You got it done in the end. Lesson is to not give up. Those scrapers you bought were a real time saver. Looking forward to seeing the bus on the road. 😃
I'm having flashbacks to the process of removing all the decals on our bus. I found out towards that end that Klean Strip "Paint Thinner" does a good job of releasing the left behind adhesive. We also discovered after we finished that the aerosol version of "Goof OFF" works well too, or at least it works to remove decals from semi's. Looks like you got it done, but keep it in mind for the next bus! ;)
I agree with the easy off oven cleaner. I have used it many times. It starts working after a few minutes, making the decals look like paint remover does on paint. I have never had it destroy the paint. It just allows you to easily scrape off the decal.
For the letters if it’s a sunny day (and anything above 70 degrees) you can peel the letters right off by hand as long as you slowly do it/ don’t just rip it off it comes off fairly easy.
Yes, most of the lettering came off fairly easily. The reflective tape on the sides was a totally different story for us. That stuff was really stuck on there.
Great video. Please note. Do not put a roof top deck on your bus. As of May 2023 the insurance companies will not insure due to liability. GoodSam or Alstate will not insure with roof top deck. Solar is fine.
@@bigfamilyexpedition Absolutely. My profile pix is my bus. 2002 Thomas/Freightliner FS65. Cummins 5.9/24v, upgraded to 300 hp, upgraded trans to MT643. Three years to build.
Another one that is important as well. Here in Illinois, to get a commercial vehicle to RV they have six requirements and require five photos. Following that a visit from the Illinois secretary of State police to inspect. The handy trick. If your state requires. Take 20 photos and in great detail. Write long detailed letter on your build, parts. Divide build and chassis repairs done too. They love seeing the photos of new tires, with tread date and receipts. Illinois rated my bus a superior condition and no mandatory inspection required. My title conversion took 10 days. However the person who has a cruddy bus in another spot by me, took 10 weeks and multi inspections. The first two are free, after that $150 per visit
@@johnclamshellsp1969 Wow, that is a lot of steps for the title. We were lucky in our titling process. Our state only required that we write out a statement stating that it was going to be used as a motorhome, and what changes we made or were going to make to it for that purpose. We also had to state that it would not be used for commercial purposes, and that's it. Sounds like you had to go through a lot, but at least you were prepared and got it done in the end 💪
I did not know that. We used some 3m adhesive remover that worked well, but it was expensive. Will easy off remove adhesive residue from other surfaces? That could be helpful in the future.
@@bigfamilyexpedition I'm not sure the extent of it's usefulness. I had a van once that had decals on the sides with shadows on the letters painted on. After using heat gun and razor blade like you did, I used easy off to remove the residue and the old painted shadows of the letters. It took off sone oxidized paint in the area i was working but the gloss paint was not affected. You can either spray it on a towel and hold it on the adhesive to avoid any overspray. If you're planning on repainting then you can just spray it on and let sit a lil bit then wipe it off. Probably cheaper than other adhesive removers. Use your best judgement and test it in small area first.
Heat gun & plastic razor blades. Good luck with full coverage when you're finished. After i finished converting our mc9, our insurance co dropped full coverage because i wasn't a "licensed" bus converter.
Wow, I didn't know there were any "licensed" bus converters. I wonder it they could point you to one. Sounds like they just didn't want to cover it and made up an excuse to drop it.
don't have a schoolie, just looking into buying one, for some reason i want to load it full of tools and have a mobile shop but I don't think it would work well.@@pushythom
Thank you for the comment. One reason we got the bus was for all of the windows, but we knew from living in a RV previously the windows can be problematic. From what I have seen the cost to replace them all with upgraded windows would be extremely high (about $400 per window). We are going to try to take every step we can to reduce the condensation and heat loss.
We used a heat gun in the beginning, and while it worked better than the scraper it seemed to leave more residue behind than the other methods we tried. If we had to do it again we would use a rubber eraser wheel for the whole process.
The bus has been retitled as an RV and we are not using it for commercial purposes, so we do not need a commercial license where we are. However it varies depending on where you live so always check. We hope this helps.
There is no requirement to remove the safety yellow reflective tape strips. Unless you are removing them as prep for a new paint job, you could have left them on for safety sake.
We did need to remove them eventually for paint. Each insurance company may have different requirements for covering skoolies. The insurance company we found that would cover it told us they needed to be removed for them to give us coverage. Other companies just flat out told us no, so we were just trying to do what we could to get covered.
Thanks for the tip, we did have some 3M adhesive remover and that did work. The method we found that worked the best was a rubber eraser wheel on a drill. It took off the sticker and the adhesive at the same time. We figured this out after we were mostly done though lol.
