MCI Bus Conversion RV Motorhome

Bus Conversion Page 5

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Miss Terry Gets A Kitchen

While at the Escapees RV Club www.escapees.com North Ranch RV park we started working on building a kitchen in the bus for Miss Terry. We are the perfect couple - she loves to cook and I love to eat. But just as any artist or craftsperson needs the proper tools, my pretty wife requires the proper setting to create her culinary masterpieces. Truth be told, Terry could whip up a delicious meal on a campfire with no more than frying pan, a couple of eggs, and whatever else the cooler holds. But I figure than anybody who can both put up with me and feed me deserves the best I can provide.

Tim, Terry, and I spent a week or so building a kitchen counter with storage cabinets below, installing the stove and sink, and setting up a separate counter for the microwave/convection oven. By the time the job was finished, all three of us were tired, but proud of the final result. With Tim’s help we also repaired a hinge on a baggage bay door, installed a window over the kitchen sink, and several other jobs that made the bus more comfortable and ready for fulltime use.

Quite a few people stopped by to check out the job and offer a suggestion or two. Miss Terry is quite a cook, and having a well laid out kitchen is important to her.

We roughed in the counters, and set a stainless steel double sink into a five foot long butcher block counter top. The counter butts up to a three burner Wedgewood Vision range with oven. Next to the oven is another small counter topped with white vinyl, upon which sets a Sharp Carousel microwave/convection oven. Since we both appreciate a light, airy coach, a small window was installed centered over the sink. We have yet to install shelving and doors in the counters. A three speed reversible Fantastic fan is mounted in the ceiling over the kitchen.

We were never happy with the Dometic refrigerator in our previous motorhome and had decided early in our planning to install a house style refrigerator in the bus. Since we are fulltime RVers, living out of a Coleman ice chest was quite a challenge, but we managed for three months. Then we really got into style, adding a new 18.5 cubic foot Maytag house style refrigerator that is very energy efficient and has a much larger capacity than anything we have ever seen in a production model RV.. Fitting it through the bus door was quite a challenge, and involved a couple of teenage helpers with strong backs. The fit was so tight that I don't think we could have managed if the refrigerator had just one more layer of paint. The refrigerator is powered by either shore power when we are plugged into utilities, or our Heart inverter when we are on the road or dry camping. If we spent weeks at a time boondocking, the choice of a house style refrigerator might not have worked. But since we do not usually spend more than a night or two in succession dry camped, it works for us. The secret to having a house style unit is a strong battery bank to supply power to the inverter. The extra weight the batteries add is no problem for our bus, and we have plenty of room in the bays.

We had originally planned to go with a side aisle design, but after getting the refrigerator inside the bus (no small feat in itself) we decided that it took up too much room with our original floor plan. Miss Terry made some quick modifications to her drawings and we ended up with a more conventional center aisle design that leaves us with a very roomy interior.

When we built the bathroom, we roughed in a closet in the bedroom on the curb side. We next built a second closet on the street side of the bedroom, and built in the Splendide washer/dryer combination in the hallway.

This is a work in progress, and we still have a lot left to do. But we are getting there. In less than one year, on a very limited budget, we have managed to get the bus livable and are fulltiming in it. We think that is quite an accomplishment. Everyone who has seen the bus has commented on the light, airy feeling of it, something that can be credited to Terry’s hours of designing and re-designing the floor plan. It is really starting to feel like home.

We saved a small fortune on the bus conversion project by doing the work ourselves with the help of a few friends, and by shopping the many RV surplus outlets in and around Elkhart, Indiana. For a story on the money saving opportunities in Elkhart, see my article Building Your Bus On A Budget which was originally published in the Gypsy Journal www.GypsyJournal.net and later in Bus Conversions magazine www.BusConversions.com.

I have to admit that we are rather proud of ourselves. In just over a year, the bus conversion project has grown from an empty shell to a fully equipped comfortable home on wheels. We are far from done, but all systems are in and working and we are enjoying our coach as we travel and continue to work on it.

Other Upgrades

The toilet and stainless steel bathroom sink are enclosed in a separate room for privacy, while the bathtub is in the hallway across from the water closet. The bathroom counter is covered in easy to maintain white vinyl, and mirrors take up the wall behind the counter and a side wall. A three bulb light bar is mounted above the bathroom counter, adding to the light supplied by an overhead flourescent fixture. One of our three Fantastic fans is mounted in the ceiling of the water closet, while another one is in the hallway near the tub.

One hassle we wanted to avoid was having to move whenever we were parked someplace and needed propane. Our last motorhome had a large horizontal propane tank, and several times we had to stow everything away and break camp to drive to a propane dealer when we were staying in one spot for several weeks. In the bus, we bypassed that problem by installing two portable thirty pound tanks hooked to an automatic regulator. Now all we have to do is disconnect one or both tanks and take them in for refilling with our pickup instead of moving the coach. The twin tanks supply LPG to our stove, furnace and hot water heater. The 10 gallon Suburban water heater will also run off of 120 volt when plugged into shore power.

