How to remove decals from your bus conversion
One of the very first things you can do on a bus conversion is remove the decals. It seems like a simple task but those decals have likely been adhered to your bus for quite some time. Here are three different methods you can use to remove them from your school bus. 1. Razor Blades Believe it or not, a simple razor blade will get you far when it comes to removing decals. It takes a little extra time and elbow grease, but they get the job done. No matter how small your budget, razor blades are only a few dollars. We recommend using a razor blade scraper because it…
Wall Panel and Window Removal Tips
Removing the wall panels and windows may seem like a pretty daunting task to someone who has never done a job like this before, but I’m here to tell you that it is very easy and doable even for the absolute beginner bus converter! Wall Panels Whether you take the wall panels or the windows out first depends on the way your bus is put together. You should be able to figure it out pretty easily by looking at it. If your windows are hanging over your wall panels, then take your windows out first. If you are lucky, the wall panels are fastened to your bus with simple Phillips…
What You Need to Know About Ceiling Panel Removal
Removing ceiling panels seems like it would be fairly straightforward. However, there are some things that are good to know before getting started. There are two common types of fasteners that hold up the ceiling panels in a bus. The one you hope for is Phillips head screws. Ours, thank goodness, were Phillips. Then there are rivets, which are a little trickier to deal with. This is also true for the side panels underneath of the windows, but we’ll get to that in a later post. Remove interior lights and panels above windows. The first panels that we had to remove were the ones that are above the windows. We…
Bus Conversion Heater Removal
All buses have at least one heater in the rear, with some having two. Most people converting a school bus remove the back heaters. The reason for this is mainly that they are large and unnecessary. They also can get in the way of the interior design and layout of the bus. There is no reason to keep the rear one unless you are planning on having seating toward the rear of the bus. Most conversions keep the seating area toward the front. Remove Metal Casing around Coolant Lines The first thing we did was remove the metal casing that was around the hoses that ran from the front of…
Bus Conversion Seat Removal Tips
Removing bus seats sounds like something that would be fairly straightforward. However, it can be a lot harder than it sounds. There are a lot of tools involved and it’s always helpful to have a system in place. In this article, we will discuss how we removed our seats and what tools were used. We started at the back of the bus so that we could begin throwing the seats out of the rear emergency exit. The back door is wider than the front door and required less maneuvering. Bolt Removal When it came time to remove the bolts, we had one person inside of the bus with an impact…
9 Tips for First Time School Bus Drivers
Driving a school bus seems extremely intimidating if you’ve never driven one before. It is definitely a learning curve but if you apply the following tips, you’ll be on the road in no time. 1. Check all of the mirrors. Make sure that the mirrors are properly adjusted before every trip. Every mirror is like another set of eyes. Make sure to get a good idea of where your blind spots are and what your range of vision is. A good rule of thumb while driving is to check every mirror every 5 seconds and before you slow down. 2. Make sure to perform pre and post trip inspections. Pre & Post…
6 places to buy a school bus for cheap
We know that there is a large number of resources out there for where to buy a bus. Through our research, we are going to list the best places we’ve found. But before the list of places to buy a school bus, we also want to throw out a couple of extra tidbits of advice to keep in mind during your bus search: 1. Look to the south when buying a bus. The northern regions get a lot of snow in the winter. This leads to heavy salts on the roads in these areas. While this is great for improving driving conditions, it really speeds up the process of auto-body…
7 Biggest Challenges of Converting a School Bus
Converting a school bus is a huge undertaking and we’re learning that there are a lot of challenges. We’ve put together a list of the biggest challenges of our bus conversion so far and solutions to overcome them. 1. Time management issues We’ve had plenty of days where we have a plan of what we want to get done. Then we get to the bus and realize that there is a ton of prep that needs to be done and before we know it the day is gone. One way we can try to avoid this pitfall is by coming up with a weekly action plan. I think that if…
5 Mistakes to Avoid when Buying a School Bus for a Bus Conversion
Are you considering buying a school bus to convert? When we decided to buy our first bus, we were way too excited and overlooked parts of the bus that were concerning, to say the least. We came up with a list of 5 mistakes that we made in the process of buying our first bus. The first bus that we bought ended up having so many problems that we had to get rid of it altogether and completely start over. It was horrible at the time but a lot of valuable lessons were learned from that situation! That being said, we decided to share our mistakes so you don’t have to…
6 Reasons Why We Chose to Live in a Skoolie
Making the decision to live full-time in a skoolie was definitely not easy. We really had to weigh out the pros and cons of what we were doing. After months of serious emotional struggle, we finally came to the realization that this big life-change was a no-brainer. The way that the stars lined up really pushed us in this direction and we’re very happy it did! Outlined below are the main reasons why we decided that this lifestyle was for us. 1. We accidentally discovered that we prefer minimalism. A couple of years ago when we had baby number two, our daughter Avery, we began to feel quite claustrophobic in…
