Getting off more and more and more stickers!

Listening to the song of the Eastern Towhee...while I scrape and peel off more reflective tape and letters from the bus...and realize...I FORGOT to drink my tea...it is now cold and sitting on a tire under the wheel well on the other side of the bus!!!

(The Eastern Towhee's song sounds like..."Drink your tea!")

Two of my amazing helpers, Lily (11) & Nora (8) working hard and scraping off all that reflective tape and letter stickers!

One advantage to being tall is that I can remove those side pieces of reflective tape without a ladder!! 

Thanks, Mom & Dad for the genes!

First ceiling panel out!

Whew!  I finished removing all the wiring panels, so I could get to the ceiling panels.  Got the first ceiling panel out & boy that dude was so freaking heavy!  The panels are made from ventilated/perforated sheet metal, laid against the fiberglass insulation.  And I don't think the presence of all those little holes of metal did anything to lessen their weight!!  I do realize how infinitely lucky I am that those panels are screwed on, rather than riveted on!

And out the side door it goes!

Wall Skin drama

Bummer...just found that the wall skins are also tack welded under the windowsills!  Which means, I will probably be cutting through the sheet metal with the angle grinder.  And that also means removing. every. single. window!  *Sigh*

More rubber floor demo...

More rubber floor demo...and 1st plywood piece photos!

And a new lost tooth...but not from any tools!

The aluminum strips of trim, not only aided in water seeping under the rubber flooring, but was an absolute BEAR to get out!  Nora worked on lots of it with her brute strength!

Stella was, and is, our shop-vac girl.  

Here, she is sucking up the detritus from demo-ing the 1st plywood flooring piece.

Those wood screws are thick and rusted.  We used graduated sizes of square bits and Philips bits, then after that we just had to pry the suckers out with a pry-bar and mallet!

After an hour or so...we got ONE piece of plywood up!!  Woohoo!!

Last Bus seat is coming out!

Getting the LAST bus seat out!

This was exhausting! We removed and hauled out all the rest of the rubber flooring, the last bus seat and all the rest of the trim! Then we pried up one plywood sheet...which seemed to take over an hour or two!
Thank you, Mom, for staying a bit longer than planned to get that far.  Sadly, she leaves us to go on a roundabout trip back to her home.  She is a wonderfully hard worker & we are super thankful for the time she donates to our project! 

Huge THANK YOU to the lovely Lily for taking on Zephyr duty for the duration!

So close to making my goal for the week. 

It's a family project!

Our 4 year old daughter, Stella, is a pro with the drill!

All but 2 seats out!

We have now had the bus home for 1 week (as of yesterday) and all but 2 seats are OUT!!!! I am thrilled with this, my goal was 1 week for seat demo & I nearly made it! The only ones remaining are the driver's seat & the fold up bench seat by the side emergency exit door. Ran out of time and energy to get those out today. 

Also weighed one of the seats that are the most common in our bus. 
(We have 1 four legged, 1 four legged folding, 2 that were just cushions attached to the rear engine housing and then 22 - 2 legged, floor bolted and side rail bolted.) 

The 22 - 2 legged variety each weigh 44 pounds. That is 968 pounds of bus seats that I muscled out by myself! Which means that the other style of seats & the 2 front partitions put my bus seat weight well over 1000 pounds. I don't know if we will reuse any seats, or just frames, or cushion, so some of that particular weight may come back on the bus. 

I am happy to report that the Performax brand cut off wheels from Menards worked splendidly and never fell apart or behaved at all unsatisfactorily. 
http://www.menards.com/main/tools-hardware/power-tool-accessories/abrasives/10-pack-4-5-cut-off-wheel-for-metal/p-2012160-c-10154.htm
The one DeWalt cut off wheel fell apart from its inner ring after 13 bolt heads. I have no idea if that is normal, good or bad, but I prefer NOT to have crap flung around from power tools.



