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Toyota Coaster Bus Conversion – Flooring

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The flooring for your bus conversion is not a hard job, however deciding on what you want to use can be.

There are many flooring options available, so we have compiled a list of available choices for you to compare. After this, we discuss the flooring option we chose, why we chose it, and how to install.

Flooring Options –  

ProsCons
CarpetCost 
Availability (so many options!) 
Easy installation 
Soft/warm underfoot   		Hotter during Summer  
More clean-up/vacuuming required  
Higher maintenance 
Vinyl Sheeting  Cost 
Waterproof 
Lightweight 
Easy installation 
Easy maintenance 
Availability/product range  
Thin  		Must be installed directly on the sub-floor; cannot have underlay or insulation underneath 
Doesn’t look ‘real’  
Vinyl Planks  Cost 
Most varieties waterproof 
Lightweight 
Easy installation 
Easy maintenance 
Hardwearing and durable  
‘Real’ wood look without the cost 
Thin 
Self-adhesive   		Possible heat shrink over time  
Must be installed directly on the sub-floor; cannot have underlay or insulation underneath 
LaminateCost 
Water resistant  
Hardwearing 
Availability/product range  
Easy installation  		Thicker than vinyl planks 
May not look ‘real’ 
TilesPhysically attractive 
Easy maintenance  		Cost 
Weight 
Harder installation 
Longer installation 
Fragile
Hardwood FlooringLooks amazing! 
Relatively easy maintenance   		Cost!  
Weight 
Installation harder and longer 
No FlooringCost  
Easiest option available 
Can just cover with mats/carpet/desired flooring 
No installation required  		May not be as physically nice as other options  
Unable to check sub-floor status 
Unable to lay underlay/insulation 

What flooring did we choose for our bus conversion?

Self adhesive vinyl planks from Bunnings.

Why? Cost, availability, look, ease, reviews!

A lot of people warned us against the vinyl planks, and said we will need to be careful; “They lift, they shrink, they don’t last!”. Gerflor even recommend not using the 2mm Senso Rustic product line in a caravan or motorhome for that reason. We of course learnt this after purchasing our floor boards.

However after speaking to a lovely lady at Choices flooring, she suggested we get around this by using a vinyl adhesive, and not just relying on the adhesive on the planks themselves.

The floor boards were cheap enough to risk giving it a go, so that’s exactly what we did.  

Guide to installing vinyl planks –  

Step 1 –  

Make sure your current sub floor is clean! That means no debris, nothing sticky, and no holes, or bumps. Try and fill any holes prior to putting the floor planks on, and if there are any raised bits, try and sand them down.  

If you haven’t read it already, and need to, we have another blog post here where we replace some of our damaged sub-floor.

Step 2 –  

Time to measure your planks. We strongly recommend measuring and cutting your planks prior to permanently sticking them down. This ensures there are no errors with measurements.

With these particular floor boards, the grain is directional. This means that they need to be laid and cut in a certain direction to make sure the pattern lines up. This helps to create the natural and ”life like” look. There were arrows on the underside of our planks to make sure we followed this direction.

It is up to you how many planks you want to cut in advance. We cut the whole floor to measure, and just sat them in place. They are easy to cut being so thin and can just be done by scoring with a Stanley knife, then “snapping” the plank.

Cutting and installing our rv floor - Toyota Coaster motorhome conversion

Step 3 –  

It’s time to apply the adhesive. Make sure you read your instructions as they may all differ.  

The one we used is a Dunlop vinyl adhesive from Bunnings. 

Move a couple of pieces of your floor planks at a time, starting from a straight edge. It is important to not do the entire floor in one go as the adhesive will dry too quickly before you have time to put them in place.  

We began ours from the edges of our wall and shower. This meant we started with the boards straight, and hopefully would finish with them straight!

For the adhesive we used, you need to apply an even coat using a ‘V’ notched trowel. You don’t need a lot, however make sure there is enough that it gets a good even coat. Allow this to sit for approximately 10 minutes, or until it becomes tacky.

Step 4 –  

Remove the paper on the back of your vinyl floor plank, and piece by piece lay into position and press firmly. You may even want to use a rolling pin or similar to roll over it so that you can ensure everywhere is pushed down firmly.  

Installing RV flooring - Toyota Coaster motorhome conversion

Step 5 –  

Repeat steps 3 and 4 until the floor is complete.  

Step 6 –  

Leave the floor to sit for approximately 24 hours prior to walking on it. This will allow the adhesion to set, and completely cure.

