7.3 Powerstoke 5 Window Short Bus Skoolie Conversion Tour (w/ Toilet and Shower)

[Music] [Laughter] [Music] what's up everybody welcome to the vin diesel bus tour this is a 2002 ford 7.3 power stroke diesel short bus five window we just built this up my shop dream reality studios and we're gonna go through the whole bus tour and show you all the cool features of this guy and just so you do know this bus is available for sale and the listing descript the listing will be in the description below so if you're interested in buying this bus it is available for purchase but let's show you what's going on with this bad boy let's talk about paint first so i use an oil-based paint from home depot and it's a semi-gloss so that way if you ever need to touch it up you can just paint right into it you're not going to see like orange peel over spray really easy to work with it's made for metal we refilled all the windows so there isn't any leaky windows which is really common in a bus and then school buses are notorious for the roofs leaking so we used a henry's silicone tropical paint up top to seal up all the cracks and stuff like that and you guys are probably wondering what this guy is now this is the vent for our composting toilet we have a fan in there and when you're doing a number two hit a little button fan blows the stinky out stinky comes outside to your neighbor he smells it not you moving along with the exterior we do have my shore power port you just plug a regular extension cord in there and it goes to a lithium battery tender which will keep your battery topped off if if you don't got solar or anything like that and we do have courtesy of grape solar they sponsor the entire electrical system and they gave us 202 220 watt solar panels on the roof and then the rest of the stuff i'll show you in just a second but also this is the exhaust for a diesel heater one of the biggest things i feel like new bus people and van people do is they don't put a heater in right when they build their rig until winter hits and they realize they messed up i've already learned this through three years of experience and basically that is the game changer of living in a vehicle that's the exhaust for the heater so sends all the fumes outside climb temperature controlled so you just hit a temperature in there and it'll kick on it off and keep it cool next up let's keep going this is underneath the bed of the vin diesel bus this is the electrical system shout out to josh from crown and style for helping me wrap this whole system up so let's let's start getting into it grape solar we have a 40 amp dc or 40 amp charge controller again grape solar sponsored that for us all the normal stuff this is our lithium battery tender and then i use a renigi 40 amp dc to dc charger so this bus can charge three ways you can charge with the solar on the roof if you happen to have sun which in the pnw i'd never depend on it and it has the shore power port out there that connects to this battery tinder so if you're in your mom's front yard or backyard you plug that in don't worry about the sun either and then the other way is if you're on the road and there's no sun this 40 amp dc to dc charger as soon as the vehicle is on it uses the vehicle's alternator to charge your battery so this is the heater that's the heater tank over here behind you i and i a lot of people like to tap into the diesel tank it's just a big job and i kind kinda like having it separate because i end up going to a lot of places that are really really remote and i really want my fuel in my tank to get out so i like personally having the diesel for the heater in a separate tank to be honest so that's what that is over here we have our grape solar 1800 watt inverter again they sponsored that for us and then lanak they are the battery sponsor for this bus and this is a 150 amp hours of lithium battery so linac lithium thank you guys so much for this battery it works freaking great it looks way cool compared to a lot of the stuff i've seen and we it's just 150 amp hours that's that's 50 more amp hours than i normally put in here shout out to them for hooking that up and that is the heart of the electrical system for safety features you guys might be seeing this afg fireball they're another sponsor of this build and basically these are self-detonating so like if there happens to be a problem back here this fireball will self-detonate and hopefully put it out and i don't even need to be near the vehicle it's really nice peace of mind to have that i'll put a link to the description to all the sponsors but this doesn't cost that much i just hung it up here with a zip tie and like that could save your bus if you're not around all right let's get out of here okay i have tried to lock the back doors on these buses 50 million different ways tried a million different things and you'll see a million different ways on the internet and while we were coming down to the end of this build i still wasn't sure how the heck i was going to lock this back door i went to home depot and knew that i was going to try and figure it out and this is what i came up with so this is just a slide lock right here and i bolted it through the handle and i was like oh that'll be easy i'll just put something like this on here you know it's a little funky looking but it works right and that's just a piece of 2x2 that i use a couple l brackets some self-tapping screws and then you just slide lock that through that and that back door is not opening the reason i wanted to do it like this