jack boy
Member
Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this website. Squat the Planet and Skoolie.net has some great advice for anyone who is getting started on a project like this and were extremely helpful to me during the last few months.
After weighing the pros and cons of a short bus, a van, or an RV my girlfriend and I decided to go with a bus. We checked CL and autotrader for something that would work for us. At the time we were in Indy, though, and were fortunate that a school bus dealer called Midwest Transit was located nearby. These guys only deal in busses and a lot of schools will sell their old busses to them as used inventory. They have locations throughout Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. More fortunate still they had listings in our price range. You can find listings on their website and narrow them down with the filters if you are looking for a vehicle. We ended up getting a 2005 Ford E350 short bus with a 6.0 diesel engine for $2500. It has a Thomas body. The odometer reads 160K miles. It had one owner, a school district, who had maintained it. The only problem we've had is that I had to replace the starter after 6 months. It was $65 for a new starter on Ebay and seems to be working fine.
The summer was pretty exciting for us, though we were anxious to get on the road and more anxious to get out of Indianapolis. We ended up crashing with some relatives in Northern Indiana while the real work began. The first step was getting the seats out, 5 rows in all. These things were bolted thru the floor so I couldn't just unscrew the bolts. I had to grind the heads off and pound out the bolts. I also took out the rear heater and rerouted the coolant lines into themselves courtesy of a tutorial on the skoolie website. I have pretty limited carpentry experience but once the seats were out I managed to build a bed frame with some storage underneath that can be accessed from inside the bus and from the rear emergency door. Summers in Indiana are always hot and humid but last summer was more humid then I could remember. It felt like we were working in rain forest. Next, I built a work bench which eventually turned into a kitchen counter. Everything is just plywood and wood I could reclaim. Since we didn't have money to install water and holding tanks I put in a sink and built a foot pump that pumps from one five gal. bucket and drains into another. No hot water but it has worked well enough since we can boil up on a two burner Coleman. We also carry some extra water in those five gallon Culligan things. I ended up building two benches with some storage under the seats. They sit across from each other and we can put our card table between them if we want a table inside.
Our intentions were to be pretty minimal and our funding was so little that it didn't allow for anything else. We got rid of the shit we knew we couldn't take with us or didn't need. We decided we wanted to try a composting toilet. I built a small enclosure and we DIYed a 5 gal bucket into a saw dust composting toilet. It has served us well and when people tell my girlfriend they can't believe she uses that thing it's quite amusing to hear her tell them that she can't believe they shit in their water.
After we had the basic amenities we moved in full time (along with our dog). For 150 sq feet its pretty cozy and it beat the hell out of sleeping with the bugs. The heat was pretty bad and keeping cool became an issue in the summer. The fall was great tho and we planned on heading south before it snowed.
Insurance, however, became an issue. Fuck insurance companies, dude. I knew insurance companies were real skeptical on skoolies and had read a lot of horror stories. However, I had assumed that my VIN would just read out as an E350. There was actually another thread on StP of someone who had done the same thing. I guess I was wrong though because every broker asked the same question ass soon as I gave them the VIN. Is it converted? Well, fuck.....kind of.....I guess. If you are reading this for advice and you don't want to convert to an RV title you should probably just lie. I after emailing photos to several agencies like National General and being denied by all of them we got approved for RV insurance thru Good Sam (which is National general, who had denied us). They only offered liability and it cost us $600 for the year.
So on the skoolie website I found a thread that gave the requirements for getting the title changed to RV. The thread said that in Indiana all I had to do was print of a form, have a cop come sign off on it, and take it to the BMV. I called the BMV and they affirmed this. One of the relatives we stayed with happened to have a friend on the police force and arranged for him to come sign off on the paper. It was hot as hell that day and the cop literally just came inside, said, "Whoop, it's hot in here. Yup, it's not a bus anymore." and signed off on my request for a body change form.