The planks will move under foot before they are fully cured, trust us we know!

And you are done!  

So while installing flooring into your bus conversion is not a hard process, it is a little time consuming, however 100% worth it.  

We have been living in out Toyota Coaster for a year now, and have not had any issues with our vinyl floor option. The planks have not had any shrinking, lifting or any other movement. Recently we decided to replace two of the boards due to some scratches we had made. The effort it took to remove the old boards confirms our belief that if you use vinyl adhesive you will definitely not have any issues with shrinking or lifting!

It is a good idea to have a few boards spare just in case.  

This small thing made such a huge difference and really made it start to feel like our home!  

Check out the video of us laying our flooring here ?:

Toyota Coaster Motorhome Conversion – Floor Installation and Wheelchair Lift Dismantle

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There are some days that are just disappointing and our last day on our Toyota Coaster had us walking away with a frown. Not today, today would be great. We just knew it. Our goal was to dismantle our wheelchair lift and replace our damaged sub-floor.

The wheelchair access in our Toyota Coaster was at the rear of our bus, and opens like a ”clam shell’. It is not a standard lift however, and when discussing with people who install the wheel chair ramps, they stated it looked like it actually came off a Ford van or similar, and was made to fit the Coaster. 

As it was made to fit, it has been completely welded to the chassis. Of course we would pick one with something non-standard and difficult to remove. Either way, we decided to still give it a go, and remove what we could. 

Dismantling the wheelchair lift – 

Shane and Claire trying to dismantle and remove the wheelchair ramp in our Toyota Coaster bus conversion.

The easiest place to start was the hand rail, and fold out ramp. These were held in place by a few bolts and were easily removed. 

This now just left the main lift. There was a steel plate on the main lift area, and underneath it ran all of the electrics. The electrics looked like they were connecting each bit of the lift, and needed to be disconnected for us to be able to remove the pieces. So it made sense that we had to start by removing the steel plate.

A lot of the small screws in the steel plate were threaded so it took a fair amount of effort and frustration to try and undo them. Two of the screws were unable to be taken out and a grinder was required to cut the heads off. 

After all of the screws were removed, we were able to remove the steel plate. This allowed us to access the electrics underneath. 

Shane trying to use the grinder to dismantle and remove the wheelchair ramp in our Toyota Coaster bus conversion.

We were right. The wires ran under the metal plate and linked everything together. 

After reviewing the wires (and much to my disagreement!) Shane decided to cut the wires leading to the first piece of wheelchair lift he detached.

‘Check it’ he says. Of course I was not surprised to find it no longer worked. Shane had broken the electrical circuit and now we were stuck with the wheelchair lift down. This became priority number one now as without the electrics, there was no manual way that we were aware of to be able to close it again.

To fix this, Shane got some female insulated electrical blade terminals and a switch. He stripped the wires back, crimped the terminals on and connected them to the switch. 

For anyone out there like me who doesn’t understand that, he basically fixed the broken circuit by adding a new end and reattaching it to where he had cut it off from before. Kind of like cutting a circle, taking part of it away, and reattaching the ends to make a smaller circle.

So now the pieces of the lift had all been disconnected, and the electrical circuit was fixed, we were only left with the ‘clam shell’ doors. 

Replacing the Sub-Floor – 

If you haven’t read the previous post to this one, Shane and I had some damaged sub-floor at the rear of our Toyota Coaster motorhome. Water had leaked in via some damaged seals, and the back 30cm needed replacing. 

If you want to see how we removed the damaged sub-floor, you can read about it here. 

It was now time to replace the floor with some new wood. 

The original sub-floor we removed was 15mm thick. We wanted to replace this with marine plywood in case there were any future leaks. Unfortunately, we were unable to find 15mm marine ply to replace it. We decided to buy 6mm and 9mm marine ply which we would glue together to make the 15mm.

Photo of the new marine plywood cut and ready to be installed in our water damaged floor in our Toyota Coaster bus conversion.

So how did we do it?

  • Start by measuring the wood, and mark it up with a dark sharpie (or similar). 
  • Use some clamps, and secure the wood to a solid and stable spot ready for cutting. 
  • Use a jigsaw to cut along your marked lines. 
  • Make sure the wood fits into position, and adjust and cut as necessary. 
  • Once the wood is ready, remove it from position and spray the metal floor of the bus with some sort of Rustguard and allow to dry. 
  • Apply a layer of liquid nails to the metal of the floor, ready for the new wood to sit on top. 
  • Lay down the first layer of wood, and then apply more liquid nails in between the layers, and place the second layer of wood into position. 
  • Place something heavy on top, and allow to sit until set. 