because i see a lot of people they do the the little class thing with the with the padlock right and then you can still move the handle up and down i just feel like because it is a school bus if somebody wants to get in it there's a million windows are going to get in but i think mentally if they can't move the handle it just triggers them that it is locked and they just might not try as hard versus the handle being open and then their mind's like oh i wonder if i could pry it off so that's that's why i did this so this way the handle don't move feels locked to an intruder you know it's it works okay welcome to this side of the vin diesel short bus let's get into it this right here is our water filled door so it locks so that somebody an arch enemy can't get in there and put something in your water tank you know you can lock it keep them people out but i didn't put a lock on the fuel tank maybe i should do that working our way over here this bad boy is a on-demand tankless hot water heater that means like you're not gonna run out of five gallons you're gonna have hot water as long as you want it in this bus which it does have a toilet and a shower which we will show you in a little bit stay tuned for that this thing is amazing i've never had hot water in a bus before and like it's literally a game changer this was also provided by rec pro and i'll put the link in the description for them as well like this thing is freaking amazing 500 the best 500 bucks i've ever spent in the bus awesome down here we have ourselves a gray tank that's a 15 gallon gray tank and it opens two ways so it'll open manually if something goes up goes down with the electrical system it also has a 12 volt switch inside that you can press a button and it'll release so you never even got to touch it just press a button has a ball valve it opens electronically something does go haywire with your system you just come down here and manually open it 40 gallons of fresh in the back 15 gallons of gray i just don't really want to be carrying around 50 gallons of gray water i think it's weight is a thing and like i'm just gonna dump it so i think that's it for the exterior of the bus you guys ready to go inside huh before we go inside let's talk about this door i call this the school bus home door conversion check it out boom look at that swings off swings like a real door just like a real house so the way i did this is i used c channel and i fused the door together and then i cut it out of that side and then i put this lock so this is actually a dummy dummy handle and then this lock will lock into this little deal from uh right here so you can have a key just like a house kind of a little comfortable home and then this deal this is two by three we put in here we had to take the metal jam out that was originally in there because i think some school bus driver somewhere totally ruined this whole thing like the metal jam was just all bent out and it was crazy we had to bend this all back and it was just not usable and i decided to put this 2x3 in here just to give it i don't know a different kind of vibe and the whole the whole building here is like a modern rustic kind of industrial feel i've never seen another bus like it and i'm excited for you guys to come in here and check it out come on welcome to the inside of the bus we're going to show you the goods here in a little bit but we're gonna start with the entryway so the entryway i buses come with this like black padded deal here and i it's kind of cool like i left it here for a reason because you might hit your head on that but i took this one out and i cedar paneled it just i don't know kind of a throwback to the schooliana bus like the cedar panel entryway and then i don't know if you guys can see over here but i added a little bit of wood accents to the c channel just i don't know i think it looks kind of cool so kind of different vibe there we added this little hook deal right here so you can kind of just throw your keys knickknacks right here which you want your keys in your rig pretty close in case you gotta dip out in the middle of the night and then you can hang coats or towels or anything like that so tiny little bit of hanging storage and that's pretty much all we did up here besides taking out the whole school bus unit here which i love because like it opens up two more cup holders it's a big deal but i i really like school buses so i like to leave a lot of the school bus pieces and make it look like a build in a bus versus somebody trying to make a bus a house it's like two different vibes i like schoolies for a reason so i kind of build them a certain way so that's it for this way and now let's uh let's move into the build i forgot to mention the privacy curtains up here again i have tried so many different ways to block the windows out in these things and one of the things i did in my van that i didn't like was i because it's easy to close it off right here it's just a straight run so in my van i blocked it off right here and then this whole part was covered with a curtain at night right i i think i like having it more open but the other reason that i like to have the whole drivers area accessible is for safety i was in a planet fitness parking lot one night years ago and some people were trying to get in my van like three o'clock in the morning and i was completely blocked off from getting to the driver's seat uh and i've always kept that in mind as i do build so the privacy curtains one thing they're right here they just snap this will drop cover