The local BMV wouldn't deal with me at all. They told me I had to take the thing back to Indy and have them look and sign off on my bus. I wasn't sure how to do that since it wasn't plated or registered and she said I would have to send them photos and receipts for the conversion. I called the central office in Indy and asked them about photos. "No,", they said. "You just need the request for a body change form signed by a cop." So I drove to another city (I was staying between the two) and had that BMV take a look. Be it luck or fate, the clerk looked at my title and recognized the school corporation that had owned it previously and recognized the bus number as well. She told me she went to school there and that it was the cheerleading bus. She had been a cheerleader and had ridden on it many times. She was totally on board to help us after we told her what we were doing. Predictably, with the BMV, nothing was easy. She tried to submit our request for body change and told us that it WAS requesting photos and receipts, which would need to be faxed to the central office for approval....since she was on board to help us she gave us her bosses email so we could forward the few pics we had on our phone. I told her there were no receipts because all conversion materials we used we had on hand. I had to sign a sworn affidavit saying so and she faxed it along with the photos. After two hours at the BMV they denied our request for a body change because we don't have a shower and a fridge. They were fine with the compost toilet. They said our stove had to be permanently affixed so we lied and told them our two burner was, but it all came down to the shower and refrigerator....
As of now we are kind of in a legal gray zone with all these bureaucrats. She ended up registering us as a private bus since we couldn't change our title. The plate says "not for hire" in big letters. Our insurance is RV insurance though, because no one will insure us commercially. Technically I think we're legal with proof of insurance but if we ever got into an accident I'm sure Good Sam would drop us.
I got offered a little under the table work after Thanksgiving and decided to stay in Indiana til after the holidays. We plan on heading south in two weeks and are very much looking forward to it because we did not make it out before the snow. In fact, two days from now is has a low forecast of -19 degrees. I woke up two days ago and our floor was frosted over so I got some carpet remnants and covered up the rubber bus floor. It seems to have helped. Our portable Mr. Heater is definitely our lifeline right now and these next two weeks couldn't go by fast enough. I imagine I won't be seeing this family anytime soon though, so I'm making the best of it. We were flying by the seat of our pants this whole time and even starting with basically no money I'm pretty happy with how its gone so far. We got kicked a canoe and are taking it with us. It is strapped to the roof so we lose all of our stealthiness, but the bus wasn't very stealthy to begin with. Looking forward to the future! Stay warm out there!!
After weighing the pros and cons of a short bus, a van, or an RV my girlfriend and I decided to go with a bus. We checked CL and autotrader for something that would work for us. At the time we were in Indy, though, and were fortunate that a school bus dealer called Midwest Transit was located nearby. These guys only deal in busses and a lot of schools will sell their old busses to them as used inventory. They have locations throughout Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. More fortunate still they had listings in our price range. You can find listings on their website and narrow them down with the filters if you are looking for a vehicle. We ended up getting a 2005 Ford E350 short bus with a 6.0 diesel engine for $2500. It has a Thomas body. The odometer reads 160K miles. It had one owner, a school district, who had maintained it. The only problem we've had is that I had to replace the starter after 6 months. It was $65 for a new starter on Ebay and seems to be working fine.
The summer was pretty exciting for us, though we were anxious to get on the road and more anxious to get out of Indianapolis. We ended up crashing with some relatives in Northern Indiana while the real work began. The first step was getting the seats out, 5 rows in all. These things were bolted thru the floor so I couldn't just unscrew the bolts. I had to grind the heads off and pound out the bolts. I also took out the rear heater and rerouted the coolant lines into themselves courtesy of a tutorial on the skoolie website. I have pretty limited carpentry experience but once the seats were out I managed to build a bed frame with some storage underneath that can be accessed from inside the bus and from the rear emergency door. Summers in Indiana are always hot and humid but last summer was more humid then I could remember. It felt like we were working in rain forest. Next, I built a work bench which eventually turned into a kitchen counter. Everything is just plywood and wood I could reclaim. Since we didn't have money to install water and holding tanks I put in a sink and built a foot pump that pumps from one five gal. bucket and drains into another. No hot water but it has worked well enough since we can boil up on a two burner Coleman. We also carry some extra water in those five gallon Culligan things. I ended up building two benches with some storage under the seats. They sit across from each other and we can put our card table between them if we want a table inside.