Shane replacing the floor in our Toyota Coaster bus which was water damaged.

The sun was setting and it was time to reflect on the day we had had. The day started well. Then after multiple trips to the shops and the issues with the electrics we were feeling quite certain it was going to be another day of disappointment.

But it wasn’t!

We fixed the wheelchair lift and removed what we could. We cut all the wood, and replaced the sub-floor. It was a day of teamwork with our wheelchair lift and sub-floor, and we got there.

It all went well, except our sunburn… that was another story!

Toyota Coaster Motorhome Conversion – Heater, Floor, Roof and Wall Removal

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Day two of renovations on our Toyota Coaster motorhome conversion – we were excited! Our first day of removing the seats had been so successful that were keen to do more. The goal for today; remove the heaters, vinyl floor, and the internal roof and walls. In other words… IT’S DEMO DAY! 

The only concerns we had for demo day, was the removal of the heaters. There is not a lot of information online regarding this and we were a little concerned about the process. 

I had even tried that morning to call around our local auto stores to try and pick up a Toyota Coaster manual… who knew this would be so hard! All we wanted was a guide to work out which hoses to cut for them. We rang multiple places and looked online and have come to the realisation that they no longer publish them. There is only a CD or an online, downloadable version. 

So we decided we were going to wing it. We will eventually get the online version, and possibly even look to print it as a hard copy. It will just be convenient if something were to go wrong. If interested, you can look here for the CD.

The Heaters –

Shane pointing out the heaters inside our Toyota Coaster bus prior to removing.

There are two heaters located in the middle of the bus floor. For anyone wanting to install anything like a kitchen, bathroom, or even just a lounge room, there placement is quite inconvenient. You could look at building over them, or making a box to sit on top, but if they are not required, it is much more space friendly to remove them. So that’s what we decided to do. 

They would have to be the most difficult thing we were to remove today in our Toyota Coaster Motorhome.

The Process –  

  • The heater is bolted into the floor, with the nuts of the bolts located underneath the bus. The location underneath the bus can be quite difficult to find on your own. Try and have someone on the inside of the bus, tapping the floor at the location of the bolts, while a second person searches underneath. 
  • Once the bolts are located, there are 3 to remove. These can be done relatively easy with a wrench, or socket. One of our heaters was covered in built up dust and grime. If this is an issue, maybe spray with WD-40 and leave for 10 mins to help clean the area a little before trying again. 
  • When the bolts are loose, it is time to disconnect the two hoses. These are removed by undoing to clamps on the hoses and pulling them off. 

Be careful when removing these hoses as the coolant inside will come spurting out. Shane got a nice little splash to the face and this is something you do not want to get in your eyes, mouth etc. Have a bucket ready to go to catch any excess coolant. 

Now that the hoses are disconnected and the bolts are undone, the heater just lifts out. The removal of our heater in our Toyota Coaster bus was complete!

The next step for the heaters is to plug them. Have a read of our next post here where we guide you through how we plugged ours. 

Shane pointing out the heater hoses underneath the bus before removing in our Toyota Coaster bus conversion.

The Walls –

The walls in the Toyota Coaster are held on with metal screws on the padded edges, and trim fasteners on the walls. 

I started the hard way with the trim fasteners – trying to remove one by one. This was not a fun endeavor. After getting fairly frustrated I decided to use the drill with a phillips head driver on it to remove the screws holding the padded edges of the wall panels in place. The screws were mostly located tucked up underneath the padded edges, but were easily accessible.

Claire pointing out the screws underneath the wall panelling prior to removing in our Toyota Coaster bus conversion.

Once the screws were removed, I was then able to just pop the walls off. The easiest way is to get behind them and pull. It takes a little effort but is much simpler than trying to remove each trim fastener individually. Now that I had the knack, it only took around twenty minutes to remove all the internal walls.

The Roof Lining –

Removing the internal roof lining of our Toyota Coaster motorhome was next. 

This is not something you have to remove. If you have decided to keep the current roof, it does have a layer of insulation underneath as well as structural metal beams. These beams can be drilled into for support.

Our roof was in fairly good condition and we did consider leaving it as is. However, part of our dream included a wooden roof. So we decided to remove the roof lining to make way for our new roof paneling and to install new insulation.

After doing some research online about the insulation currently in the Toyota Coaster, we realised it is fairly combustible. We saw a video showing the difference between the current insulation and new insulation when catching on fire. It was not pretty! Being that this was going to be our home, that was a good enough reason for us to want to replace it, in the off chance anything were to ever happen.

