MCI Bus Conversion RV Motorhome

Bus Conversion Page 2

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Our Bus

We looked at a lot of buses, everything from ancient ScenicCruisers to modern city transit buses, and finally settled on a forty foot 1976 MCI 8, the workhorse of charter and interstate bus lines for decades. The MCI 8 came powered with a 8V71 Detroit Diesel engine coupled with an Allison four speed automatic transmission, power steering, and air suspension. Our particular bus spent its working life with Gray Line Tours, making the run from Las Vegas, Nevada to the Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon. The bus was home every night, and seldom exposed to snow, which meant it had very little rust. The MCI also uses a lot of stainless steel, which helps fight rust problems often found in some other buses, such as Eagles. While a 25 year old motorhome would be long past ready for the scrap yard, we have seen many bus conversions dating from the early 1960s and even the 1950s still going strong. These machines are built to last forever it seems.

After leaving service with MCI, our bus was purchased by a gentleman who began to convert it, but quickly lost interest and ran out of time to work on it. He did manage to strip out the seats and overhead baggage compartments before selling the bus. Since it was on a day-run, the bus didn’t have a bathroom, removal of which can be a major undertaking.

Strip Show

Soon after acquiring the bus, we began stripping the interior, removing the inside metal skin and old insulation, which had years of smoke, perspiration, and dirt imbedded in it, from the sides and roof. This was a formidable task, accomplished with the aid of a power grinder, pry bars, and much elbow grease. The interior skin was held on by what seemed to be thousands of rivets, each one of which had to be ground off or drilled out.

While we were stripping the inside skin, we also removed the old linoleum floor covering, the ramp that sloped up to the floor from the entry area, and the fiberglass covering over the driver’s compartment. We pulled great piles of crud out from the fresh air intake under the floor after removing the ramp. Stripping a bus is filthy, sweaty, knuckle-skinning work, and we were more than glad when the job was over.

One major job was cutting out the old destination sign from the passenger side windshield area. Constructed of heavy steel and fiberglass, I quickly learned how handy a Dremel tool is. I went through several packages of cutting wheels, but the tiny tool managed to cut through the metal with few problems.

We hauled over a thousand pounds of metal and old insulation to the dump, as well as another 750 pounds of stainless steel and aluminum, which we took to a recycling center. We earned $63 for the aluminum and stainless, not a lot of money, but cheaper than paying to dump it.

At the same time we stripped the bus, Miss Terry applied two coats of white Seal Kote to the roof to aid in cooling. We were amazed at the effectiveness of the elastomeric material - sitting in the Texas sun, I could put my hand on the inside roof and feel a fifteen or twenty degree difference in temperature between sections that had been coated and those Terry hadn’t reached yet.

After stripping the bus, we left Texas and drove to Elkhart, Indiana to purchase some of the equipment for our conversion. Elkhart is the hub of recreational vehicle manufacturing in the United States , and several surplus stores in the Elkhart area sell RV furniture, appliances, and equipment at very deep discounted prices. By shopping these outlets, we saved at least half of what we would have paid at traditional camping stores.

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What Comes Next?

So we now have a completely stripped bus. Now what? Terry has been drawing floor plans for months, adding something here, moving something there, and discarding ideas that originally seemed good but now may not work. With the bus stripped, we are using chalk to draw our ideas out on the floor, trying to come up with the best use of the space available. One of the biggest attractions of building a bus conversion is the ability to customize it to our needs, and not have to settle for a generic floor plan some designer in a studio somewhere came up with. A designer who may have never spent a night inside an RV.

In the weeks ahead we will be covering the floor, insulating and covering the walls and ceiling of the bus, and installing our propane, electrical, and plumbing systems. Then we’ll tackle the installation of our stove, furnace, water heater, and other major components. With a lot of planning, some trial and error, and a few false starts, I’m sure, we’re well on the way.

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