Removing the Angled Panels and the Wiring Therein

Skoolie School II

Hello again! It's obvious, if you look at the archive bar, how little I really keep up with this blog. It's also obvious, if you've read the few posts I have so far, that our bus's construction is much farther progressed than what I'd documented in the one and only Skoolie School post.

So in an effort to devote more time to the blog (because I have so much to talk about!), here I am, devoting more time and effort. Haha! Anyway...

Removing the Angled Panels

So there are lots, and lots, and lots of these square-head screws holding the bus together (figure 1). Once again, you'll be using a power drill with a square bit (fig. 2) to remove them. 

figure 1

fig. 2 *

Now, don't get all crazy and remove all the screws. The ceiling would fall down on your head, and that would not be good. No, you must reverse engineer your bus. To begin, we're only removing the screws in the angled pieces that run above the window for the length of the bus (fig. 1). Go ahead and remove all the screws on all the angled pieces while you're at it (fig. 3). It's not a bad idea to hang onto these screws, just in case. You never know...

fig. 3

You may have noticed, while studying these images, that the angled panels overlap one another. Remove only the first panel on either side of the bus (fig. 4), the panel that's closest to the rear exit.

fig. 4

Now that the panel is removed, you can see where the wires for the rear lights are connected (fig. 5). Notice the big, white plugs? Those plugs connect bundles of wire from the rear lights to bundles of wire from the front of the bus. Don't unplug these just yet!

fig. 5

We're going to label these wires so, should we need to in the future, we can plug these back together without the guesswork. Observe (fig. 6) below. Each one of these plugs connected to a wire - or bundle of wires - with a matching plug. Before you unplug them, make a duct tape tag for each side of each plug, and code them with matching numbers, symbols, whatever. Then you can match them easily, if need be.

fig. 6 *

So it would be nice if that was that...but it's not. Along the sides are a bunch of speakers and emergency lights (of which I don't have a proper picture). Take your trusty drill and square bit, and remove all the screws. Go ahead and let them dangle down (fig. 7).

fig. 7

Now go back and unplug them all (fig. 8). Don't worry about labeling these wires, unless you're planning on wiring them into your skoolie, which we are not.

fig. 8

Once you're done, you should be able to remove the angled panels one by one, moving from the back of the bus towards the front, since that's how they overlap (fig. 9).

fig. 9

We are not keeping these, since we're going to do a more finished, home-y ceiling inside, and these have a rather institutional look to them. Off to the scrap yard with 'em, and the money will go back towards the bus later (fig. 10).

fig. 10

With the panels down, you'll be able to see that the plastic wire conduit is being held up by little clip thingies. Un-clip the clip thingies (fig. 11. This is the technical terminology. Hope you can keep up).

fig. 11

Nate coiled all this conduit up and set it at the front of the bus (figs. 12 & 13), and there it remains. We're still hesitant to mess with the pneumatic mechanics above the door, so he bundled up the wires just on the side of it. We'll deal with all that business inside the door later.

fig. 12

fig. 13

So that's that for now. We are quite farther than this, but documenting every little thing that is being done is harder than it seems. There's lots of things to go into, and a few I forgot out of order. So next Skoolie School, I will probably actually move backward, since I forgot to document the business with removing the flashing light from the top of the bus, deactivating the emergency buzzer at the rear door, and getting the bus up on jack stands. We'll get there eventually...

* Photo by Aubri Porter, aubriporter.com

So Long, Seats

Every day or so, one of us will look at the other and say, "Babe! Guess what?"

"What?"

"We got a bus!" 

Cue the happy dance.

How you doin'?

Seriously, though, we're super psyched about starting this skoolie conversion. Nathaniel particularly so, because he confessed to me a few months ago that he really missed having a hobby to work on. With the bus, he can work on something he truly enjoys without feeling like it's time misspent; after all, he's technically working on our future house. So it's enjoyable and productive. Win win!

Since the bus arrived, he's been heading down to the backyard to work on the bus whenever it fits into our schedule. He's had some help from a friend, but is figuring out that certain things he thought needed two people to get done, could actually be done by him alone. Whatever work gets done on this bus will be documented in this blog, in the hopes that others looking to convert a bus to a skoolie will find some valuable resources here.

I will note that this post has been in the making for a few weeks; it's hard to find time to do a tutorial blog while simultaneously keeping two preschoolers and a baby alive and fed and not living in chaos.

Parking the Bus

It might seem a little superfluous to start out with a section on parking, of all things, but here's why:

Here's the takeaway from this: if anyone involved doubts that the ground is solid enough to drive on, maybe you should reconsider ;) Just sayin'.

Anyway, with a few minor hiccups, Nate eventually got the bus parked out behind our place (with our landlord's blessing, of course). All the tires are currently resting on plywood sections to avoid dry rot. We're soon going to be investing in a bottle jack and some jack stands so we can raise the wheels off the ground, but for now, this is an acceptable solution.