that and then the piece this is another blackout curtain there's just button snaps and it'll snap against this all the way around and leave this open so if i am like in a sticky situation and i need to get out like if they were right here and i come up in the curtain they're going to see me situation's going to get worse right but if they're trying to get in they can't see me and then i could just boom get the key in there start the thing and take off it's just a little bit better of a situation so i don't like covering it from here so privacy curtains are just button snaps and they snap across here you can still get to the ignition still getting a seat get out easy breezy and then the other thing i also like is i didn't have a place to store my front curtain in schooliana and now it just is right here in space that i wouldn't use anyways it's a nice place to keep it now let's get into the build ladies and gentlemen the first ever shower stall i have ever installed in a school bus and i gotta tell you i didn't used to like them before i used to talk bad about them until i had one like this is almost as big as a game changer as putting a heater in your bus let's okay let's just talk into the build of it though because i'm gonna get crazy i love it love it hot water okay let's start by this we got ourselves so it's cedar paneled and i use a marine grade wood sealer and like it's waterproof i'll put a link to the varnish in the description but this is just cedar paneling uh so this is three quarter plywood that i use red guard to seal the plywood which is water sealer then i put cedar panels over it and then i use the marine grade varnish to seal the cedar up and then i cocked it all in and then the water mixer is here and then this is just a pre-bought shower pan that happened to fit within a school bus window dimension and this is copper tubing and then this is the nebia shower head which is really nice and it's got a bunch of different settings like really fancy love it and then up here we cut a skylight into the shower which wasn't part of the original plan but when i put the shower pan in it lifted the floor up like an inch and a half or two inches which i didn't account for and my head was hitting the ceiling in the shower which just wasn't gonna work out so i decided to cut this in and now you can kind of look up with the stars or the trees when you're taking a shower it's really rad and then we put privacy film on the windows so you know people aren't watching you scrub a dub dub while you're in tow you know it'll be and it's like a stained glass i just think it goes with the aesthetic of the whole bus and one of the other features that i really like about this is this shower rod so this shower round rod pops out and just gives you a little bit more elbow room inside of this small shower already i seen this in a van build and i thought it was one of like the most functional things i've ever seen this thing will pop out give this little shower just a little bit more room and then when you're done with it it just folds right back in out of your way and i thought about doing a door and all that stuff but i just went with a simple shower curtain i don't know i think it kind of goes with it anyways and then i just use rope kind of give it a little vibe tie it up so it's just a bundle of stuff but i love this shower love it i guess i should talk about the light in here right i started using these 12 volt silicone strip lights in my builds and that light will go goes through the entire build on that whole side of the bus and they're waterproof i just thought it would look really clean to just have a line of light go through the whole build and into the shower i don't know it's just a design thing i thought would be kind of cool but waterproof this light in the shower i don't know vibes all right let's talk about the kitchen one of the things too is you know a lot of the van people they like to talk about how they have this this thingy here what do you call this faucet and it'll go out the window and they can take showers outside which you have that option now take a shower in the stall take a shower outside if you want to get a little crazy the water pump you just turn it on right there and boom just two streams so it's got normal and then it's got a little woof woof and then cold and hot you know normal stuff going on there and then i just i always am in the habit of turning the water pump off and then taking the pressure off the system just think it helps minimize leaks in a moving vehicle i don't know it's just a habit thing i do and then inside there is just a trash can and then the water heater am i going to show you that ugly looking and the propane tank is also under there and i'm just in the habit of turning it on when i need propane and turning it off when i don't because if it does start leaking like it's not enough in the lines to do any damage so that's kind of what i do the countertop so this is live edge juniper that was epoxied and then as you look over here it's kind of got some cedar two by fours and some other things going on i was kind of going so this this piece of live edge wasn't wide enough to to cover the whole cabinet and then i decided to come up with this like design with the help of my girlfriend jaylena she came up with this like red thing kind of like a cutting board kind of vibe i don't know i think it looks really cool and i've never seen anything else like that before so this is live edge with like some custom stuff going on i love the countertop