So you have decided to do your own bus conversion, and you’ve gotten to the point where you are needing to do all those small miscellaneous jobs. It’s the things no one ever talks about and you should just ‘know’. But really, it never is that simple. And that’s what this post is for us; the small jobs we had to work out on our own for our Toyota Coaster, and now we can share them with you.
Heater Plugging –
Time to plug the heaters that we removed in the middle of the floor in our bus. If you haven’t already read it and need to, you can check out our post here where explain how to remove these heaters.
Since we removed them, we have had a few people ask us how we went about plugging the heaters in our Toyota Coaster Motorhome Conversion. Well we can tell you it was a success.
- Shane started by hopping underneath the bus and traced the heater hoses back towards the engine bay until he found where they clamped onto some metal pipes.
- Then, he cut the hoses approximately 10cm from this join and, using a bucket, let the coolant drain out until empty.
- After this, he then plugged them with 19mm rubber plugs (purchased from Bunnings) and sealed the ends with hose clamps.
We have not had any issues with overheating or coolant leaks, so can confirm for us the heater plugging was a success.
Sub-Floor Removal –
If your sub-floor has any damage, it may be a good idea to replace it now during the conversion, rather than needing to deal with it later.
Our standard Toyota Coaster sub floor was in quite good condition. However the rear 30cm or so had water damage from a leaking seal. So Shane and I both decided the most cost effective method would be to replace just the back 30cm with water damage.
- Start by removing any seals, and measuring the back portion you want to cut out. For us, this was 30cm across the rear.
- Remove anything that may prevent you from cutting the floor up.
We had some wheelchair seating mounts which needed removing. These are the mounts that were used to hold the seats in at the back of the bus; the seats that were removable to put a wheelchair in if necessary. These were a little tricky to remove; I used an allen key on top of the mount to hold it in place, while Shane unbolted a nut underneath the bus. WD40 was our best friend here. We used a lot of it to loosen the nuts and remove the 4 bolts off each mount. If we were not replacing our sub-floor, we would not have bothered to remove these mounts as they will be located under what will be our bed. However, we decided that considering we were replacing the subfloor, it would be easier to remove these now. Other we would need to cut and shape the new floor around them.
- It is time now to measure the depth of the wood. We measured our sub floor depth by taking multiple measurements at different levels and established it was around 15mm thick. Due to the water damage and age of the wood, one measurement could not be relied upon accurately.
- Now it was time to remove the wood. We set the circular saw to a depth of around 12mm. Close enough we should be able to pry the wood off; not too deep as to touch the metal of the bus underneath. We cut as much as we could with the circular saw, and used a crowbar, chisel, and anything else we could to scrape the remainder of the wood off.
So this was our experience of removing our sub-floor. If you want to continue reading about our new sub-floor installation, check out our next post here.
Seal Replacement –
Now that the damaged sub-floor was removed, we had to fix the leaking seals prior to laying the new floor.
This part was easy; at the back of our bus we have a wheelchair access door. The seals were old, dry and cracked. It’s important to fix the issue otherwise you will continue to have problems later.
We were able to purchase auto seals from our local hardware store. We purchased Goliath rubber seals. It was a simple task to cut the old cracked seal and push the new seal on in its place, ensuring a snug fit.
Sub-floor Hole Sealing and Filling –
Our Toyota Coaster motorhome sub-floor had a few holes – this was expected after the seat, heater, hand railings, and trim removal!
In NSW, it is a requirement that a vehicle not have any holes. So be able to get signed off by the engineer, we had to fill any visible holes. Not only this, but we want it to be completely waterproof.
As this was a bus we are converting to a home, we decided to use a sealant suitable for wet areas (just in case there are ever any leaks!).
After research, we decided on Selleys 100% Wet Area Silicone Sealant in white. Even though the sealant won’t be seen underneath the floor, we chose white in case we decided to use it for our bathroom.
- For the larger holes (particularly the ones from the heater plugs we removed earlier), we purchased a thin sheet of aluminium and tin snips, and cut some small rectangle pieces.
- Once these pieces of aluminium were ready, we placed a layer of silicone around each hole, and used it to adhere the aluminium in place.
- We also used the silicone to seal around the edges of all the subfloor, and joins in between.
So these are just a few of those jobs that no one ever talks about. Glad we can finally say they are done!
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