Our intentions were to be pretty minimal and our funding was so little that it didn't allow for anything else. We got rid of the shit we knew we couldn't take with us or didn't need. We decided we wanted to try a composting toilet. I built a small enclosure and we DIYed a 5 gal bucket into a saw dust composting toilet. It has served us well and when people tell my girlfriend they can't believe she uses that thing it's quite amusing to hear her tell them that she can't believe they shit in their water.
After we had the basic amenities we moved in full time (along with our dog). For 150 sq feet its pretty cozy and it beat the hell out of sleeping with the bugs. The heat was pretty bad and keeping cool became an issue in the summer. The fall was great tho and we planned on heading south before it snowed.
Insurance, however, became an issue. Fuck insurance companies, dude. I knew insurance companies were real skeptical on skoolies and had read a lot of horror stories. However, I had assumed that my VIN would just read out as an E350. There was actually another thread on StP of someone who had done the same thing. I guess I was wrong though because every broker asked the same question ass soon as I gave them the VIN. Is it converted? Well, fuck.....kind of.....I guess. If you are reading this for advice and you don't want to convert to an RV title you should probably just lie. I after emailing photos to several agencies like National General and being denied by all of them we got approved for RV insurance thru Good Sam (which is National general, who had denied us). They only offered liability and it cost us $600 for the year.
So on the skoolie website I found a thread that gave the requirements for getting the title changed to RV. The thread said that in Indiana all I had to do was print of a form, have a cop come sign off on it, and take it to the BMV. I called the BMV and they affirmed this. One of the relatives we stayed with happened to have a friend on the police force and arranged for him to come sign off on the paper. It was hot as hell that day and the cop literally just came inside, said, "Whoop, it's hot in here. Yup, it's not a bus anymore." and signed off on my request for a body change form.
The local BMV wouldn't deal with me at all. They told me I had to take the thing back to Indy and have them look and sign off on my bus. I wasn't sure how to do that since it wasn't plated or registered and she said I would have to send them photos and receipts for the conversion. I called the central office in Indy and asked them about photos. "No,", they said. "You just need the request for a body change form signed by a cop." So I drove to another city (I was staying between the two) and had that BMV take a look. Be it luck or fate, the clerk looked at my title and recognized the school corporation that had owned it previously and recognized the bus number as well. She told me she went to school there and that it was the cheerleading bus. She had been a cheerleader and had ridden on it many times. She was totally on board to help us after we told her what we were doing. Predictably, with the BMV, nothing was easy. She tried to submit our request for body change and told us that it WAS requesting photos and receipts, which would need to be faxed to the central office for approval....since she was on board to help us she gave us her bosses email so we could forward the few pics we had on our phone. I told her there were no receipts because all conversion materials we used we had on hand. I had to sign a sworn affidavit saying so and she faxed it along with the photos. After two hours at the BMV they denied our request for a body change because we don't have a shower and a fridge. They were fine with the compost toilet. They said our stove had to be permanently affixed so we lied and told them our two burner was, but it all came down to the shower and refrigerator....
As of now we are kind of in a legal gray zone with all these bureaucrats. She ended up registering us as a private bus since we couldn't change our title. The plate says "not for hire" in big letters. Our insurance is RV insurance though, because no one will insure us commercially. Technically I think we're legal with proof of insurance but if we ever got into an accident I'm sure Good Sam would drop us.
I got offered a little under the table work after Thanksgiving and decided to stay in Indiana til after the holidays. We plan on heading south in two weeks and are very much looking forward to it because we did not make it out before the snow. In fact, two days from now is has a low forecast of -19 degrees. I woke up two days ago and our floor was frosted over so I got some carpet remnants and covered up the rubber bus floor. It seems to have helped. Our portable Mr. Heater is definitely our lifeline right now and these next two weeks couldn't go by fast enough. I imagine I won't be seeing this family anytime soon though, so I'm making the best of it. We were flying by the seat of our pants this whole time and even starting with basically no money I'm pretty happy with how its gone so far. We got kicked a canoe and are taking it with us. It is strapped to the roof so we lose all of our stealthiness, but the bus wasn't very stealthy to begin with. Looking forward to the future! Stay warm out there!!
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