Art We There Yet
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      April 17, 2022

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      February 27, 2022

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      January 8, 2021

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      March 1, 2018

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      May 27, 2018

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      May 7, 2018

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Art We There Yet
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    • MURALS

      A Mural Celebrating Teamwork

      April 17, 2022

      MURALS

      A Mural Celebrating the Great Outdoors

      April 3, 2022

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      A Mural Celebrating a Way of Life

      February 27, 2022

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      A Mural Celebrating the Sea

      January 15, 2022

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      A Mural Celebrating Action

      January 8, 2021

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      The Story Behind “Chan Chan”

      February 25, 2022

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      The Story Behind “Wanderer”

      January 31, 2022

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      The Story Behind “Here We Listen”

      January 30, 2022

      MUSIC

      A Song from the Bonneville Salt Flats

      February 10, 2021

      MUSIC

      A Song from the US-Mexico Border

      June 8, 2020

  • WORKSHOPS
    • WORKSHOPS

      A Mural Celebrating a Way of Life

      February 27, 2022

      WORKSHOPS

      A Song Celebrating Growth

      February 20, 2022

      WORKSHOPS

      A Song Celebrating Inner Strength

      February 6, 2022

      WORKSHOPS

      A Song Celebrating Healing

      March 24, 2020

      WORKSHOPS

      A Day Painting New Beginnings

      March 16, 2020

  • FILM
    • FILM

      NOLA from the Streets | A Short Film

      May 13, 2020

      FILM

      The Himalaya | A Short Film

      March 1, 2018

  • PHOTOGRAPHY
    • People of the Americas
  • STORIES
    • STORIES

      Returning to Roots

      August 7, 2022

      STORIES

      Wonders in Wisconsin

      June 26, 2022

      STORIES

      A Gallery Show in Chicago

      June 12, 2022

      STORIES

      Cities of the Midwest

      June 5, 2022

      STORIES

      Big Nature in Colorado

      May 22, 2022

  • BEFORE THE AMERICAS
    • Before the Americas Project

      Our Story Before the Americas

      July 24, 2022

      Before the Americas Project

      The Story Behind “Emotion”

      November 1, 2018

      Before the Americas Project

      A Mural Celebrating Perspective

      June 10, 2018

      Before the Americas Project

      The Story Behind “Be”

      May 27, 2018

      Before the Americas Project

      The Story Behind “Paso A Paso”

      May 7, 2018

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Bus Conversion Tutorials

How To Remove Bus Floor Tracking

by Art We There Yet? October 15, 2018
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Our school bus had in floor tracking and we thought it would be easy to remove.  The tracking made bus seat removal easy-peasy, but boy howdy removing the tracking was a different story.  Let’s start with a diagram of the school bus flooring and how the tracking was built in:

School Bus Flooring with Tracking Diagram
Imagine you are looking at eye level with the floor, looking from the rear of the bus towards the front.
School bus tracking on floor
Here you can see how the tracking installed between strips of plywood and bolted directly through the metal floor.

Tools & Material Required:
  • Hammer
  • Power drill
  • Angle grinder
  • Long pry bar
  • Wrench
  • Protective gloves and protective glasses
  • A sibling or two to be under the bus to anchor the screw from underneath (thanks, Jairo and Norlan!)

Full disclosure guys, some of these are affiliate links, so we get a commission if you buy something from the list.  As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.  Not much, but something.  This is really important: we only link to tools and materials we actually used and highly recommend. We do these guides completely for free, so these links are the only way we get a little something back (except for the satisfaction of knowing we helped you build your dream skoolie, of course!)

Don’t have Amazon Prime yet? Here’s a link for 30 days free.


STEP 1:  Remove the Metal Liner
  1. The metal liner is screwed through the rubber and into the plywood (not through the metal floor)
  2. Wack each screw a few times with a hammer (this helps prevent stripping)
  3. Unscrew with the power drill
  4. Pull up stubborn screws with the pry bar
STEP 2: Remove the Rubber
  1. Fit the pry bar in a loose space between the plywood and rubber
  2. Use the pry bar to pull up the rubber, it will come up fairly easily with if you use a long (3ft) pry bar
STEP 3: Remove the Plywood
  1. Use the pry bar as leverage to pull the plywood up from the metal floor, the nails will remain behind
  2. Use the pry bar to pull up the nails (wear your safety glasses!)
  3. Use the angle grinder to cut off the nails that you can’t get up with the pry bar
STEP 4: Remove the In-Floor Tracking
  1. Get ready for a lot of work.  This step took us three days; you will need two people for the job.
  2. Clean inside the heads of the tracking screws with a nail so that there is no gunk inside.
  3. Have someone go underneath the bus and hold the screw’s locker nut in place with a wrench.  This is key.  If someone is not holding the nut in place, the screw-nut-washer will simply spin in place.
  4. While the person underneath holds the nut steady, the person inside the bus will use the power drill to unscrew the bolt.
  5. Use the angle grinder to cut the tracking into 4-6 feet sections, then use the pry bar to pull the tracking up

There will be sections where you can’t reach the nut from underneath the bus.  There will also be some screws that simply won’t come up.  In these cases:

  1. Use the angle grinder to cut both the screw and tracking in half (diagram below).  Make one cut that halves the screw and completely cuts through the tracking, going down to the rubber but not into the metal bus floor below.
  2. Use the pry bar to pull the tracking up.

NEXT STEP:  Treating the rust on the floor!


<< Back to the Skoolie Conversion Ultimate Guide Homepage


art-we-there-yet-skoolie-bus-travel

So you’re building a skoolie, huh?

We feel your pain, my friend! We also know how good it feels to finally make a dream reality.

Our skoolie took 9 months and $28,000 to complete. We documented the entire build and are slowly building a series of guides on every step of the bus conversion process.

We spent a crap ton of time figuring out how to do this and that. We also could have saved a few bucks along the way. We hope our tutorials help save you some time and money!

Our TOP 5 Bus Conversion Tools & Materials:

  • 5-in-1 Painters Tool (you will use this a MILLION times)
  • Impact Driver & Drill Combo Kit (there won’t be a day you won’t use this)
  • 100% Silicone (buy in bulk to save a LOT of money!)
  • Angle Grinder (get used to using this ALL the time!)
  • Table Saw (it will be nearly impossible to complete your conversion without this. It’s WORTH the investment!)

Bolt & Screw Graphics Provided by Vecteezy.com

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About The Project

About The Project

Art We There Yet is a project to create art and music inspired by the Americas, celebrating our shared humanity and giving back to communities along the way. Aboard a school bus converted into an art and recording studio, we are traveling 30,000 miles across 23 countries of North, Central, and South America.

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