We peeled back some of the flooring up front to see if we could get a little idea of how the subfloor is up there. It seemed in okay shape, but we couldn't see under the plywood, and it was really only a 12 inch section.
Nora bustin' out the big guns with the pry bar.


Found some rust nasties when we popped off the front edge covering.


We also started getting all those letters and reflective tape off, for eventual painting.
Lily & Nora using the razor blade scrapers.


The next goal is to demo the floor by April 27th.

Time to get those seats out!

All right. After only being able to remove 2 bolts via socket and ratchets, I had to bust out the angle grinder. Covered myself from head to toe, man those sparks do go everywhere!


Ratchets at work.



Stubborn rusted bolts!
Topside


Bottom side



Ready to get down to business



In the middle of one leg


DECAPITATED!!



Not bad for $9.99 on clearance at Tractor Supply Company! JobSmart brand. DeWalt Cutoff Wheel...only lasted through 13 bolt heads. Time to go shopping for non name brand cut off wheels!!



BAM!! First seat out! Woohoo!!! Feels soooooo good!!!! (And I found an old mouse nest in the first seat I took out. Will be keeping my eyes open for any other freeloaders!)




Then I got a second seat out & 1 is halfway & 1 is 1/4 way! Time for celebratory Ice Cream!!!

Bus Tour!!

The Entrance



Console



Less than 100K miles!  Woohoo!!



Lots of places for new switches in the future!



Air Ride seat...just needs a new slipcover!



View toward the back.



Down the aisle, toward the back.



Zephyr approves!



The Rear Engine compartment.



Thayne found his new favorite place!



Stella & Mommy like it, too!

The Skoolie Adventure Begins!

After many months of planning, dreaming, screen shopping and perusing all the awesome information on the internet & especially on the Skoolie.net forum, checking out countless research books from the library & buying a library's worth from Amazon...

WE BOUGHT A BUS!!!!

The Family
My husband, Royce, is in Afghanistan, so I, Sarah, will be doing this project mostly by myself, with help from our 5 kids, (Lily, Nora, Thayne, Stella & Zephyr) and hopefully more of our family and friends. It should be an interesting adventure!

The BusShe is a 2001 International AmTran RE with a T444E engine. Her Allison transmission is either an AT542 or an AT545, not quite clear on that. She is a bit shorter than 40 ft by 8 ft wide. And she only has 99K miles on her.
We shopped for buses all over the place. Apparently none of the school districts around us auction off their buses, or not at this time when we were in need. They mostly trade in to new school bus distributors when buying their new replacements and the distributors re-sell their old ones. Unfortunately that knocked our year and style of choice up to about $12K. So, we happened to find THE one, through eBay. And only an hour and a half away. We did pay more than we were hoping. I think, in our area and for our timing, we definitely beat the $12K! Our bus was $5300 with $371 Tax. I hope this is as good a deal as I think it is. 

The OutsideWe have a mechanic who will check out the engine. So far, to my layman's eyes, all looks and sounds good. 
She has surface rust on the undercarriage, where it has gotten under the spray coating on the chassis, which is now flaking off. I will be scraping off as much as I can, then hopefully pressure washing her, applying Ospho, or similar and painting/sealing the underside.
I'll be repainting the roof with BusKote, eventually installing some decking as needed to support PV arrays. 
Her NSBY paint will hopefully be covered in the next few weeks with silver paint, with green and blue stripes.



The InsideI am pleased to find that her walls and ceilings are screwed on and not riveted...unless rivets have Philips heads! The floors have quite a few (read: million) screws in them also! 
I had my first attempt at removing the bolts for the seats today. My 8 year old was not in the mood in the sudden 35 degrees of today. I'll try again tomorrow with my 11 year old and 55 degrees! Used a ratchet for stabilizing one side & air powered ratchet on the other, but couldn't get the coordination figured out. Weather and impatient little ones didn't mix well with that trial! The flooring came today, so I am eager to get up the old, insulate, cover & lay down the new!

Hoping to continue forward a little every day.

This is my latest CAD iteration!