Micro Bus Build

I have been thinking about doing this for some time now but was finding it hard to come across the items I needed, luckily a friend recently offered me an old disability chair that was no longer needed. Perfect, just the thing I need for my base.


After a happy half hour spinning around the car park having fun I parked it and put it on charge and sat down with a cuppa and started hatching my next move.


Another friend had already built a micro split screen for his boy using my nans old mobility scooter and I didnt want to feel like I was copying him, but lets be honest a bus is going to be easier to build than a beetle or buggy! (more on this project another time ) This is a very nice looking bus but as it was from such a big unit he had to strip the whole thing and make a complete custom build. Looking at what I had I soon realised that with a little modification I could use the existing base.


The plan was to use the battery box as the seat and extend the front to create the right proportions. Time to start cutting and slam that bad boy.


Anonymised and standard:




Strip down the existing hardware:




Cut off old battery tray drop and weld back on:






Battery back in (after some wiring rework):






I did a bit of measuring of a full size bus and after some calculations figured that my micro bus was going to be about 1:3.07 scale some got some metal bar out to see what sort of dimensions I would be looking at:








OK, so maybe 56" (1420mm) is going to be too big and how the devil am I going to transport it to shows?


Scrap the scale sizing then, reduce the length to around 38", its going to be a bit stub nosed but I don't think it will be too noticeable, we shall see.




So thats all I have done today, keep an eye out for updates..............

 

What is this, human robot wars??

 

This idea:

Noel 2011 Nora mini vw bus split vw Bratz + Karmann ghia

 

this is exciting.

bek

 

So what happens when your Nan finds out her mobility scooter's missing?

 

Awesome idea, a friend of mine did a similar thing making a scale version of a Land Rover Defender for his kid, he loves it (the kid that is, well and his dad lol).

Can't wait to see this take form

 

Bookmark!!! I'll be keeping an eye on this one!!

 

This is what my mate came up with.

Splits have been done to death and mine will look much better than this >

 

Got a little more done on it today. After some thinking i decided that the original size would be too much for transport and weight so I dropped the length down by 10".

The best way forward, i thought, was to make a cardboard mock up of what the shell will look like:









With that all sorted I can now see what room I have and where things should go, so off with the cardboard shell and fabricate up the footrests making sure that I have enough clearance for the front wheels:





Next I need to think about how I'm going to fix the shell to the frame. Due to the rear wheels being 21" wide and the frame only 15" and needing clearance of half an inch each side of the rear wheels I'm going to have a space of 7" between the frame and shell so I reckon if I make up some 22" wide bars and weld them across the frame in various places I can then fix some U brackets to the shell so that it sits on the cross-members.

Till next time.....

 

Looking good. Are you going to leave the front wheels as they are, or are you going to put in some sort of steering?

 

Why complicate things, with the current 360 wheels I can turn on a dime

 

I love the toylanders so will follow this along

Have some karma

 

i've been thinking about this today.... and if i was building this it would stay at the gaffer and cardboard stage. and i would be well happy with it.- yours will be able to go outside and see the world in all it's wet rainyness.
bek

 

I reckon you should keep the cardboard top, and get JK to sponsor it

 

Funny you say that mate, the roof didn't fit right and fell apart today......