More Windows Covered! | Bus Conversion

The last few days I have been working on covering more of the bus windows.  I did this on the inside and not on the outside.  Sometime in the future I may go ahead and cover the outside of the windows with metal.

This is what I did.

First, I removed the wood trim that surrounded the windows I wanted to cover.  I ran them through a table saw in order to make a notch in the wood.
 

Next, I reinstalled the wood trim strips.

Trim with Notch

Installed Trim with Notch

Then I installed construction foam over the window and in between the wood strips.

Construction Foam Installed

Then I cut 1/4" oak plywood to fit each opening and stained and varnished each panel.

After they were dry I installed the plywood panel over each opening.  In all I covered 7 Windows.  In doing it this way I was able to avoid having to cover the exterior window openings with metal because I didn't have to remove the existing windows.  When I am ready to cover the exterior with metal I don't have to remove the windows either.

Front Dinette Window Covered

Rear Dinette Window Covered

Front Kitchen Window Covered

Master Bedroom Passenger Side Windows Covered

Master Bedroom Drivers Side Windows Covered

After all the panels were installed I applied silicone to all sides of the panel to insure and good air tight seal.

My reason for doing this was to increase the energy efficient of the bus.  It should stay a little warmer in winter and cooler in the summer!

UPDATE:  I had someone ask what it looks like from the outside.  You can't see the foam insulation from the outside because of the dark tint on the windows.  I will post a pic soon.

Tires Complete | Bus Conversion

I wanted to follow up on two posts I made some time ago regarding our tires.  The posts I am referring to can be found here: Previous Post Update & Tires & More!!!

Hopefully this info may save some money for those of you who are doing similar projects.

We did the following not long after getting our new tires but I never made a blog post about it so here it is.

Originally I wanted to purchased some used tires at half the price of new.  After purchasing them and having them installed we noticed that the bus vibrated really bad.  They informed me that they were unable to balance the kind of wheels that are on the bus  To make a long story short we went back and had new tires installed all the way around hoping it would fix the problem but found that the vibrating had not stopped.  I then did some research and found that I needed to have my tires not only balanced but trued.

I located a place that could true my tires.  Truing is the process of shaving the tire in different places to get it perfectly round and balanced.  They do this with the tires still on the bus so not only do you get balanced tires and wheels but everything that spins and is connected to the wheels is also balanced. 

Had I know about this process before, I could have just kept the used tires and had those tires trued and balanced instead of spending the extra cash on new tires.

Now the bus rides very smooth with no vibration at all!