Demolition - Subfloor

Removing the fasteners took sooooo long that it was such a glorious feat to take off the plywood subfloor. 

Here's our reaction to uncovering the first board ...

Click to play V I D E O: Bus Demo - Subfloor

We had been debating whether or not to pull up the floor, but we were glad at this point to do it. We found some rust towards the front, we discovered that Michael had room to move his gear shifter from the right side to the left (more on that in another post), and we generally learned more about what we were dealing with. It was a bear of a chore to lift up that sucker, but now we knew we could put a new, more soundproof floor back in.

There was also the issue of taking off the seat tracks which were welded to the center chase's metal frame. Taking them out would mean that we could lay the new subfloor more easily. But we were fearful (and pooped) that taking out those rails would be another multi-day labor. Michael asked advice on a bus conversion forum and was told it was pretty easy.

To take off the welds, we had to use two grinders. One heavy mother-effer that only Michael could handle. It was so big and solid that Michael used this nylon strap as a sort of necklace that relieved his hands of some of the weight. It had belonged to his grandfather! Back in the day, factories made their tools out of steel man! Not the aluminum and plastic we see these days! Anyway, Michael used that get as much of the welds off as he could. 

Since his grinder was so humongous and thick, however, we needed to switch to a smaller, 4" version to get in between the frame and the rail. The smaller one also let us do the job without accidentally cutting any of those cables in the center chase. We still hadn't figured out which ones were important. I think this added volumes of sweat when I was working near those cables. Michael warned that if I knicked the wrong one (e.g., the cable that carries the gas from the tank to the engine), the bus could be rendered immobile! ACK, the pressure.

Taking the welds off turned out to be not too bad of an endeavor. It took a while for me to get used to the task because I was applying too much pressure and consequently causing the grinder's engine to work harder. Michael would hear it struggle, give me tips on how to properly use it, and then give me a second-, third- and fourth chance at wielding it. By the time I finished the welds however I felt I had just gotten into a groove that I was looking around at what else I could grind off! Fun times!


Dick once again gave great advice. He has converted 5 busses and one fire engine and knows some great tricks on doing things with less effort. Once we had pried off about 4' of the track. We would bend it to about 45 degrees from the floor level and then swing it wildly from side to side. This motion used the weight of the freed portion of the track to pry off the next weld without our exerting ourselves! I was so greatful to Dick for all his help that I wanted to give him a gift to say thanks. I found a nice bottle of port but didn't know that he had been dry for so many years now! D'oh! But he was gracious and said that his wife would enjoy it. 

Demolition - Finish Floor and Fasteners

Insulation galore! This was only half of the insulation we pulled out. Dick periodically came by to advise Michael and would always leave with some sort of trash to dump or items to salvage. Needless to say, he dumped the insulation somewhere.
Dick told us about Michael's dad and how he notoriously would dump garbage in certain places around the Twin Cities. Bear, as his friends and family called him, had a beef with neighboring Scott County and made sure that his "deposits" would always sit on a roadside that was in any unincorporated city of said county. Mind you, Bear was very neat about it and would stack his trash in a tidy and tall pile. But ever opportunistic to be a thorn in the side of those on his shit list (Hmmm ... much like his progeny ...), he made sure it was the county who would have to pick up the trash.

Back to the bus ...

The existing flooring was a thick rubber glued to a plywood subfloor. Here's how our removal of the finish floor went. 

Click to play V I D E O: Floor Demo - Rubber Flooring

What a godsend the air compressor is! Before Michael had time to show me how to use the tools, I tried to use a paint scraper thinking my muscles would do the trick. Pshaw!!!! My teeny tiny mushells were no match to the power that an air hammer has!!!

After the rubber flooring, we had to find all the screws and bolts. Because we only had one air compressor, we split the work. I manually took off the screws with a screwdriver. Michael would use the air hammer to dislodge some of the ornery screws. I'd say 35% of them were like that. He also used the tool of magic to loosen these fasteners that I like to refer to as "the ticks of the construction world." 

Their round head has been notched and bent in two places to create these "teeth" that locks into the plywood. Michael first tried to drill through the head, but that took so long. Enter again the air hammer, which Michael used to tear up the wood around the bold heads. Once exposed, he had leverage to use the hammer to just chop off the head. We should have recorded these blogs sooner because we now can't remember if it took us 3 or 5 days to get all the screws off. It was a looooong time. So long, in fact, that we skipped doing all the bolts, left about 15 % still on, and tore off the plywood in frustration.

