School Bus Floor Removal

Everyone knows you have to remove the seats, but when it comes to the floors there are a few different ideas on what to do. The beauty of a DIY bus conversion, it is your DIY bus conversion and you get to do what best suits your budget and desires. Some conversions leave the floor entirely, others remove the rubber, and the rest remove everything down to the bare metal.

For me, the choice to remove the flooring all the way down to the metal was a very daunting idea, but I wanted to make sure I had no surprises lurking beneath all of that rubber and plywood. I am glad that I did for I found several rust spots that I would have not known were there until later on down the road and that would be too late. I was able to properly treat these spots with Ospho rust converter.

Bonus Tip: If you are removing the rubber and plywood, remove them at the same time and save yourself a whole lot of extra time and effort.

Bonus Tip: If you are removing the plywood subfloor – Beg, borrow, find, acquire by whatever means necessary a good floor jack! This will save your back while prying up the plywood from the bare metal.

Bonus tip: If your bus has undercarriage air condenser fans installed, these units will more than likely have bolts that extend up through the floor of the bus. You will want to remove this first before removing the plywood, otherwise, you will question your life choices and your language will grow very colorful.

Here are my favorite YouTube videos of others who have trailblazed ahead and left a path for the rest of us to follow.

Ian Robinson

Make sure to watch the whole video, Ian starts with grinding rust but then goes back and shows removing the floor. Ian demonstrates an excellent technique that I borrowed on my bus, by removing the plywood panels and rubber at the same time, thus saving a step if you plan to remove all of the flooring.

The Bus Experience

This is an excellent example of working smarter, (you still have to work hard – you are converting school bus!) After finding this little gem online from “The Bus Experience”, I knew this was the way to go for my floor removal.

This was the technique I used. I would pry up the board just enough to set a chock block in place so I could maneuver the floor jack in place. Once the panel was up, I would just cut the rubber with a utility knife and remove the board, rubber and all.

Gus the Struggle Bus

Also employed the floor jack technique halfway through the floor removal. As you will see in this video, it gets much easier than just a pry bar. You can follow their progress on Youtube – they have great videos each week.
More Bus Demolition