Tour Our Beautiful Bus Conversion that Could Be Yours

this video I'm going to show you every little detail that you might be curious about as well as show you why our bus is so great and has taken incredible care of us and as much as we want to keep them forever it's time for us to move on from this stage of Our Lives probably it was a little over five years ago in late 2017 a few months after our youngest daughter Nova was born all of a sudden as we saw our child grow we realized that time was fleeting so we set out to create an alternative lifestyle full of Travel and Adventure and we picked this 40-foot gillig Phantom school bus to make that happen we then spent all of our free time turning it into a cozy Family Home and after 18 months of work we were finally ready to leave on our epic adventure we are actually living in it now which I'm super excited about it's been like pretty much two years of weekends no Adventures no Hobbies just bus work so worth it we stayed at beautiful campgrounds along the west coast and enjoyed visits to many national parks like Yellowstone in Wyoming and Zion and Utah we lived a genuinely incredible lifestyle in this home on Wheels eventually the spark that started all this is what brought us home our daughter Novak was ready for kindergarten and we realized at that point that that was the right move for our family it was always our goal to pull this off before our kids were of school age and that's what we did so now our bus is parked again in our side yard exactly where this all started and as much as we want to keep them forever our bus really belongs on the road taking care of a family full time and if it can't be us well maybe it can be you okay so here we are we're gonna skip the boring stuff and go straight into the fun Aesthetics and then we'll get back to the boring stuff at the end now first of all let's talk about these couches for us as a family it was really important to have a gigantic social space we definitely wanted to be visiting with friends and family hosting people on this bus having big meals and so we went for two eight foot long couches we decided to top these couches with RV twin size mattresses so both these make for excellent guest beds we went for like a mid-century aesthetic so you've got a basic platform with this wedged pillow in the back super comfortable they're at the perfect height for me I'm five foot ten having a ton of social space in your bus especially with a 40-footer is so cool and especially having this beautiful view for everybody to experience this is really probably my favorite part about the whole bus now of course we do have giant amounts of storage in here [Music] and this side matches too we have reading lights in here we've got strip lights which bounce light off the roof make it super bright if you want it to be now we have Bamboo privacy screens for shade and privacy all along here and this is what it looks like during the day when they're all closed kind of a nice smoothie vibe in here so with these two Dinettes you can easily feed six people and you can also put a big table between the couches if you want to do more these do flip down and there are seat belts in both these Dinettes so that you can safely put a car seat in there in the Dinettes we do have storage and on this side we have our diesel heater and the outlet for that is right here underneath the kitchen speaking of the kitchen here it is we've got two five foot sections of countertop on both sides we went with quartz because it's very durable it hasn't cracked except for one tiny little chip over here no idea how that happened but from driving absolutely no damage at all beautiful addition very happy with them Granite not so much because Granite is a lot softer so quartz is the way to go the cabinets are made by Ikea with custom Maple fronts we do have RV latches to keep them from sliding out when you drive which is critical those work really well several of these also have drawers inside of drawers a local spatula trash is under here this is where we kept glasses and silverware there's some electrical tools in there right now and over here we have tons of pantry storage we kept this all food this was all food as well Vitamix and instant pot went under here oh that's a seal for the rear door don't mind that so as you can see plenty of storage for everything that you might need we did really fall in love with induction cooking during our time on the road and I'm going to tell you why it makes so much sense for a bus so the major Pros are that it's energy efficient it heats up your food really fast and it doesn't create additional heat from cooking in your space on this side we've got a nice deep sink faucet with sprays [Music] and a soap dispenser moving backwards there is storage underneath the refrigerator we kept like garbage bags and things like that under there there's storage up top and we have a residential apartment size refrigerator this runs off of AC power and it's about seven and a half cubic feet with a fridge and a freezer maybe it's even more maybe it's nine I forget I'll put what it actually is right here and then on this side we have an electrical closet slash Pantry as well now in here is everything required to make this bus all electric with no propane we've got a big AC panel with 16 slots we have two DC fuse blocks a charge controller this is a big breaker box for the inverter switch and