New bus new life

[wstcstslider]

This is my first post on here but I have been here several times for ideas and inspiration. I first found the site years ago when some fellow veg burners told me about Sharkeys electric powered/ diesel pusher project. Very nice Sharkey! I hadn't been here in a while until one day something happened that would change my life.

I had gotten into the habit of reading the free adds on craigslist and the local newspapers web site with my morning coffee. It's kinda like playing the lotto without buying the ticket. There's a very small chance you may score big.

One morning I did. It was the local papers free section of the classifieds, which I read online before most people got there paper. The add read" 89 School bus runs, you drive***-****". It was before 6am but I called anyways. The guy owned a tour company and needed to get rid of one of his five buses. This was the oldest he had and he said he thought it had bad compression in one cylinder. I went ahead and got it not knowing what kind of shape it was in or even what I was going to do with it.



The thought of living in a bus had never really occurred to me. However, having been a renter who lived pay check to pay check all my life the idea sounded kinda intriguing. Own your own home. Take it with you wherever you go. Lower your bills. Have more time to do what you want to do. My girlfriend and I felt that the bus was a sign that it was time for change.

I know this isn't the ideal bus for what I'm doing but I didn't pick the bus, the bus picked me. There was a point, after doing a bunch of research and before beginning the conversion, that I almost postponed the whole plan until we could afford a more suitable bus. I'm glad I didn't I would have liked a more classy old body and a diesel engine but I didn't have the $$$ to make that happen.

We started going over floor plans and figuring out where we would get the needed parts to make it a cozy little home. At one point I had the cost of the build up around $10K. We quickly realized that if this where going to happen any time soon we would have to get very creative finding the needed supplies and put off some of the improvements until funds permitted.

This has been a salvage project from the beginning so why change the theme. We scraped up $400 for a 16' 82 Komfort Lite travel trailer. It can be seen to the left of the bus in the first picture. It was badly water damaged but it had most of the appliances that we needed for the bus. Getting it home and scrapping it out was quite an ordeal. Definitely "sticks and staple". It provided a 3 way Dometic fridge, a three burner Magic chef range w/oven, a suburban forced air furnace, sinks, windows, toilet, shower pan, AC/DC fuses panel w/ 30 amp convert, tank monitor, propane tanks and regulator and many pieces of electric plumbing and misc hardware. I choose not to use any of the holding tanks because they where odd sizes and didn't fit my needs. The trailer frame was the turned into a 16' utility trailer complete with electric jack and trailer brakes.

[splummer]

hi wstcstslider welcome to the site. i also bought an old camper just for the appliances , the price was right . dont be a stranger and come to the chat and we can talk about buses or anything else that comes to mind. steve

[wstcstslider]

It was the second camper I have torn apart. The first was a 27 foot motor home on a one ton ford chassis. It was much more stout than the Komfort. It had inch and a half by inch and a half framing. The Komforts framing was 3/4 or less.



It sat stripped to the frame for a few months till I came up with the steel to add to the frame to make it a useful trailer. My next door neighbor donated the wood for the deck. It was inch and a half tongue and groove doug fir. I hadn't planned on using T&G but I'm glad I did because it sure makes a strong floor.



Here is a shot of the added steel. Brown and white where existing frame. Black and raw $teel where added.

[Rudy]

We are all happy for you. Welcome to the bus family. The trailer looks great. Please keep us informed on the bus conversion progress. Ask as many questions of us as you wish. Rudy.

[William Biffwinkle]

hey west coast! Good scrounging there! Welcome aboard.

[wstcstslider]

Thanks for the warm welcomes.
I'm going to post this a bit at a time because I can only take so long in front of the screen at once.

Before I get too much further I'll go a ahead and introduce the new bus inhabitants. Here we are, all exited with oh so far to go.



I will spare you the picks of the bus gutted out. They pretty much all look the same at that point.

At this point I was working a full time job at a timber framing company running there portable band saw. I would get roughsawn doug fir timbers from the valley and cut out any bow or out of square. This meant shaving each beam on all four sides. I would often end up with a cant that was 1/4"-1/2" thick and anywhere from 4"-24" wide. These where set aside for interior paneling of the bus. I would also on occasion have to cut a 12X12 down to a 10X12 which left some cants that could be used for larger framing material. I can't find any pics of the mill but you'll see some of the wood on the walls of the bus. Here is a shot of some of our finished truss work ready to be installed. This was for someones house!