The removal of the roof lining was fairly simple. Using a phillips head piece on the drill we removed all of the lights and speakers in the roof. Once these were removed, the roof just peeled out.

We didn’t get a chance to remove the insulation and will be leaving this for another day. If you want to read about how we removed the insulation, check out that post here. 

The Air Conditioner Ducts –

The air conditioner ducts are only something you will have in your Toyota Coaster if you have the deluxe model which features ducted air conditioning. To us, this was something that was wasted space. It is an empty duct that is used to navigate the air from the front to the back of the bus. They are very large, and empty underneath. 

The plan in our Toyota Coaster motorhome is to have overhead cupboards all the way around the edge and this is the perfect place to put them. 

We also decided on a roof mounted split system air conditioner, so we did not require ducting from the front.

Shane and Claire removing the air conditioning ducts in our Toyota Coaster bus conversion.

These were frustrating to remove. As with almost every other thing we had done so far, they required a phillips head drill piece to remove. 

Underneath the ducts, there are two rows of screws along the entire side of the bus. The screws were not drilled into any backing, so when trying to remove, they just spin in place. 

We did this together as a team.

As one of us would remove a screw, the other would pull on the plastic panel making sure the screw dug into something and would pull out.

It doesn’t sound too complicated, but when you have one every 10cm and you are constantly reaching up high it becomes quite difficult and time consuming!

The Floor –

Ahh… The removal of our vinyl floor, the last step.

After removing all of the edge trims, door mechanism and hand rails, it was a simple task of peeling the vinyl off. It works best if you get down low and peel together. The glue Toyota have used in construction is amazing and extremely adhesive. If we had thought about it earlier we might have had something ready to go to start cleaning it while we removed. But alas, we did not.

I recommend not removing this until you are ready to clean or to lay something over the top. Ours now has not a only a layer of glue to remove, but also looks like a lawn from the grass we had dragged in.

We found the best/easiest way to remove the glue is to use a planer and plane the top edge of the wood off. We tried multiple different cleaning chemicals however did not have any success and spent hours on the floor. If you do decide to use a planer, make sure you regularly clean it as the glue can clog it and if not careful, it could damage your planer. We did this for one of the sub-floor panels and decided that it still wasn’t worth the time it took. Eventually, we ended up just painting over the adhesive with a primer. 

At the end of DEMO DAY, we were exhausted and proud.

We allowed ourselves two days to remove the heaters, vinyl floor, internal walls and roof. We did an amazing job and got it done in one! I guess ‘winging’ it paid off. Next time we will work our how to plug our heaters, as well as looking into replacing our damaged sub-floor in our Toyota Coaster motorhome.

Everytime we set our minds to it, we exceed all of our expectations and we couldn’t be happier. We are  waiting for the day for something to go wrong, or not as planned because we know it will. I guess that’s one way to look at it, you can only plan so much. But until you actually get in and get things started,  you’ll never get anywhere. 

Check out our DEMO DAY video here – 

Toyota Coaster Motorhome Conversion – Seat Removal

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Once you have chosen your vehicle for your motor home conversion, the first step for most people is to remove the seats and empty the bus. We were lucky that our Toyota Coaster seats were not too difficult to remove. However, we still wanted to provide some handy information for anyone needing some help. Unlucky for us, the day we decided to start our Toyota Coaster seat removal, was going to be over 45 degrees!

What are the rules with seats in a bus conversion? 

Something that can differ between each state in Australia, and definitely something to check before removing the seats; is the amounts of seats, with seat belts required per sleeping berth.

So for example. Shane and I will have a double bed, and our Toyota Coaster bus plan will be made to sleep just 2. This means we are able to remove all but 2 seats. If we were to have enough bedding to sleep 4, we would need to have enough seating with seat belts to match. You cannot have less seats than sleeping berths.

You may be able to move seats by using the current anchorage points.  Possibly even change the position of the seats, build your own, or have additional seat belts added. Either way, it is best to chat to an engineer in your state first to make sure what you are doing will be legal and able to be registered as a motor home once complete. It would be so sad to go to all that effort to not be able to register it!

If you are looking for more information for NSW standards to convert a vehicle to a motorhome, have a read of this RMS link. We have constantly referred back to this link while we have been building our home.

Photo of all the seats that have been removed from our Toyota Coaster bus conversion. Toyota Coaster seat removal.

What tools do you need? 

