How to Remove Skoolie Ceiling Panels

Removing the ceiling panels in a school bus conversion is no joke!  We were lucky our panels were secured with screws, which made it easier.  If your panels are secured with rivets, I’m sorry this won’t help a lot!  There are many useful videos on Youtube for this though.  Here’s how we removed our ceiling panels secured with screws.

Tools Required:

• Impact Driver
• Angle Grinder
• Safety gloves and glasses
• Utility knife
• Masking tape
• Sharpie Marker
• Trash bags
• A strapping Danish friend

Step 1 – Remove the easy screws

1. Disconnect the bus battery!
2. Unscrew the light covers and speakers.  Use the marker to write on the backs of them, noting exactly what position they were in, just in case you want to re-install them.
3. Use the impact driver (not a regular power drill) to remove as screws as possible.  If every single one comes out, go treat yourself to a beer because you just saved yourself some serious time!

Step 2 – Remove tough screws

1. Use the angle grinder to make a cut in the screw (like you are turning it into a flat head screw)
2. Attach a flat head screw bit to the impact driver and use it to remove the screw
3. If this doesn’t work, use the angle grinder to completely shear off the screw head

Step 3 –  Remove the panel

1. With a friend (or two) pull down the center of the panel, so it forms a U shape.  Like this:

2. Pull the center down, then slowly slide out the ends of the panel.  Slowly lower the panel to the floor. Be VERY careful on this step, because the edges of the panel can be sharp, the panel is heavy, and it is flexible so it will wobble and flex when it comes down!  You need enough hands to be able to bring it down slowly and safely!
3. Use the sharpie to mark the back of the every panel you bring down, so you know which one went where.  (We just numbered ours 1-8). This is EXTREMELY important if you plan on re-installing those panels, because the screw hole positions are completely unique to each panel/rib.  If you try to install a panel in a spot it didn’t come from, the holes in the panel will not match the holes in the rib structure of the bus.  Then you’re looking at re-drilling a billion holes in thick, solid steel.  No fun.  So make a system and know which panel went where!

Step 4 – Remove the old insulation

We chose to remove the old insulation from our bus because it really has no R-value at all.  It was basically a nylon pad in there for noise absorption.  We replaced the insulation with rockwool mineral wool, a good insulator and noise absorber.  We did save a few panels of the old insulation that was in good condition, and re-used for things here and there in the conversion.

1. Use a utility knife to cut the tape holding in the old insulation
2. Pull the insulation down, being careful with the light and speaker wires.  Once the insulation is down, re-tape the wires back where they were before, so you know what wire went to what (you might want to write on the ceiling as well, just to remind yourself that “this wire was going to a light/this wire was going to speaker” etc.
3. Throw the nasty insulation away, and save a few pieces that are in good shape (if any).  This can be re-used for other things in the conversion.
4. We re-used a few of our old insulation panels in a very key way, which we’ll detail below.

Re-Using the Old Insulation Panels

We replaced the old insulation with Rockwool mineral wool.  Here is the guide showing that process. You don’t want to be breathing this stuff.  Two of our ceiling panels (the two closest to the front of the bus) were perforated.  We didn’t want the rockwool sitting right next to this perforated panel, as we’d be breathing mineral fibers all day long (not good).  So we did this for the two perforated panels (this only works with old insulation panels that are basically a nylon cushion):

1. Take the old insulation and slowly peel off the top layer of the panel.  (Like taking off a layer of dead skin.  Gross, I know. But it’s the easiest way to describe what we did.)
2. When you install the mineral wool insulation, lay this ‘layer’ of the old insulation on top of it, securing with masking tape stretching from rib to rib.
3. Re-install the perforated panel.  What you’ll have is a thin layer of the nylon insulation creating a barrier between the rockwool and the perforated panel, stopping mineral wool fibers from entering your air every day.