Click to play V I D E O: Bus Demo - Floor - fasteners 

Here's a little clip of the destruction that lay outside the bus after the rubber flooring was removed

Click to play V I D E O: The Destruction

Demolition - Walls and Ceiling

When we arrived at Minneapolis, I immediately phoned Michael so he could pick us up. He told us his mom would be waiting for us at baggage claim and that he would be bringing a metal chariot to pick us up outside. He said,


"Look out for a 35' bus. You can't miss it!"



I couldn't. Here is the interior of the bus when he picked us up.

We started work on the bus immediately - well ... immediately after Memorial Day. On the national holiday, Dick (Michael's dad's best friend) visited us and gave us such great advice on how to convert the bus. Invaluable advice like "save all the screws and label everything."

Save all the screws, nuts, bolts, etc.

and L A B E L everything!

Since we were going to tear down the walls (to remove the insulation and treat any rust) and then put them back up, we had to label the panels. "S" is for starboard, and the numbers started from the front of the bus and ended in the back. On the other side we used "P" for port. There was one set of things we didn't label and it bit us in the butt a month later. We didn't know that the latches for the windows were individually bored in!

We took out insulation from every pore of the bus. The ceiling frame had batt insulation within the hollow metal parts! My little fingers came in handy because I was able to get at the little pieces here and there. Michael had given up on the task and moved on to other manly things like grinding the rivets off, taking out the spare tire, and tearing off the wall panels.

Removing the rivets was a two-parter. After grinding off the rivets from the outside, we had to pop off the stems that were left within the wall frames.

This hammer, among many other tools from Uncle Frankie's workshop, came in handy in doing all the demolition.

The picture above shows the walls and ceilings demo-ed. We had toiled with the decision to take out the floor or not. We thought it would take a lot of work. Was it worth it? The condition of the existing floor was pretty good as is. Sure there were holes from the air conditioning vents we were going to take out, but we could always cover them up. Maybe it wasn't worth it to tear up the floor. We only had 3 weeks left at that point. Michael's family thought it was a lot of time, but we knew there was so much more to do.

Our Bus, the "Silverliner"

We bid on a bus through Ebay and WON!!!!

Michael is proudly posing in front of our 1978 MCI-5, which was lovingly cared for by the previous owners, a Hutterite colony in Minnsota who valued working hard as a virtue.

"Thou shalt not steal" is a popular commandment in all religions and we feel we violated this right off the bat with what we paid for it. Note that we did not literally steal it from the kind Christians. We figuratively did, however, with what we bid and in which the condition the bus is.


Who We Are
We are Michael (37) and Gigi (38) with two kids: Simone (4) and Max (2).  Michael is an active duty Coast Guard JAG and Gigi is an architect who has been promoted to stay-at-home-mom status.   Michael’s hobbies include day trading, flying, motorcycles, chess, blues, and drinking beer.  Gigi’s hobbies include knitting, crafts, blogging, and being pestiferous.  We are, as of this writing, from California.


Why a Bus
When Michael recently received orders to Florida, we were excited at seeing an area of the country (the southeast) that neither one of us had really visited before.  We decided that we’d take weekend trips to different cities and events.  The bus idea had been lurking in our minds for some time, and the moment appeared to be ripe.  We decided that now was the time to get the bus, convert it, and use it for a family mobile command center / classroom (we plan to homeschool for secular reasons) / hangout.  And busses are just plain cool. 


Why the MCI-5
While we wanted a bus, we wanted one on the smaller end of the spectrum, as we wanted to be able to navigate unfamiliar cities and access  smaller campgrounds.  We were ready to pull the trigger on a shorty school bus, but a trusted advisor recommended that we go bigger.   At 35 feet, the MC5 appears to be about the perfect fit.  