honestly oh let's turn that on all right so above the counter we have a open shelf again the lights going all the way through it i should show you this about the light it's uh on off and then it's also on a dimmer so you can control how much light you want in in your rig back to the shelf there's a big old open shelf right here like the reason i like them and nothing nothing's gonna fly out of there but the reason that i like open shelves is because sometimes when you have those clothes shelves stuff just kind of gets buried behind things and you can't see it you forget what you got you're buying it two three times i've done that i like this because i can see what's physically there all the time i'd be like i could be laying in bed and see oh i got coffee up there and get coffee oh i got chips like you can just see it and like that's a lot of food storage so that's why i went with the open shelf plus i think it just goes with the theme of the bus as well okay that's it for the show let's move down here all right check out this stove y'all it's got a little glass whoop whoop which i don't know how to say that is and then it's got three burners and an oven and look at this it's got fancy lights i never had no oven that fancy again that is a sponsor from rec pro they also hooked up the water heater and they also hooked up this stove this thing is nice i can't even really cook but like for somebody who buys this bus i can cook that's a nice feature and then i feel like you also have some counter space too so a little bit extra you turn the swag off you don't want that much swag turn the swag on if you want a little more swag drawers i have gotten a little bit better at making drawers so we have this drawer and they these are just leather drawer pulls and then wayne scotting on half inch birch ply that's painted white and we have this is like a silverware i don't know whatever else drawer and this drawer is for pots and pans like that's a lot and then ladies and gentlemen we have a pull out pantry look at that stuff so there's just so much storage here for food and pots and pans and silverware a lot and then down here i wasn't sure what to do with this space because the wheel wells right behind it i don't know i just made this little deal here i figured you could put like cooking spray or something in there but just instead of blocking this off in a bus you want to try and use all this space so that's that's what we did here i just made this like little alcove thing i guess i'll call it and you can put whatever you can fit in there in there okay check this out so this is 12 volt fridge ladies and gentlemen this is from set power i don't have it on right now because nothing's in it and it's on locking sliders so one of the things that happened in a lot of my old stuff is anytime i put a fridge on the slider it would just slide out and blow up these are locking push it in oops that's locked it ain't going nowhere right you have to unlock it pull this out and when you push it in it locks super nice the other thing is sometimes the these are really heavy for the slider so i actually have casters underneath this little cradle that support most of the weight and so just three quarter plywood casters underneath support the weight and then i use locking sliders to uh to kind of roll it in and out that being said a little tip if the fridge you're buying comes or has a 150 slider from the company made for it just buy it it may seem expensive but think about it these sliders were probably 100 bucks casters for probably 20 30 bucks this plywood hardware like i spent that already and then i had to make it my advice in set power also a sponsor of this build it's provided this fridge really inexpensive fridges that work great they actually have a slider for this fridge that i wish i would have known about but i didn't so i made all that but yeah if you need a inexpensive 12-volt fridge looking to set power less than 500 bucks and i've been using them for a long time they work great so that's it for the fridge boom let's talk about the bed area one of the things i really really like about the bed area so far is getting to the storage underneath in i've been trying to figure out the best easy way to do this i've had doors that pull up you got to hold it open nightmare check this out boom and it'll just stay open you could get in and out of here get whatever you want you could slide stuff through here and then check this out boom boom soft close you see that fanciness those little like hinges are expensive they're like eight dollars a pack i will never not use anything else though super awesome this is just half inch birch with cedar on top again it's tongue oiled boom let's hop up here this is a full-size mattress it's a zenith i think or it's made of i don't know it's up i'll put a link to the description but anyways it's full-size mattress and i really like how open this layout is because this just turns into another area where i could sit talk to my guests on the couch or dinette or whatever's going on over there versus being completely separated because the one thing i'll say is a lot of us build guest beds in our bus for friends right i'm guilty as well but what we don't think about when we're doing that is most of our friends all have built out vehicles so the amount of people that have slept on my guest bed are like less than five i like to have the whole space open it's already small this is something i really wanted to do in my schooliana bus and i love the way this feels because i