Building a Motorhome
We receive several emails every week from people who enjoy reading our blog and who have questions about how they too can begin to enjoy the lifestyle that we live. We enjoy reading these emails and like the feedback, there are always a number of questions about building a motorhome. In this article I would like to put forward my opinion on building your own motorhome.
My first chunk of advice for those who are considering buying an old bus and converting it into their very own home on wheels is “DON’T DO IT”! I seriously suggest that anyone who thinks they are capable of turning an old bus into a practical, functional, robust motorhome on any sort of reasonable budget and in a reasonable timeframe, without any previous experience is deluding themselves. Now I am not saying that it is impossible, I am just saying that it is probably 10 times more difficult, and twice as expensive as you think. If you don’t believe me, have a look in local papers and on eBay at the number of “incomplete project busses” that are for sale – these people found out the hard way just how expensive and time consuming it is to do your own conversion.
So what is the alternative? I suggest that the best way to get on the road is to buy a bus that is already converted. Look for something that is close to what you want – then spend the time and money making the changes.
Lets compare the two options:
| Build Your Own Motorhome | Buy A Already Converted Motorhome |
| On day one after the purchase, you start removing seats. You have drawn you design based on what you think will work for you and you start building. The motorhome has to be almost finished before you can try out the design by taking the motorhome away for a weekend. By the time you realise that it is not quite right, it is too late. | On day one you drive a fully functional motorhome onto your property. On day two you decide to spend the night in it and pretend that you don’t have to go to work the following day. The next weekend you take it away to try it out. During this time you get some ideas about what needs to be done to make it suitable for full time living.
A month later you take it away for your first week long trip. This is where you really start to figure out what full time motorhoming is all about. By the end of this week you have altered your 2 year “get on the road” plan to a 1 year plan, have some real plans for alterations to the bus and definitely do not want to go to work on Monday. |
| Six months after buying the bus, it still doesn’t look anything like a motorhome. You cannot believe how expensive all the parts are. The gas fitter and the electrician have quoted outrageous prices and your mate who was going to help you always seems to have something else on.
Someone said that the household fridge you bought for the bus would require too many solar panels and the large water tank you had built is just a fraction too big for the space you allocated for it. |
Six months after buying the motorhome, you have been away in the motorhome 9 times and the 1 year plan to get on the road is looking more like a 9 month plan. You have already started selling all the stuff you won’t need and have secured a storage unit for the stuff you have to store. The alterations on the bus are complete and they have been tested. |
| Nine months after purchase, you are over the whole thing, doing 3 hours work on the bus after work each day and two full days at the weekends has worn you down. You cannot understand where all the money has gone and it still looks nothing like a motorhome.
You decide to advertise it on eBay as a partly completed project. |
Nine months after buying the motorhome you are finally on the road. The bus has been well tested (all those weekends away) and the alterations are working well.
No work tomorrow! |
Ok, so that is perhaps a little over dramatised, but it is fairly representative of how many of these stories go. All I am suggesting is that you think very carefully about what skills and experience you have in designing and building motorhomes, really check out the prices of fittings (some are up there with marine fitting prices) and realistically consider the amount of work that is involved.
Selecting a used motorhome
Before you even start looking at motorhomes you must make some important decisions. The first and most important is “what sort of traveller am I?” By this I mean, will you be driving from caravan park to camping ground or will you be wanting to free camp 95% of the time. I suspect that most people who are reading this will opt for the latter. Clearly, the advantages of setting up your motorhome for freedom camping include a vast reduction in ongoing expenditure (no or few caravan park fees) and the ability to stay that that magic place in the middle of nowhere.
The downside is the cost of the motorhome fit-out. Setting up a bus to be fully self-sufficient and independent is far more expensive than simply equipping it to accept the services from a caravan park.
Having decided on the type of travelling you will be doing, you now need to start listing what the motorhome will require…
How big does it need to be?
How much water will you need to carry?
How much food storage?
What is the best type of refrigerator?
What type of fuel will the vehicle run on and what tank capacity will you need?
How will you make power and how much storage will you need?
Solar – how much?
Once you have answered these and all the other important questions, you can make a list of what the ideal motorhome will contain. Of course, you won’t be able to find a motorhome that is for sale that meets all of these requirements (Hobohome is NOT for sale! 
)– but you will find one that is close, it will require some time and money to get it to where you want it to be – but it will be a manageable project AND you will be able to use the motorhome on day one.
Be honest – if you have never lived in a motorhome for an extended time away from services, how can you be expected to know what it takes? Taking your newly purchased motorhome away for a week at a time before you start spending any money on it, is one of the best ways of finding out -without spending money on mistakes.
Motorhome mistakes are typically very expensive!
Do you agree or disagree? Do you have a story about building your motorhome? Have you bought someone else’s mistakes? I’d love to hear from you – why not use the “leave a Reply” box below and tell us about your experience.
Related Articles:
- Getting Your Motorhome – Build or Buy? Written May 2004 Updated May 2009 and moved from the old articles section What should I consider when thinking about building or buying a motorhome? That is a question we...
- Top Questions about our “Hobohome Lifestyle” A list of some of the questions we often get asked about our Hobohome lifestyle… Where do you get your drinking water from? In most part of the country, drinking...
Tags: Building A Motorhome, Bus Conversion, Motorhome
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However it costs a lot of money each year to keep the site up and running. The advertisement that you see on the site
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Many thanks - Gavin & Tracey.
June 6th, 2010 at 10:57 pm
Hi Gavin,
I disagree, try 3x as expensive and 20x as hard
Actually you’re pretty close, our estimate to build Mk 2 was $25k and it wound up being $45k. As for Mk 1, I often reckon if we had done as you suggest we would have hit the road 2 years earlier and $100k richer. We may not have had exactly what we wanted but is it worth that sort of cost?