for the solar panels down here is our line energy lithium battery Bank there are six 12 volt 105 amp hour batteries wired in series and parallel to give 24 volts and 315 amp hours moving back it is time for Nova's Nook this was our daughter's bedroom during our travels she actually only slept in this bed in the last couple weeks that we were living in the bus it was basically her play space and she had a ton of fun in here you can see some of her stuff is still in here just to provide some Ambiance and underneath this bed is an incredible amount of storage I went with just doors instead of building drawers because I could fit more stuff in there and there's three gigantic Bays there's also a beautiful full Urban electrico light back here and the switch is in the closet and that just makes for really nice ambient lighting when you are hanging out at night and hiding in here is a carbon monoxide and smoke detector there's really no reason any carbon dioxide would ever end up on this bus but it's okay to be safe we've got a DC light back here in the hallway there is one marine grade hatch here with access to the roof it is probably pretty uh dirty up there and we do have covers that you can put on them for when it is way too bright like it kind of is right now I'll stick a cover up for you and there you go that is your insulated cover made by Mohawk creatives keeps the hot air out the cool air in reflective on one side and full of insulation on the inside over here we have a cork board you can put your paintings pictures whatever you want on here in the hallway right here we have a sliding door with a chalkboard and magnetic finish that you can draw on this with Chuck or stick magnets to it I do have a magnet right here boom and this slides away next up let me show you the bathroom we did keep our emergency exit in case we ever need to use it which has a beautiful window for letting in tons of light to this bathroom and of course there is a blind for privacy over here we have our Airhead composting toilet all cleaned out ready for you to use we've got a medicine cabinet towel hangers and a little shelf for your stuff and right here is the perfect size shower for a bus it's about 30 by 30 inches and it's got this really wonderful shower head in it and it's tall enough for me to be in here and slouch just a little bit moving backwards Towards the bed we have this really big closet hallway space great for getting changed getting dressed doing what you need to do in the morning we both have gigantic closets three feet long on either side space up here for clothing plenty of hanging space and then this cubby down here is the perfect size for these Ikea sorting boxes which also fit on this side hanging storage over here and then that is the water heater and hiding behind this clothing is the water pump I made it a point to have all Plumbing exposed this way if there's ever a leak it's an easy fix you can access it you'll always be able to see it or hear it because the pump is running nothing ever has leaked and shouldn't ever but just in case you really don't want to be buried in a wall but my guess is that you're going to put a bunch of clothing in here you're never going to see it again on this side we've got one outlet and over here we have one too and this one is for TV and the TV is on a fully articulating arm you can watch TV out here if you want to but most of the time you're probably going to want to enjoy this from the bed which is honestly so cozy if the big open social space with the couches up front is my favorite part of the bus with all the windows and the Beautiful views this is my second favorite because this bedroom which is a king-size bed is just so cozy back here day or night you can close the blinds watching TV place a Nintendo switch whatever tickles your fancy we have a 12 volt fan back here to circulate the air in this space or keep you cool and we have a mini split air conditioner with this mini split AC you can easily cool the bedroom to a comfortable temperature almost all the time and of course you can open this all up get some natural light during the day very very pleasant place to be lastly there is a reading light right there with a USB outlet another one right there and a little bit of storage space for extra pillows blankets books whatever you might need now underneath this bed is the 100 gallon water tank and a ton of space for your more long-term storage so now I'm ready to tell you about our bus what makes it special and why it might be right for you and your own dreams of Adventure so our bus is a 1987 gillig Phantom School Bus it was one of only about 2400 ever made and it was made on a Transit bus chassis along with their new Transit bus and so it's made unlike any other school bus on the road ever it has a monocoque welded steel frame unlike a normal school bus which has pieces of Steel riveted together it has aluminum exterior skins and roof meaning that the exterior of our bus is lightweight and will never rust it has the tallest ceiling of any bus made in this era and after conversion it's 75 inches in the center of the bus and 78 inches in the front of the bus where the floor actually slopes down to accommodate more Headroom for the driver or some of your taller guests it is 40 feet long eight feet wide with a rear engine which means it's the biggest school us ever made and because you have the engine in the back with the