can just sit here and hang out with people um that's kind of what this half divider wall is and then we have uh brand new sheets back here kind of match the outside of the bus and then pendleton awesome oregon company they sponsored this really sweet pendleton blanket and i think it matches the vibe super rad shout out pendleton thank you very much and then back here so i always kind of do this in my builds is i always put my curtains on a snap system in the back because it's just kind of weird angles and then you just roll it up back up and then everything else i'll show you the curtains on the rest of the bus later and they just snap up and hold so i always do these snap curtains in the back of the buses i don't know i just think it works the best and then up here there was an ac unit and there's just a big hole there so i had to do something to cover it up i thought about doing a shelf but i mean i already have so much shelf back here i didn't think it was necessary so i kind of i've never done this before but i tried this like wood art deal thing here just to cover it up and just give it a little more a little more flavor check these out so again these were holes from the ac unit where the tubes came in and out there's two big old holes there and i was like i'll just put some 12-volt fixtures over those kind of use those holes and just you know have some light back here so these are on their own switch in the bedroom just turn them on or off and the cool thing about that is like i can have the lights and the whole bus on and then when i'm getting ready for bed i come back here turn these on turn the lights off on the bus and then when i'm in bed when i'm ready to actually go to sleep i just don't even have to get out of bed press this button turn the lights off go to sleep that was the idea behind that over here it's closed storage so this is an enclosed overhead cabinet you could put you know stacked clothes up in here you could put a mirror i was thinking you could put a mirror here if you wanted to have a mirror to do makeup for all y'all ladies or anyone that wants to put makeup on you know i'm not going to discriminate and then bam so you got clothes storage here i had no intention of putting an overhead shelf over here i was just gonna put the trim all the way all the way through but i decided it just seemed like a waste to not do it put an overhead shelf here you can stack more clothes up there and then also you have this chest right here tons of clothes storage here here here you throw some junk in there lots and i think that's that's it for the bedroom so let's keep moving that way everyone's going to tell you wheel wells and the buses suck it's hard to build around it so basically that's what this whole contraption deal is here is a little platform over the wheel well and what i've done with it is i put the kildwick composting toilet which i think is really cool a lot of people use those like plastic thousand dollar composting toilets i don't know not a fan like i like how this is wood these are imported from germany i just feel like they're the bmw of like composting toilets and then it's got you know the bucket in the back you got all your little stuff you put over your poop and then i have a urine diverter in here i have tubing that goes through all this out so when you pee you just pee in straight outside you don't got to catch it another thing you're going to hear about in bus life and van life is everyone overflowing their urine like that ain't never going to happen because when i'm out in the woods i'm peeing outside anyways and i'm pretty much always in the woods so i can just stay in the heat of my vehicle have a nice little toilet pee right outside boom cool right the other thing that's really rad check this out it's got an exhaust fan so you hit that little 12-volt switch right there fan sucks this the stinky out to that little vent out there to your neighbor remember that so it's like you can poop in here don't even smell like it smells like roses you just turn that off you shut this and it doesn't look dumb you know if i just had a plastic toilet right here it might look kind of dumb that don't look dumb that's got a vibe so that's just sitting up on the platform and then also underneath it i'm running wires and things like that this is where my diesel heater controller is at this is the vent this little thing will heat this whole bus up no problem and the controller's right here and it's just on velcro so i could like pull it out if i ever really wanted to but i kind of have it set and i just turn it on and off also we have our 110 outlets here with two usbs here in here so one on this side for the dinette if i'm on the computer or doing anything like that and then one on this side if i have any appliances i want to use in the kitchen and you can turn your 110 on right here by holding the switch boom lights on turns it on hold it again turns it off easy breezy so that's like i'll call this the toilet platform area let's go that way check this out this ladies and gentlemen is a dinette booth one thing i've also learned living in a bus for three years so that's one thing i will say is i've lived in buses for years and i know what i wish i had and what i didn't and like this is the product of three years of me wanting certain things and one of those things was i had a couch and i really you know just sitting across from someone and having a meal like you don't realize how much that's a thing until you don't have it anymore this is a dinette booth and