June 9th, 2010 at 7:33 pm
hi gavin
I am starting to agree with you. We started our bus an 8mtr hino december 2008 (even after reading your story back then I dont think you recomended a self build), we used a N Z product called Duralite and it looked easy to use on the web site, but being an electrician and not a chippie I struggled until I found a 79year old retired cabinet maker who came to our assistance and he has done a fantastic job.So after 2 or 3 hours every day after work and most weekends the inside is nearley complete just waiting for the kitchen seats to be made,gas and hot water fitted then its off to the spray painters .then registration then ???
If I had my time over, I still dont know if this was the way to go but we are getting the fitout design we want, probabley saved $40k, but we are still here and lost 2 years traveling time, will make up for that when we are on the road.
I have read all the stories you post on your web site and have got some good ideas during the build which have been helpful to us. Here’s hoping that we meet on the road some time soon.
Cheers Jim
June 11th, 2010 at 7:50 pm
G’day Gavin
I’m not about to argue with you – since I haven’t a leg to stand on!!! – but we are a stubborn pair and our standards aren’t as high as some! We’ll be on the road by this time next year if we wind up sleeping on a mattress on the floor of our bus. If there’s one positive thing about living in South Australia it’s that it makes anywhere else look attractive, and a 36 foot bus positively luxurious. It’ll happen, stay tuned…
June 11th, 2010 at 8:27 pm
Please keep us informed with your progress.
BTW – we loved SA!
June 19th, 2010 at 2:16 am
Hi Guys
This is the address of our blog site it is open to the public so feel free to share it…
http://cid-6b455154a691979b.spaces.live.com/default.aspx?_c02_vws=1&sa=244504173
We are currently building our bus/motorhome but are also living in it as we build. The bus is to be named “Dilligaf” inspiration drawn from reading your story… We do agree that the costs associated with conversion and fitout can be very expensive it is also very rewarding when you can do most of the work your self.
Whilst I am not a tradesman I do consider myself a jack of all trades and am willing to give anything a go…any skills I do not have I am happy to research them or request some assistance if it is beyond me. We still have a long way to go but it is not our first bus, having converted and then reconverted a 25 ft bedford school bus in the eighties.
Our current project is a PMC bodied 36ft International, repowered with an Aussie spec Isuzu 6bd1 driving a 4 speed auto. We have put about 10,000 klms on the bus since we acquired it and all indications are that it is very sound if somewhat slow, still I am happy to travel about 85 to 90 kph.
Regards
Colin and Jacqui
June 19th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
Hi guys,
The choice of engine is a very good one (imho) – it is the same as we have (ours is turbo) and we are very happy with it. At 4.5km/l we get at least as many kms/l as many people towing caravans.
Living in and building the bus at the same time must be tricky – I guess it has some advantages too.
Love the photos on the site – she is looking good.
I do feel that it is a huge advantage (when actually on the road) to be a jack of all trades – it costs a fortune to get a tradesman to do every little job.
Hope to meet you guys on the road sometime.
G & T
June 19th, 2010 at 8:32 pm
Hi Gavin,
I guess it all has to do with planning and determination.
We bought our very empty 7 meter Nissan Civillian in Chch NZ where we live, end 2007, made a plan and stuck to it. Motivation for us was that we wanted to take Jimi (that what we called him, Hendrikx is our surname!) to Australia March 2010 for 9 months and guess what….we’re here! Arrived in Brisbane end of March and travelled over the East coast to Alice Springs where we are at the moment. We’ve just missed you guys in the Uluru area a couple of times. And we must be very close now. For anyone who’s interested in our travels and what it takes to bring a bus over from NZ please visit our website http://www.jimiztravelz.com
Happy to answer any questions. Cheers Syl
June 20th, 2010 at 9:17 am
Well done guys! That is a great resut. Determination, planning and good old hard work are the cornerstones of any sucessful project. We are still in Alice Springs. I will email to see if we can catch up. I have lots of questions!
G&T
July 6th, 2010 at 9:59 pm
Hi Gavin i just finshed my 1985 nissan ud ex school bus to motorhome cost was $32,000 from start to finsh .i will say it was hard going as i had 2 operations in between my 16 month start to finsh project and having cash on hand helped heaps.so the bus has just been finshed 4 hours ago and tomorrow loading it up for a trial run .have been living in it in drive way for 6 months so everythink should be ok.number plate BAVO76 cheers Darryl and i agree home built is hard and stressful throughout the project even finding parts and items to fit is hard enough
July 7th, 2010 at 10:43 am
Hi Darryl – Congratulations on finishing the motorhome. That is quite an achievement (and done at a very good price). I am sure you are now looking forward to getting out there and enjoying all the hard work. I hope we meet up somewhere nice along the road for a amber ale or two.
Gavin & Tracey
July 20th, 2010 at 1:15 am
Thanks Gavin and Tracey for wishing me well i just love taking a look at your web site as you both Have so much good advice and such a passion for motor homes and traveling it just blows me away your details and pictures of explaining the good and not so good parts of motor homing and every think in between cheers Darryl my bus is traveling good and i just purchased camps snaps 5
August 12th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
hey there
just incase any one deciding to biuld motor home
thers new regulation out for nsw that ALL doors must open out
i just took mine up for second time after finding this out the hard way and traveling 200km
to engineer
anyway allllll passed and another step done
ps the engineer said that a door cant open inwards ( as most do on busses)
but he also said if i block it off so its not a door(because i have middle door) he would pass it????
mmmm stuppiddd
id rather some form off escape from a fire than no escape
but thems the rules ,, who are we to argue???
ok any way its officialy a motor home now
cheers john