bed on top you have all the floor space in this bus usable for you which after conversion is about 285 square feet it has an all mechanical Detroit Diesel two-stroke engine called the 6v92 and this is actually the bus that was run all over the country from the 70s through the 90s in Greyhound buses coach buses and high-end Class A RVs the other advantage that an older all mechanical engine poses is that you have no electronic sensors to stop you from driving the bus this is important because eventually almost everybody has a breakdown and you want to be able to get off the highway or off the roadway to an auto parts store without having to wait for a tow with this engine oftentimes you can limp off the highway to a parts store or at least to a safe place and you can figure out what to do next so I imagine you want to see this bus run so let's turn the ignition on and let's go to the back of the bus where we can actually start it straight from the engine as long as the ignition is turned on in the front so back here at the engine bay we're going to turn the ignition switch on we're going to hold the start selector to the rear and we're going to start the engine and it hasn't started in a while so sometimes it needs to just put a little bit more fuel through it no problem let me go over here where you can actually hear me so I usually start the bus obviously from the front where I give it just a little bit of fuel when I start it and with that a little bit of fuel It generally starts straight away back here I don't really have that option so it took me three times to start it but uh that's pretty easy as you saw there was a puff of white smoke that came out that happens every time on Startup pretty much and it goes away in about 10 seconds so in my experience that is completely normal in our battery box we have two brand new starting batteries completely new warrantied Not Gonna Let You Down we also replaced every single Tire on this bus in 2020 so you've got until about 20 30 2032 until these need to be replaced with top of the line Firestone Tires these are very expensive this is the best that we could get it has 100 gallons of fuel which gives this bus a safe range of about 600 miles before refuel it gets six to seven miles per gallon while driving 65 miles per hour down the highway with a max speed of 68. we have a gigantic pass-through undercarriage storage Bay which houses our 100 gallon gray slash black tank but also it's basically like having your own garage underneath the bus driving around with you and it's a huge asset that a lot of conversions just don't have there is an airbag suspension so the bus is actually lifting up right now over here we've got the driver's seat this is an air ride seat we got the original gillig steering wheel of course there is a backup camera right there USB Outlets back here cup holder air brake this is the shifter ignition high idle switch which doesn't work I forget what that does never used it this is for holding your cell phone some things that don't work anymore like interior lights exterior lights works the fans I didn't hook them up because I didn't love the way that they looked so I just opened the window and I opened the vent underneath there to cool myself while driving we've got the passenger heaters which have been deleted so those are gone windshield wipers temperature for the heater on the floor fan for the heater on the floor battery voltage water temperature for the engine oil pressure RPM gauge air gauge fuel gauge which does not work and miles per hour and you can see here we've got 224 000 miles on the clock there's some important information up here like your gbwr the data manufacturer look at that December 14th 1987 what a relic we've got the engine we've got the model we've got the engine number carried 87 passengers unladen it was 23 230 pounds and after the conversion pretty much full water tanks it's about 30 000 to 31 000 pounds so we put about seven thousand pounds of stuff in here up here we've got another storage compartment I put things like fishing rods and lures and stuff in here you've got some road safety cones right there nice little first aid kit and a school bus service manual with parts and service and service history amazing to have that in case you need to do any kind of troubleshooting and over here is the original door which I removed the bifold mechanism and I bolted both sides to each other with this right here and then the original mechanism holds it together from the outside and so you have this nice solid door but it still looks original and if you want to black out the front of the bus well there you go it's also nice to have this big mirror so you can see your passengers behind you so in the description below and also in the pinned comment is a website with all the details that I've just subscribed to once again in print form as well as photos of the build and if you want to see it built in Rapid Pace start to finish 18 minutes you're really going to love this video right here it's awesome click it foreign [Music]

Channel: Mobile Dwellings

Views: 37,522

Keywords: skoolie for sale, bus converison for sale, skoolie conversion, rv for sale, van for sale, adventure rig, mobile dwellings, buslife, school bus tour, skoolie tour, bus conversion tour, rv tour, tiny house tour

Id: x2h1Dw36_Lg

Length: 15min 5sec (905 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 19 2023