully welded, but I got impatient... ;>)

 

[AlphaHare]

A few more

 

[AlphaHare]

Maybe a 40 footer?

If I was younger, maybe... I like the fact that the Minotour is something that can be lifted and serviced at just about any Ford dealer, and will fit into most parking spaces. But an eight window flat-nose front engine has kinda been calling to me.

Maybe something like this? The short flat-noses are kinda ugly-cute to me. If I mounted it wheels up, I could just roll it and decide which one to drive... ;>)

For now, I really just want to get this done and start using it!