Problems stripping your bus?

[JackConrad]

  I am working on another articvle for MAK. The question is "What problems did you have when stripping youir coach and how did you overcome them?"  Jack

[H3Jim]

The over head luggage racks were  seemingly one piece and about three hundred lbs each.  I ended up removing about 500 fasteners per side, undiging it like a jigsaw puzzle, and resorting to cutting off some pieces with a sawzall.

The chair rails were actually easy, as it was just fastened with a 2 1/2 inch screwe every foot or so.

The bathroom was fiberlgass and glued to the floor, some of it is still there under the bed and cabinets.  It came apart and out via untold fasteners and a saw.  I was getting smarter, just cut things out as I didn't really need to save any of it.

Generall it was persistence combined with a curiosity of how it was put together that overcame everything.

Not really challenging like the MCI bathrooms.

[travelingfools]

Im in the process as we speak...so far the only snafo was the overhead luggage rack at the seam where the front and back were joined/scabbed...pop rivited together. The first side sucked as it was a learning experience, the second side was easy wit the help of a sawzall. Taking off the stainless deflectors on the floor from the heat today. The little screws attatching it to the floor are a pain, but are comming out ok. THe next project will be stripping the vynil floor.

[Nick Badame Refrig/ACC]

Hi Jack,

The biggest problem that I had was removing the restroom...

The walls were not a problem, just the stainless floor and the tank. My helper and I spent a whole day removing the inside walls, vanity, water tank,

and comode. Next, it took an entire day to remove the 4 stainless bolts for the holding tank. Those two rear ones were the bugger..well, rear if

you are in the engine compartment looking forward. We exhausted all our options with, sawsalls, wrenches, and drills until we gave in and used the

oxy & acetylene cutting torch which I didn't want to do because of the wood floor and all the grease around the rear at the time.

Good Luck with the artical
Nick-

[Jerry Liebler]

Jack,
     While not problems, there are a few things I encountered in 'stripping' my bus that deserve mention in an article such as you are writing.  The floor covering was asbestos filled linoleum so wearing a good mask and keeping the windows open were important for safe removal.  Patching all the fastener holes in the 'firewall' above and in front of the engine was, I felt, important.  I used high temperature RTV Silicone to glue on lots of pennies that I had found in the heater ducts. 
Regards
Jerry 4107 1120

[Hi yo silver]

Jerry brings up an important point.  In my opinion, even more important than a fire detection or suppression system in the engine bay, is effectively maintaining a fire resistant barrier between the engine compartment and the living quarters. 

When there is a fire in an enclosed space, that area becomes pressurized to some degree.  Heat and smoke will be forced through any opening in that firewall or partition.  That's why openings in fire rated partition walls are required by National Fire Protection Association codes to be sealed with an approved material.  There are a number of different sealants, some being "intumescent", i.e. a material that is engineered to expand and seal the opening tightly if it is heated.  Such sealing isn't usually specified in codes applying to single family homes.  The requirements are usually invoked in either multi-family structures or in commercial buildings having different occupancies or uses among different spaces within the same building.  An example would be office spaces or apartments in one side and manufacturing in the other side. 

The goal of the separation and sealing requirement is to contain any fire within the space of origin, which in some cases will prevent an incident from becoming a catastrophe. 

My opinions are based on my past experience as a fire and explosion investigator in the risk management industry.  I hope this is helpful.  This is a subject that's near to my heart.

Dennis

 

[Paladin]

Not sure if floor removal is part of stripping.

My bus was already stripped of all seats but the driver, the rails and rods for luggage were long gone and the lav was torn out so I went directly to the floor.
Most of the linoleum came up just by lifting or a nudge from the scraper but the plywood was a tad more challenging. I asked several people and posted the question on the forum. In the end I adopted multiple ideas into use. I back out as many of the fasteners as possible but some were really stuck. After wasting time and getting frustrated I took out my circular saw, set it to just clear the 1/2" plywood and then after marking the beams underneath I cut out the wood just going around the fasteners that remained. After that I brought out my 4" grinder and just ground off the fasteners at whatever length I could best get an angle. With this done I pried the wood up which took a little work is some sports since it's also glued down and then I removed the remaining studs from the fasteners by either twisting them out by hand or grinding them flat to the beam. A mask and glasses are recommended since there is quite a bit of really disgusting stuff lurking underneath waiting to come out to the air you breathe. What's under the wood is a whole 'nother issue!