In our Toyota Coaster bus, we had 5 sets of double seats to remove, 4 single seats, 2 single wheelchair removable seats, and 2 double sets of wheel chair seats.

We started with the standard double seats and the single seats. It was very simple. For most seats, there were 2 bolts in the floor, and 2 bolts in the wall. Each used a 13mm socket to be removed. It only took around an hour in total to remove these seats.

Our Toyota Coaster bus has a wheelchair access and lift at the back of the bus. So the back 2 rows of seats were made to remove easily. We found this out way too late. I won’t tell you how we did it, and will give you the right information instead!

Underneath each seat, there is a lever. Once this is pushed, it undoes the latches which hold the seats in place. This then allows the seats to be removed, and just leaves the mount on the ground.

These mounts of our Toyota Coaster seats are the difficult part to remove.

Each one is bolted with 4 allen key bolts into the ground, and requires a nut to be undone underneath the bus. The easiest way was to start with WD40 to provide some lubrication to the bolts and the nuts underneath. After this, an allen key was held on to the bolts on top, whilst the nut was loosened underneath the bus just enough so we could remove the bolts from the top.

It was not easy. However, we were lucky. Most of these are in the place where our bed is going to located, so we did not need to remove the majority.

For a lot of people, removing the seats can take a long time and be extremely frustrating. From our research, a lot of people need to individually grind out each seat from in the bus, but also underneath.

Considering how long we thought it would take, it wasn’t as bad as expected and the seats were removed. Our next step is to remove the roof, walls and floor in our Toyota Coaster school bus.

Check out all our mistakes from our first day of our bus renovation below –

Now read on to see the fun we got up to next with our school bus conversion heater, floor, roof and wall removal, and how we can help you!

*Literally the only tool required!

4 Reasons Why You Must Consider a Toyota Coaster For Your New Bus Conversion

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Are you looking to convert a school bus into a motorhome? Wanting to get escape the 9-5 daily grind and explore everything around you? Not sure what is the best vehicle for your bus conversion?

Yep, it’s a hard decision, but we’re here to tell you why you should consider a Toyota Coaster for your conversion.

We undertook a lot of research before deciding on a Toyota Coaster for our school bus conversion; our home. There are so many things to consider – like what sort of layout is it going to have? Am I going to be able to fit everything that I want and need? Am I going to be able to drive it? Is it reliable? The list goes on and on…

The good news is, you will get there; a decision will be made. After all our research it became clear to us that the Toyota Coaster was everything we were after, and more. And, with helpful posts like this, it makes it that little bit easier to compare, and get information for your decision as well.

Shane and Claires Toyota Coaster chosen for their school bus conversion - best bus for conversion

Why choose a Toyota Coaster?

Reliability – 

Arguably the most important factor when considering a vehicle to be your new home is reliability. You don’t want to have it fail and leave you stranded. Where will you stay if it needs to be at the mechanics for weeks?

The Toyota Coaster is a popular minibus available locally in Australia, Japan and China, but imported all over the world. They have been driving on our roads for almost 40 years with over 20,000 of them being sold locally in Australia, and many more being imported.

Toyota Coaster’s (Primarily models between 1993 and 2003) have the same engine as the Toyota Landcruiser, the Toyota 1HZ. This well respected engine has been found to be extremely reliable, with some coasters lasting well over 600,000 kms.

The coaster is famous and well known worldwide, for its strong body and large seating capacity. The internal floor of the Toyota Coaster is made up of a durable and high-quality vinyl-covered timber. The coaster has been so popular that many companies have tried to replicate it, however none have been able to come up with a design that has been as durable.

There is a reason it has a reputation for a bus that won’t fail you!

Easy to service – 

Because Toyota in general is such a well-known brand Australia wide, almost any mechanic can perform services and minor repairs on a Toyota Coaster if required. Parts are easy to come by, with most local places stocking Toyota parts or being able to order them in, relatively easy and inexpensive. This is a huge reason why the Toyota Coasters are popular for a bus conversion.

Size – 

Due to being a minibus we found the Toyota Coaster to be the perfect size for what we were looking for. It is large enough that we could comfortably have a queen bed, shower/toilet, kitchen and lounge area with space to store everything we require. Yet, it is also small enough, at around 6.8m long and 2m wide, that it would not be a major inconvenience driving to and around national parks, a big win since this is one of the reasons we wanted to do this. It also fits into two car spaces, and is not much wider than a 4WD, which makes it easier to drive around town and park when required.

