The bus was $3200 from an individual on Craigslist. The person I got it from had purchased it from the local school district. The body is in good shape and the 5.9l Cummins diesel engine runs well for having over 200,000 miles.

I experimented with several different methods of removing the seats before committing to grinding the bolt heads off with a grinder. Just make sure to go overboard on the safety gear. Grinder disk can blow up and cause serious injury. Go with a face shield instead of just goggles.

I experimented with different ways of removing the old plywood flooring. The screws were rusted and difficult to remove. The 4-foot Harbor Freight crowbar was labor intensive and I didn’t want to risk an injury early in the conversion project. Lifting the floor with a floor jack ended up being the solution that worked best. Then a Ryobi cordless sawzall worked well to breakdown the plywood into manageable sections. The youtube video below gives you an idea of how it went.

The craigslist Gigs section worked well for finding people to haul away the old seats and floor. It only cost about $80 to get it all hauled away. The seats were picked up by a guy who intended to upcycle them.

The next step was to clean the floor and paint the rust spots with Ruststop primer that came from Ace hardware.