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toyota coaster floor

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 – 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 –