What is the average height that most of you raise your roof? Not sure what the height on an mc9 is....i remember hearing 11ft somewhere.
Anyways, i am looking into raising the roof, but i also dont want to have clearance issues in underpasses. Just interested into how much room i have to work with pretty much.
we raised our roof to 12ft 1inch, plus the Dometic low profile airs (9.5 inches). Overpasses so far haven't been the issue. The issue for us has been simply the tree branches that are to low :(, which is even worse at night when you can't see the branches coming.
God bless,
John
Over the years through trial and error the optimal raise on an MCI has been determined to be 8 inches. People have went 10 and 12 inches, others 4 or 6. Less than 8 inches you are not gaining much for your labor. Over 8 inches and the bus starts to look out of proportion.
Hi Peach,
Keep the tall guy's in the front of your bus. ;D Your floor slopes down from the rear to the front. "The theater effect"
8" is usually looks right. Like others have said, "Proportion" & "Overpasses" is important if your planning roof airs.
Nick-
For me, 13'6" minus a few inches fudge factor minus bus height is how much I raise. 3 times now, turned out to be a simple 1 foot...
I was keen to raise my roof by the minimum amount in order keep the vehicle looking as 'normal' as possible, (ie. everything in proportion, as has already been said). This was more of an issue on mine for two reasons - firstly, I was raising the roof above the windows (actually above the sidewalls entirely) in order not to disturb the side skins at all. Secondly, the sides of my bus are curved inwards rather than simply vertical as on MCIs etc. Aesthetics demanded that I continue this curve on the roof raise, which for various reasons made the steelwork much more difficult as the roof raise got higher.
I found it very difficult to calculate how much extra headroom I needed whilst standing underneath the standard roof, although this might be partially because the roof itself is also very curved on my bus. I originally decided that a 5" raise would be sufficient, then later panicked and made it 7". I now wish I had made it 9" or so, as the extra couple of inches would give me much more latitude in sorting out the floor covering and ceiling panels without feeling I was using up my valuable headroom (I am 6'+ tall - for someone shorter it wouldn't be an issue at all).
There is a plaque on the dashboard of my bus telling the driver that the height is 10'9", which means that it is presumably now 11'4" I'm sure that is quite modest really, but I am very concious that there are two 13' (in the centre) bridges not far from where I live. I certainly won't be having any roof airs on my bus (horrible looking things), but I will be adding various things up there eventually which will add a number of inches(awning mechanism, solar panels, roof patio etc).
Jeremy
We raised our MC-8 8". Most people do not even notice the raise unless we tell them. MC-8 OEM specs is 10'10" so we are now 11'6" We have basement air, so no roof airs to consider when approaching low overheads, however we do have a manual crank-up sat. antenna that is 8 1/2" in retracted position. This makes out total height 12'2 1/2". We figure the bus height at 12'6"
After raising our roof 8", we lowered the interior ceiling 5" giving us an overall interior height increase of 3". This gives us adequate headroom and all our AC ductwork and electrical conduit is in the 5" space. The rest of this space was filled with foam insulation. Just "our way" YMMV Jack