school bus conversion

Toyota Coaster Motorhome Conversion – Seat Removal

January 18, 2018 by Claire Edwards 2 Comments

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.

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

January 13, 2018 by Claire Edwards 2 Comments

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.

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

Even 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!

January 7, 2018 by Claire Edwards 1 Comment

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.

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.

« Previous Page