My mobile bus bar needs flooring…
Downstairs stripped
The biggest problem with working on old vehicles is that there is always the element of the unknown. Once all the seats, handles, posts and brackets had been removed I started to remove the floor. This floor had obviously been in place since 1965 and wast actually in no mood to be removed at all. Reinforced rivets meant that, what was going to take 2 days took two weeks. The unknown, hate it! I did manage to pull the floor out without damaging any of the sections.
Every little helps….
You might wonder why I went through all the trouble to pull up the old floor out of our beloved bus bar to be? I could’ve just laid the new one on top. Here’s why! I was born and raised in Holland, my father is Dutch and my mother is Swiss. In Holland I’m considered “average height”. In England I’m seen as somewhat of a giant. At 6 foot 6. I was always going to struggle to stand up in my bus but at least I saved myself a good 30mm by tearing out the old floor. The fact that I’m so tall actually ended up giving my business national head lines. Check out that story HERE!
Routemasters are part of history, we must recycle the parts!!
There is a small group of people in the UK that are very fanatical about Routemasters. One of them being the man I bought my first one off (RML 2355) who shall remain nameless for the moment. I had to actually avoid the real reason for purchasing her because if I’d have told him I was going to convert it he simply wouldn’t have sold it to me. I still feel bad about that but the main problem this situation is that when you say the word “conversion” all the purists instantly jump up and start shouting. I laid down some very strong ground rules when I started my mobile bus bar build to simply protect this historic icon.
- The bus had to always be able to be turned back into a actual bus.
- I would recycle all the removed parts back into the RM fraternity.
- I would alter the outside as little as possible.
- I would drill as little holes in it as possible (3 for electric cables)
There where a few bits I had to brake because they where impossible to remove due to old age but even the floor boards that took two weeks to remove ended up being sold to a Routemaster owner who was missing his. Made me feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside that did…. ;)
Our seats were all sold to the chaps in the image below for use on other Routmasters.
All the seats were recycled to a routemaster bus company
From here on out I’d be adding rather that removing to our bus bar!
Upstairs stripped
With both levels totally stripped out it was time to start adding rather than removing stuff from our mobile bus bar build. A very exciting point in my conversion and a moment I remember very well. See you next time on the continued story of my very own Routemaster Mobile bus bar build!