[Songman]

The big problem I had with my RTS is that I had one of the over-the-road models that had high back buckets mounted on 8" risers above the regular floor. The seats came out easily but I tried everything to get the risers out with absolutely no luck. No matter how many hidden screws I took out, I still couldn't get anything to budge...

My solution - I sold the RTS and bought an Eagle and let the new owner figure it out! haha. The Eagle was already stripped to the flat floor!

[abebris]

I just started on mine and we had a devil of a time getting the seats out. (MC9) The bolts keeping the seats down were completely rusted (not just the ones on the floor, but the side mounts as well) and neither 4D-40 or BreakFree had any effect.  We ended up using a halligan to pry them up and out.

Within the next two weeks we'll start tackling the luggage racks and restroom, but I'm thinking that this might be a bit easier - I have a friend in the fire rescue tool business who will be bringing over his air chisels and some medium to heavy duty rescue cutters.  As the Director for a public safety agency (police & fire) I'm contemplating having a little 'training day' with some of the younger members who haven't had the opportunity to play with a lot of these toys on a regular basis!  I'll let you know how that works out...

Alex Bebris

[buddydawg]

So far the toughest thing has been the floor.  It took hours and hours to remove all of the bolts, screws and other mysterious things that held the old platforms and risers in place.  There was a fastener nearly every six inches, many of which were seized and had to be extracted.  It was very satisfying to see that flat floor when I finished, the removal was worse than compacted wisdom teeth.

[donnreeves]

I agree that floor removal was the most difficult. A good method for dealing with stuck fasteners is to use a hole saw that is slightly larger than the hold down washer. First cut a hole through a 6" square piece of 3/4" plywood, then center the hole over the fastener and screw it down. Now remove the drill bit from the hole saw and the plywood jig becomes the guide. Saw around the fastener, pull up the plywood floor, and chisel off the offending screw with the plywood plug around it.  Donn

[buddydawg]

Using the above method, I also found that if you removed the plywood wood plug from around the fastener with a chisel most of them would then back right out.

[unclewilly]

       The hardest part of stripping our senicrusier was the restroom i believe that they built the bus around the restroom.
It took a whole day and it seemed that we had gotten no where.  So i removed the lower window on the drivers side and hooked a comalong around the restroom and hooked the other end to a big pine tree and pulled and cut with a sawzall
until it came loose thought at times that we would pull the bus apart.
                                                                                                     Happy Busing  unclewilly

[belfert]

The biggest problems I had were the bathrom and having the wrong tool.  I had bought a set of Makita cordless tools that included a sawzall.  That darn sawzall would eat through batteries in 15 minutes or less, but charging took an hour.  A friend of mine brought over a corded sawzall one day and that saw had more power and worked non-stop.  I should have had one from day one.

The bathroom was a pain to remove.  It was basically solid fiberglass.  We had to do tons of cutting with a sawzall to get it into pieces.  My friend was able to get the top half of the bathrooom out easily enough, but the bottom half was a royal pain.  It took multiple days of sawing out piece after piece to get things loose.  The manufacturer had spray foamed the cavity under the sink completely so the fiberglass was hard to remove.  There was also a blower embedded in the spray foam for venting the bathroom.  (No possible way to ever replace the blower if need be!)

I was itchy for days from cutting fiberglass.  The entire interior was made from fiberglass including the bottom half of the overhead racks, ceiling panels, and the covering over the A/C evaporator at the rear.

The three most important tools for stripping: cordless impact driver to remove screws, corded sawzall, and angle grinder. 

[DavidInWilmNC]

The biggest problem for me was doing it alone.  I had help heaving seats out the windows and stuff like that.  Sitting there and just looking at all the screws to remove for the restroom and seat rails, all the rivets holding the inside alum. panels to the wall, etc was so unmotivating.  Sometimes, when a friend would stop by, just having a 'new set of eyes' would help.  They'd see the screw I couldn't find or the tool I'd misplaced in all the mess.  Of course, it was late spring / summer when I was doing all this.  What helped the most was when I got that Carrier heat pump installed on the roof.  It took a while to cool down, but I realized that a lot of the time I was just so hot that much of my energy was being spent dealing with that.

David