We had installed a Suburban gas furnace, and later picked up a nice propane catalytic heater. If we had known how well the space heater was going to work, we may well have not installed a furnace at all. While the furnace requires 12 volt power for the fan, and can drain a set of batteries overnight if you are dry camped in cold weather, the space heater requires no electricity, only a window or vent open a crack for ventilation. It also is much quieter than a furnace, since there is no fan noise. On some very cold evenings in Michigan this Spring, where snow fell on us as late as May, the space heater kept us warm and cozy.

We also added a layer of 2 1/2 inch thick Styrofoam sheeting to the inside of the roof, on top of the space age insulation supplied to us by Radiant Technologies. We then covered the Styrofoam with fan fold extruded foam insulation. The finishing touch will be sheets of 1/8 inch plywood sheathed in Ozonite fabric from RV Surplus Supplies in Elkhart, Indiana.

While in Michigan I began polishing the stainless steel on the lower half of the bus. Years of road grime had dulled the finish to a matte, and we really wanted to have the mirror finish we have seen on so many bus conversions. I knew going in that this was going to be a nasty, dirty job, but I had no idea just how nasty or dirty! Using jewelers rouge and a borrowed polisher I went to work, and after a false start or two, managed to get the front of there bus looking really good. Those who have done this job told me it is at least a full week or more worth of work. Michigan went from unseasonably cold to unbearably hot in a matter of days, and I found myself caught in the middle. Hopefully the high temperatures will abate soon and I can finish polishing the stainless steel.

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Also outside the bus, we replaced several marker light fixtures that were no longer working, and mounted a porch light over the door. We have four high intensity "scare" lights that we will be mounting on the front and back of each side to warn away anyone who might come prowling around when we are boondocked somewhere, not that we have ever been bothered. These lights will be wired so we can turn them on either from the living room or bedroom. We also added another coat of the Kool Seal elastomeric coating to the roof for enhanced insulation.

A lot of buses, including ours, do not have a fuel gauge. They are expected to run on a regular route with pre-planned fuel stops along their route. For RV use, this presents problems. The simple solution is to use a dip stick and check the fuel level often. We have a 144 gallon tank, giving us a comfortable range of about 900 miles. But for peace of mind, I still wanted a fuel gauge. We picked up a gauge and sending unit on a visit to Caylor Supply in Rantoul, Kansas, and I installed it in a couple of hours one afternoon.

We still have a lot of work to do, but at this point the bus is capable of carrying us comfortably wherever we may wish to go. We have been somewhat hampered by funds, doing a bit here and there as discretionary cash becomes available. We have been very lucky to have friends, family and a couple of very understanding RV parks allow us to work while we were visiting, since we are fulltimers with no base location to work on the project from. Without the help of Terry’s parents, Pete and Bess Weber, and our friends Tim and Ann, much of the hard labor would not have been done. They all pitched in several times to help us, even traveling out of their way to meet up with us to complete some of the work.

Next on our list are running electrical wiring for as yet to be installed rooftop AC units and a ceiling fan over the bed, installing the finished ceiling panels, installing drawers and finishing up the kitchen cabinets and bedroom closets, and hanging a louvered swinging door of some type between the kitchen and hallway to give an extra measure of privacy when someone is taking a bath. While we were at North Ranch, Miss Terry was relaxing in the tub one evening while I worked at the computer. Someone knocked on the door and I absentmindedly called "Come in," leaving my pretty lady scrambling for a towel as she retreated quickly to the bedroom.

I have always been notorious for my lack of handyman skills, but Miss Terry is comfortable with tackling any project. Under her tutelage, and with the help of some very wonderful people, we have found the conversion project to be a fun job that has been well within our combined abilities. There have been some challenges, some real frustrations, and a time or two we thought we were in over our heads. But we are learning that while converting a bus is an intimidating project when taken as a whole, if we break it down into smaller chores it is not bad at all.

During some phases of a bus conversion project you can spend a lot of time and money, and while it adds to your overall safety and comfort, not all of it shows. A fair amount of what we have done lately fits into that category.

While we were in Arizona over the winter, we had six new tires put on, as well as new brakes on the drive and tag axles. While we would have been just as happy with Yokohama or Toyo tires, or any of the other imports we have heard good reports on, we actually found a great deal at a Goodyear dealer and went with new Goodyear tires on the front (steering) axle and dual on the drive axle. Since our front tires were still in very good condition, we moved them back to the tag axle. The new tires and brake job really add to our feeling of safety going down the highway.

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