2. Workshop

The Bus

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A borrowed grinder helped a lot with bolt removal and with reshaping of existing hardware like benches and bars.
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A borrowed grinder helped a lot with bolt removal and with reshaping of existing hardware like benches and bars.

  • After shelling out the cash for our future home and with some help from my buddy Carlos we made a couple minor fence modifications and squeezed this thing into the side yard. This is a 1994 Gillig Phantom bus that's been used by the city of Fairbanks. It's got 135,000 miles to start with, and our goal is to build it into a beautiful tiny house and move into it, and then head south.
  • Here's the front view of the bus where it sits while we build it out. This is a 1994 Gillig Phantom bus that's been used by the city of Fairbanks. It's got 135,000 miles to start with, and our goal is to build it into a beautiful tiny house and move into it, and then head south.
  • As with any vehicle build, rust was prevalent here. Some of my seat bolts were accessible underneath the rig and I was able to clamp a pair of vice-grips on the nut and take the bolt out from above, but a few of them were stuck behind and above stuff where I couldn't reach or find them, and with my limited tool selection I wound up having to put some elbow grease into those ones. There were only a couple that I had to hack saw.
  • Luna loves to help, but she isn't very strong.
  • I peeked into the roof to see what's up there for insulation, and since I want to keep most of these handle bars, and a good portion of the roof is bar stock instead of insulation, I elected to keep the existing roof intact and insulate with another layer of blue board. I've got the height to do this in this bus, where I wouldn't have been able to with a lot of other buses we've checked out.
  • The teardown continues with Max helping me remove a bunch of the plastic channels from the top corners, exposing the passenger bus electrical systems that I won't be needing anymore as well as the ones that run back to the engine.
  • A borrowed grinder helped a lot with bolt removal and with reshaping of existing hardware like benches and bars.
  • A couple of spots in the floor were obviously rotten, so I put some sweat into removing the rubber floor to expose the plywood underneath.The best tool for this turned out to be a large ice chipper I had handy. You can also see a few of the handrails I've removed as well.
  • We wasted little time in getting the hammock set up and trying it out. Luna loves it, and it cemented the idea of leaving the bars in place where we can. The plywood floor is pretty poor under this thing, with a couple spots rotted clean through, but a lot of it is good enough so I just cut and patched a few chunks and we'll go with it.
  • Here's one of the rotten spots in the plywood. I'm sure this rot will continue despite my patching, but we won't be driving this thing in wet conditions near as much as it used to see, so hopefully it'll last us a long time before we need to address floor integrity.
  • After cutting and chiselling out the rotten patches, I cut some plywood to fit and then coated everything with waterproofing as best I could and slapped it all together with plenty of goop in the seams.
  • Here's the floor post sealing, with all the holes patched.
  • To help keep the elements from freely flowing through whatever holes I didn't get patched, I threw down a vapor barrier before dropping in my insulation. I also used some floor leveler on a couple really badly uneven spots in the plywood, which you can see under the plastic just at the front of these wheel wells.
  • I insulated the floor using blueboard. This stuff is made to be buried with rocks and stuff on top of it, so we went with the assumption that it'll hold up to being sandwiched between plywood and walked on, and we didn't use any furring strips. The hammock stays up throughout construction.
  • Here Tracy cuts in a few of the smaller pieces of insulation while I work on laying down the plywood.
  • We have elected to remove the rear and use the space, so I built out a bit of a platform here to expand our bathroom. I didn't build it all the way across the stairs because we have a few ideas for using this space and I wasn't sure I'll want it closed in just yet. I may modify this down the road.
  • Here's the completed insulated floor, and more of our friends dropping in to help out.
  • The walls have a nice solid track built into them for the old seats and it comes in handy for attaching walls, but the bolts are a bit proprietary so here I'm grinding a few bolts down to fit into the track and hold my framing.
  • Apparently there's a lumber shortage going on right now and nobody has 2x2s anymore, so to keep my walls lighter I'm making my own on the table saw.
  • I framed up the first walls around the port wheel well. This will be a closet, and I also may put a washer in here down the road so I'll need it to be framed up solidly. I'm avoiding putting any weight at all on the wheel well which is just sheet metal, but the track on the wall is beefy and the floor should take the rest of the weight easily enough.
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