this table will drop down into a guest bed i know i talked about that earlier but you know i figured it would be nice to have it this is three quarter ply with cedar and then it's been epoxy super nice tabletop this is built all everything in here is built out of 2x3 plywood and shiplap this is a 2x3 frame shiplapped and i don't know just a style with like the trim wood on top and then over here you have 12 volt dc on and off so you can charge your phones camera battery stuff like that and you have a battery monitor here because i put the charge controller under the bed so you can't see it but you can just take a look right here and see that our batteries at 100 right now these cushions were professionally covered by hannah babs she did an amazing job and this was another pendleton sponsor for the build they gifted us this really sweet pendleton fabric that we covered the cushions for the dinette with looks amazing and this thing will drop down into a bed and then we keep the extra cushion for the bed underneath there the re i was gonna do like the normal thing everybody does where they have the cushion here in the cushion here but it's like i like the wood i want to see the wood so i did it this way kind of on purpose and then you can you can kind of use this two ways you can sit on the cushion or you can put the cushion up here and put it on your back but then you've got like wood and wool all in like the same the same like visual deal and then inside each one of the dinette booths you have storage and the whole piece of plywood just comes out i guess i'll just show you so the whole thing comes out and then you've got like trunk storage in both of those dinette booths which is way easier to get to than in the couch that i have done before one of the other things that always leaks in a bus is the emergency hatch you can fix it you know and and they're cool to have for certain things but i was in a bus that had a skylight and i really loved how much natural light it brought into the vehicle and i decided i wanted to make a custom skylight and fill this hole where the emergency hatch used to be and this is just three-quarter ply and then it does open and it'll vent because that's really nice too it'll stay open like that and you could be passing stuff if you got somebody on the roof pass the stuff in and out like if you're cooking like such an awesome quick vet and then i don't know i i really like having the hatch that opened before so it's kind of the best of both worlds you let in all that light and get air in and out of here so far i really like it honestly and then it has this little clasp right here and boom shuts we completely painted the entire interior so when this bus was gutted we put brand new paint on all the sheet metal just to give it that really bright and like brand new feel so it's all brand new paint inside here as well i did the button snap curtains back there just to really seal it up so people can't see in there but like these are a lot of windows to do that for everything so i typically in like the living area would just use copper piping like this and then the curtains will just slide out because it isn't like so critical that this is super you know good good i don't know just you can't back there in the bedroom you know you want it to be real sealed up out here it doesn't matter so much and this is a lot easier and the way i hung these is it's just leather strap that i used a screw and this is just like a fancy screw cover and then i just hung the copper pipe in it super simple and then these just slide so all this stuff slides and then the front and the back all buttons snap okay that's it for the vin diesel bus tour uh this thing was took about a year from the time i bought it to finish it i just had a bunch of other projects that kind of came up in between on this thing i kind of like it i like the layout this was a test layout i wanted to try it's an open concept like it has everything hot water toilet shower oven stove and this bus is available for sale it's a 2002 7.3 ford power stroke short bus five window and i if this bus does sell i will put it in the description if you're interested there'll be a link to a link in the description for the listing for this bus if you have any questions let me know what's up let me know what you guys think about this layout and this build in the comment section this is a layout that i've been dreaming of for years while i was living in a bus that i didn't like the layout of i haven't been in this very long i just finished it like this morning thanks for watching this tour this is the vin diesel bus it's done i can't believe it dream reality studios isaac signing out we'll see in the next video if you want to follow me on instagram it's out of bus life story make sure to subscribe if you want to see more bus stuff or how to build bus stuff doesn't matter see you next video bye [Music] you

Channel: A Bus Life Story

Views: 191,482

Keywords: school bus conversion, bus conversion, skoolie conversion, tiny home, short bus, short bus conversion, tiny house, van life, mini skoolie, mini school bus conversion, skoolie tour, tiny home on wheels, diy skoolie, bus tour, tiny house on wheels, tiny house tour, skoolie bus conversion, off grid, diy tiny house, bus life, bus conversion tour, bus conversion for sale, bus build, skoolie conversion tour, skoolie build, tiny homes on wheels, diy, bus, tour, skoolie, 5 window

Id: 4A2_gso1IzI

Length: 38min 14sec (2294 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 05 2021