Continuing on with the salvage theme we decided to do the living room furniture with school bus seats. This saved us some cash and helped preserve some of that school bus feel. By the time they where finished it was kinda hard to tell that they had been bus seats. We cut some down to make them more narrow. Welded a couple together to make a L shaped seat. The seats originally only had legs on one side. The other side was bolted to a rail on the wall. We used legs off the extra seats for legs on the opposing side and turned some upside down for armrests. The armrests got some big cherry slabs from the saw mill for tops.



Here is one of the seats finished. The armrests are bolted on and can be turned down or removed to make more space.



We started by laying the living room floor first. I'm not sure I suggest his because it was hard to keep it from being damaged during the rest of the build. However it did keep me from having to cut around all the walls and cabinets. We used some "cherry" purgo flooring for its free floating effect. It snaps together pretty easy but its kinda tough to cut in around walls. Not sure how free floating it is with walls on top of it but oh well.



My dad who had always wanted to make a house bus of his own came over to help with the framing of the interior walls. My brother also got in on some of upper cabinet framing.



We got most of the framing and some appliances roughed in in one day.



Progress on the bus halted for about six months as I got busy with work and life.

More to come.

[splummer]

very nice, keep them coming, steve

[Jones'n4chrome]

Nice work. It is shaping up real fast.
Thanks for sharing with us.

Chuck

[Granny]

Hey wstcstslider, nice to meet you. I hear we are neighbors here in the Oregon High Desert. I almost would have sworn I had driven your bus at one time, till you said it was a gas engine. I like what you are doing with the bus, it is really looking sharp.
Glad to have another from this area join us here, welcome.

[William Biffwinkle]

man...that looks like fun. Almost makes me want to get another bus.

[wstcstslider]

The house we had been renting had lots of storage and space to work on things but cost way too much. We realized that after paying rent and bills there really wasn't any money left to work on the bus. A the same time our landlord was coming around more and more. She was a neat freak and we where demolishing trailers and buses in here back yard. Not sure where it went wrong. We decided it was time to go. Found a little dive of a place a little ways out of town. It had no shop space and very little yard to work with but it was CHEAP!

I had been used to the extra space at the old rental. I had accumulated a lot of tools and materials that I no longer had a place to store. So, we built a 8X10 shed on the back of my 12' flat bed truck act as the new shop. Here's me and dad screwing the deck on the trailer while two brothers frame up the shop truck.



We threw all the materials in the bus and the shed and head to our new location. We got hit by a big snow storm the week we got there. Had just enough time to get the shed dried in and the materials tarped down before it hit.



The next obvious step for the bus was to get some heat in there. I installed the suburban furnace I got out of the Komfort. But with minimal insulation the thing could hardly keep it warm.



We had already been planning for a wood stove and I had been looking for a few months. It's really hard to find a stove small enogh for a bus. Especially if the don't have $1K to spend on it. After much searching and patince one popped up in good old craigslist. Did I mention I really like craigslist? It was a miniature pot belly. The guy selling it had been using it as a lamp and advertised as such. It was about a two hour drive to go look at the thing but I was pretty sure it was more of a stove than a lamp. Sure enough had been a stove, was now a lamp destend to be a stove again.



I'm not a roofer but I have done some siding. We use a lot of vulfcum for sealing exteriors of house in really cold climate. It's some really sticking oil based sealer that never really hardens. I have been using to seal most of the holes I cut in the bus.



I used many screws to get the flashing for a flat roof to lay down on the contours of the bus. It went it nicely and I feel real good about it not leaking.



The stove was outside and had started to rust a little so I wire brushed it and repainted it before installing. I made a small stone pad for the stove. It was scrap from a job site where they had been producing flat stone verneer. That is where you cut the face off of the rocks and stick them to the wall like your laying cultured stone. It leaves a big scrap pile of rocks with the faces cut off of them. They looked pretty cool cut too so I grabbed a big pile before they went to the landfill. Here it is flu installed and sitting on the stone pad. I think we had a fire going within five minutes of finishing the install.



We were now able to keep the bus warm but still had to fight the elements to get to the materials or set up a cut station. Progress was slow and we tried to focus on things we could do inside like wiring and curtains for the windows.

[Rudy]

Lookin' good, Slider. What is your name? Shall we call you Slider? Join us on the Sharkchat sometime. It is fun.

[wstcstslider]

Names Luke. I'm not real big on the live chat thing. Kinda like to think about what I'm gonna say a little.

I added a couple of pics that I found while digging to the previous posts.

[Rudy]

Luke, we are all very friendly here. It is unlikely that any of us really think about what we are going to say. It is more like a spontaneous party. You will have fun. Rudy

[Rudy]

Luke, I always encourage everyone to add to the A Funny Thing Happened thread on the Other Stuff forum. We all need some laughs these days. Check it out.