Removing the Seats

The Bolts

In our bus, there are 24 seats total - twelve on each side. As you can see in the photo below, the steel seat frames for our bus have legs that run up the center aisle of the bus. The other side of every seat rests on a metal ledge that runs the length of the bus, below the windows. In this particular photo, you can see the wheel well that rises under the seat; this will be something we need to take into consideration once we start designing the floor layout. Anyhow, the bolts on the legs go clear through the floor and emerge on the undercarriage. The bolts on the sides simply anchor the seat to the ledge and nothing more.

Top Left: Bolt behind the seat, fastened to rail. Top Center: a seat not yet disassembled. Top Right: Floor bolts.
Bottom: The floor bolts as seen from under the bus

Seat rails on the left, the flipped-up bench on the right. Notice the bolt holding the rails to the bus in the picture at right.

The Benches

So in the left image, you can clearly see the rails and one leg of the seat frame, and the plywood, cushion, and vinyl bench in the image to the right. The bench here has been flipped up, and you can see the two c-clamps that hold the bench to the curved seat rail. The rusty piece, screwed to the plywood, swivels to latch the bench to the rail. The rail in turn rests on a ledge that runs the length of the bus, about 10” off the ground. Looking at our first photo, it's hard to see this ledge per se, since it's obscured by the mound of the wheel well. However, if you look closely at the second pic, you can sort of see this ledge under the left side of the rail. Nate used a power hand drill with a Phillips head bit to unscrew these three pieces of hardware. He stacked all the bench seats in the back of the bus to be reused later. The foam under the uncomfortable vinyl appears to be in good shape, judging from the bits we can see through the drainage holes in the plywood, and should be great for couches and seats in the future. We'll scrap some of the steel seat rails and put the money back into the bus, but we're hanging onto a few in case we can reuse them in the future.

Images via Here, Here and Here

Two People

Nate and his friend Eric first tried removing the bolts that held the legs to the floor with a breaker bar and a pneumatic (air-powered) impact wrench with a hex socket attachment. The impact wrench was powered by an air compressor similar to the one shown here. The idea here was that one person would hold the bolt still with the breaker bar, and the second person would use the impact wrench to loosen and remove the bolt. I should mention here that while some of the tools Nate uses in working on the bus are from his personal collection, he also has the benefit of borrowing tools from the business where he works. It can certainly be more economical to rent or borrow things than to buy, if it's a tool you won't be using all that often.

They employed two different approaches to leg bolt removal, but each proved less than satisfactory.. Eric first used the breaker bar inside the bus, with the idea that he could brace the bar against the seat rails for extra leverage. Nate was under the bus with the impact wrench. This was troublesome because the rust on the bolts under the bus made them prone to getting stuck in the socket of the impact wrench. So they switched tools. With the impact gun inside the bus, it was slightly easier to loosen the bolts, but there were still inherent problems. For one, the air compressor made communication nearly impossible; it was too loud for them to speak to each other while working. Secondly, the rust was stripping the faces of the bolts, rendering the breaker bar useless; you can't hang on to a hex bolt if it's suddenly round. Third, both methods created a good bit of rust dust that showered the person working under the bus.

Anyway, between the two of them, they removed as many bolts as possible in this second fashion. There were still bolts remaining in the floor that couldn't be removed because of the stripped heads, so they returned to them later with a slightly different method.

Having done as much as they currently could to remove the floor bolts, both guys went back inside the bus, each armed with a 1/2" hand ratchet and a box wrench, which you can see in Nathaniel's hands here. They set to work removing the bolts mounting the seat rails to the ledge, holding the nut still with the box wrench and using the ratchet to loosen the nut. They loosed the bolts for ten seats, then returned to the stripped floor bolts. One person went under the bus with a vice grip to hold the bolt still, while the second person used the impact wrench inside.

By the time both guys were ready to call it quits for the night, they had removed ten whole seats. The remaining fourteen were left for Nathaniel to revisit to a few days later.

One Person

After several days, Nathaniel returned to the bus solo with the intention of finishing the removal of the seats. Each seat had two bolts attaching the rails to the ledge: one bolt positioned behind the back of the seat, and the other "inside" the rails, only visible when the bench is flipped up or removed (see the picture of the bench seat above). For the bolt behind the seat, the box wrench and hand ratchet worked fine. However, the bolts towards the front of the rails were a little trickier to remove in this way, so he used the box wrench with a power hand drill, equipped with a 1/2" socket attachment. This method would work fine for anyone, whether working alone or with help.

There were still some stripped floor bolts that the two guys hadn't removed, but being only one person, Nate had to come up with another method to handle them by himself. The method that follows is one he wishes they would have started with for ease of removal. So anyway, if you're looking to remove seats in a bus of your own, I recommend starting with this one. Using an angle grinder fitted with an abrasive cutting wheel (ACW), Nate tackled each bolt in the manner illustrated below. Word to the Wise: this will take multiple ACWs, so don't worry if you find you're using a bunch to accomplish this. That's just how it goes.

Using these tools and methods, Nathaniel was able to remove the remaining fourteen seats in one afternoon. And all by himself, too.

Ahh...it's so much easier to envision living in here now.

Next time we catch back up with the bus, it'll be to discuss some more interior demolition. We're taking this bus down to the framing and building it back up from there, so we'll be documenting how to remove the panels and beginning to make sense of all those damn wires behind them. We'll keep you posted.