In Australia, it can be small and light enough to be driven under a standard car licence, which allows you to drive a vehicle up to 4.5 tonne and with a maximum of 12 seats.

The next licence up is an LR licence, or light rigid truck licence, which is designed for vehicles above 4.5 tonne and up to 8 tonnes, that carry more than 12 passengers.

The Toyota Coaster has a GVM of 4.99 tonne, this includes seats and 22 passengers. Once the seats are removed, the coaster will be reduced in weight enough to be reclassified to a class C, or car licence. If you keep the converted weight under 4.5 tonne gross, then you will not require a LR licence.

This was not something we did, however can be very handy.

To get an LR licence in NSW you must undertake a truck driving course and pass a computer test. This makes it a much more convenient and cost-effective method as the LR courses can be pricey.

Read more about driving a Toyota Coaster on a car licence.

Availability and Pricing - 

The cost of the Toyota Coaster itself is reasonable. After researching many different models that ranged from around AUD $10,000 to $25,000, we found that the coaster was a very viable option to transform into a motorhome.

We also learnt that once coasters were converted, hold their value extremely well. For the initial cost you get great benefits including excellent reliability and lifespan, a good amount of space for something that can only require a car licence (once converted), large windows, rear doors, and wheelchair lifts in some models.

Toyota Coaster buses are fairly easy to come across. They have been around for a long time, so you can imagine there are a fair few of them out there. We searched Australia wide and ended up finding one in our own suburb . It had everything we were after and more – what are the chances!

Not only is the bus itself readily available, but because it is such a popular choice for a motorhome conversion, so are the parts to do it. Companies such as DIY RV Solutions and Noq Noq RV fitouts provide flat pack options already cut and ready to fit into a Toyota Coaster. This can be helpful to look at if you are not sure where to start and to get some ideas.

Final thoughts

Shane and Claire standing in front of their Toyota Coaster - best bus for conversionEven after re-reading what we have just written, it solidifies that we have made the right decision in choosing a Toyota Coaster.

It feels like the best bus for our conversion. Our coaster feels like home already, and it has only just had the seats pulled out. And that’s how it should be, it should feel like home.

When we decided that this was going to be our adventure, and we told our family and friends, so many of them laughed. Who ups and leaves to live in a bus on the road?

Well we say to anyone looking to do this, or even just interested, if you can, go for it. Just do it. So far, the sense of freedom it has made us feel, and the sense that we are going to achieve what we want out of life, is so exhilarating.

We hope this post helped with your decision to convert a bus into a motorhome, and if you have any other questions, feel free to contact us ?

Welcome to Roaming on Rubber – School Bus Conversion Blog!

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Hello and welcome to our school bus conversion blog!

We struggled with how to start this blog and what would be an exciting first post, and in the end we decided we would introduce you to who we are, why we are here and to use this post to serve as our ‘About us’.

So who are we…

We are a couple from Newcastle, Australia. We are childhood sweethearts who after many years apart have reunited for an exciting journey together.

I am Claire, who along with my day job as a Customer Service Representative, am an artist at www.facebook.com/claireedwardsart. My partner Shane has a day job as a IT Operations Analyst and is a photographer at  www.shanepatmorephotography.com.au. We are busy people who just don’t have the time to do all the things we love.

After spending two weeks in Japan in 2017, we decided that working 9-5 wasn’t enough for us, that the world has so much to offer, and we wanted to do everything we could to experience it. Within a week of returning home we had booked two more trips away, one to Bali and one to China, but this still wasn’t enough.

Shane in Japan - Beginners guide to Japan - school bus conversion blog

After wondering how/where to start we concluded that there was so much to see and do right here in Australia and that we should start here and try to see it all.

To do this, we have decided to buy and do a school bus conversion and take our lives on the road. This is so that we have the best chance to go where we want and not be restricted by time or work. We are going to document our process along the way for the many like minded people out there hoping to escape the daily grind as well. By no means are we experts… in fact we have little to no experience in this kind of field at all. However, we are excellent at researching and are more than willing just to give things a go.

We forgot to mention as well that it is not just us…. it is also our beautiful fur friends and a bird. Things will get very interesting!

We wanted to start a bus conversion blog to be able to track our progress towards our goal of location independence and to chronicle all our adventures with our bus conversion. We hope that in doing this, we may be able to make things just a little easier for anyone hoping to embark on a similar adventure. This is a huge personal journey for both of us, and we want to be able to share it with you.

In saying that, I will leave it there.

Shane and Claire at the airport, bound for Japan - school bus conversion