We bought MCI-5 on eBay about a month ago for $7,780, which turned out to be a steal.  The last owners were the Hutterite Church in Minnesota, who took meticulous care of it, but didn’t entirely disclose that on eBay.  As it turns out, they put 6 new tires on it, two new 24v batteries, had the Detroit shop do an out-of-frame rebuild on the 8v71 and put in a refurbished automatic transmission concurrently.  The thing indicates only $35k miles, which Michael thought was ridiculous for a 1978, and made the purchase on the presumption that the mileage was untrue.  However, when he got it to his childhood farm in MN for storage / initial build-out, he opened the marque box to scroll back and see what sort of destinations it had been to.  To his surprise, there were only two entries before the church: (i) “Flying Rifles Drill Team” and … “U.S. Navy.”  Knowing that the military tends to dispose of its vehicles before they hit 50k miles, Michael thinks this bus might actually have only 35k miles!  And, this speculation is bolstered by the fact that the thing looks like it rolled out of the factory last week.  There’s no rust, no dents, and it appears to have been kept indoors its entire life.  In all, for the purchase price, we couldn’t be happier.

Our Plan
Michael was lucky enough to finagle nearly 60 days of leave enroute to his new duty station this summer.  Apparently, his current office can’t wait to get rid of him.  So, the family is moving to the MN farm for as long as we can stand it, where Michael and friends will begin the conversion.  We will, hopefully, at least get the shell and some of the major utilities done before we head off to Florida to find a place to live before Michael has to go back to work.  

The concept is to keep it looking like a bus to the greatest extent possible so we can remain as incognito as a bus possibly can.  We even thought of leaving the “Hutterite Brethren Church” on the side as a misdirection to curious onlookers, but after Michael spent the better part of a day researching the Hutterites (Michael has two philosophy degrees and tends to get lost in research), we’ve decided to remove the exterior references to the church out of respect.  

We’ve picked the name “Silverliner” for the bus.  Silver and grey will be the themes.  Michael has long been of the aesthetic disposition that wood looks a little out of place in a motor vehicle.  And, he’s admittedly no darned good at woodworking.  So, we’re going with a metal / composites look.   Michael also plans to build a kit airplane one of these days, and to that end, recently took a class in sheet metal construction.  While we will have to delay the airplane for a while, Michael wants to practice by using some of the skills he learned in the bus instead.  For example, the overhead compartments will be built out of .025 aluminum using the same construction techniques as an aircraft wing (ribs, spars, rivets, etc.).  Gigi, the professional designer, will oversee these wild plans and will do the upholstery, select the coloring, etc.  

Without further adieu, here’s the basic floorplan.

View of Salon and Galley

View of Galley

View of Bathroom

View from Bedroom

Isn't it nice to have an architect in the family?

Here's a few camera shots to give you a better idea of the layout.

CAMERA SHOTS

ELECTRICAL CONCEPT

Here's Michael's first-stab at an electrical concept.

ELECTRICAL PLAN

This plan shows the location of the electrical outlets (AC / DC / USB)

ROOF PLAN

While it likely didn’t jump off the page at you, the floorplan above contains six “L” shapes on it, which reflect the tops of angle-iron that run floor to ceiling.  Four of them will make the four corners of our kids bunks, and the other two form the inboard corners of the bathroom.  This is planned in order to add just a little more structural integrity in the event of a mild crash.  The iron will be welded / bolted to the floor and ceiling frame, and the inner four columns will protrude through the roof by about 2 inches to support a low-profile observation deck.

The Silverliner Chronicles

Michael has found it immensely helpful and motivating to watch the videos that Mike802 (Serama555) has posted on Youtube (thanks, btw!).  He’s watched each one numerous times.  And so, to help others and to chronicle these adventures for posterity, we’ll be setting up a youtube channel dedicated to our Silverliner project.  We’ve completed an intro video and are nearing completion of the first instructional (plywood and fiberglass holding tank), so you can follow our (mis)adventures periodically.

Our Call to YouWe are calling on the bus nut community for guidance.  We’re a family of four on a single income, so we’re not able to drown the project in cash and hope for a good result, or even to “hire it done.”  We’re predisposed to doing the conversion ourselves for the experience, education, and gratification.  That said, we don’t want to be pennywise and pound foolish – we’re going to spend money where necessary.  And since we don’t have any experience converting busses, we appeal to you to be critical of our plans and offer course-corrections where it makes sense.

So, please chime in and tell us what you think.  We’d rather hear the voice of experience now than acquire it at a hefty price.  And reading the posts on this forum makes one thing clear: there is no better source of bus conversion wisdom than you all!