--- title: "Skoolies Repair in West Covina" description: "Roof raise, window delete, floor rot and structural repair on school bus conversions, performed in shop at Yorba Linda." canonical: https://ocrv.xyz/vehicles/rvs-motorhomes/skoolies/ business: "OCRV Center" phone: "(949) 799-3387" address: "23281 La Palma Ave, Yorba Linda, CA 92887" market_served: "West Covina, California" --- # Skoolies Repair in West Covina A skoolie starts as a school bus, which means a riveted or bolted body on a truck rail, a floor that has been walked on for two decades, and window openings that a conversion wants filled. OCRV Center repairs roof raise seams, window delete welds, floor rot and body structure on skoolies in shop in Yorba Linda for West Covina owners. ## Common damage - Roof raise seam cracking and leaking where the splice band was welded thin - Window delete panel welds cracking at the corners of the original opening - Floor rot under the original plywood where two decades of mopping soaked the seams - Rusted body rail and rub rail sections behind intact looking paint - Emergency exit and door opening frames distorted after a delete or relocation - Roof rack and solar mount load paths cracking the thin roof sheet - Wheel well and rocker corrosion from years of road salt on out of state buses - Water entry at the original roof hatch and vent openings after conversion - Sidewall sheet oil canning where insulation and framing were removed - Bumper and body mount corrosion at the rear where drainage collected ## Roof raises and the splice band that has to hold them A raised roof is the most requested and most misunderstood modification on a skoolie. The appeal is obvious: a stock bus gives most adults a stooped ceiling, and adding a foot or more of headroom transforms the space. The execution is where the vehicle either stays sound for twenty years or starts leaking and cracking in one. A school bus roof is not a lid sitting on top of a box. The roof bows tie the two sidewalls together and stop them from spreading, and the roof sheet acts in shear along the length of the bus. Cut the body horizontally and you have separated a structure into two pieces that were carrying load together. Whatever splices them back is now doing the work the original sheet was doing. Done properly, the splice runs continuously, laps or butts with full penetration where the design calls for it, adds vertical extension pieces at every original rib so the roof bows are still connected to the sidewall structure, and gets sealed on the outside with a system rather than a bead. Done poorly, it is tacked at intervals with filler over the top, and the first hard year of driving cracks it. What arrives at our shop is usually the second version, sometimes done by the current owner and sometimes bought that way. We open the seam, assess the splice, add the rib extensions that were skipped, weld with correct procedure and correct penetration, then rebuild the exterior surface and refinish so the seam is not a stripe. Roof raise repair is fabrication work and it is a large part of why skoolie owners drive here. - Roof bows tie the sidewalls together and resist spreading - A horizontal cut separates a structure that was carrying load as one piece - Every original rib needs a vertical extension, not just the corners - Tacked splices with filler on top crack within the first hard year ## Window deletes, emergency exits and the openings left behind School buses have a lot of glass. A conversion typically keeps a few windows for light and deletes the rest, filling the openings with panel so the interior gains wall for cabinetry, a bathroom and a bed. Every delete is a weld job on thin material, and thin material welded rigidly along a full perimeter is a crack waiting for a season of flex. The pattern is consistent. Cracking starts at a corner, telegraphs through the paint as a fine line, opens, and lets water into the wall cavity behind it. Because most skoolies insulate and panel over the inside, the owner never sees the water. They find it later as a soft floor section under a cabinet or as rust bleeding through the exterior paint from behind. Emergency exits and relocated doors are the harder version of the same problem. Those openings had reinforced frames because a regulator required it, and deleting one or moving a door removes structure that was doing real work. We see distorted frames, doors that no longer close square, and bodies that have taken a small permanent set in the area where the opening was changed. Repair details the corners so stress does not concentrate, welds with the right process and heat input for thin sheet so the panel does not warp into an oil canned mess, and reinforces the perimeter where structure was removed. Then the exterior gets metal finished, primed, blocked and painted. Getting a large flat sheet to read straight after welding is a skill, and it is the difference between a conversion that looks factory and one that looks homemade. ## Floor rot, rub rails and the corrosion you cannot see The original floor of a school bus is plywood over a steel deck, and it has been mopped weekly for fifteen or twenty years. Water goes down through the seams, sits between the plywood and the steel, and corrodes the deck from the top. From below, road spray works on the same deck. By the time a bus is retired, sections of that floor are frequently gone even though the surface looked acceptable when the plywood came up. The first thing we tell a skoolie owner is that the floor has to come up and the deck has to be assessed honestly. Building a beautiful interior over a compromised deck is the single most expensive mistake in this hobby, because the only way to fix it later is to remove everything you built. We take moisture readings, probe the deck and show owners the boundary before any plan is made. Rub rails and lower body rails are the other hidden item. They are formed sections spot welded or riveted to the sidewall, and they trap moisture behind them by design. Out of state buses that spent winters on salted roads arrive with rails that look fine from three feet and are perforated behind. Wheel wells and rockers tell the same story. Our repair cuts back to sound metal, fabricates replacement sections in matching gauge, welds them in with correct procedure, treats the interior surfaces of closed sections before they are closed again, and restores the exterior finish. On a bus that has genuinely extensive corrosion we will say so plainly rather than patching around it, because the vehicle either gets a real repair or it gets a cosmetic one and those are very different projects. - Two decades of mopping corrodes the steel deck from above - Road spray works the same deck from below at the same time - Rub rails and lower body rails trap moisture behind them by design - Building an interior over a compromised deck is the expensive mistake ## Roof racks, solar and hanging weight on a thin roof sheet Skoolie owners load their roofs. Solar arrays, a deck, a rack, a spare tire, sometimes a water tank. The roof sheet on a school bus is thin steel over bows spaced along the length, and it was never intended to carry point loads between those bows. Fasteners driven into the sheet alone will work their holes oval, then leak, then tear. The right approach is simple and it is almost never what we find. Loads should land on the bows, or on a spanning member that transfers load to the bows, with backing on the inside face and a sealing method that does not depend on the fastener staying tight forever. Adhesive mounted solar has its own requirement, which is surface preparation the roof rarely got before the panels went on. The symptom sequence is predictable. A rack develops a small amount of movement. The movement opens the sealant at each foot. Water enters at the fastener, travels along the underside of the sheet, and appears at a ceiling panel some distance away. Owners chase the ceiling stain and never look at the rack, because the rack is not directly above the stain. We repair the roof sheet where it has torn or deformed, install proper spanning structure and backing, remount the load correctly and seal with a system appropriate to the substrate. On a raised roof we coordinate that with the splice seam work, because both are roof jobs and doing them in one visit saves the owner a second teardown. ## Getting a skoolie into the shop from West Covina Skoolies are tall, and a raised skoolie is taller than owners tend to remember. Our shop is at 23281 La Palma Ave in Yorba Linda, about 22 miles from West Covina and 30 to 45 minutes by the 10 or the 60 west to the 57 south, then the 91 east to Imperial Highway. Stay on the freeway rather than cutting through surface streets, and if your bus is over thirteen feet, plan the route deliberately. Come with the interior as accessible as you can make it. On a bus that is still a shell, that is easy. On a finished conversion, we may need to remove interior panels to reach a seam or a rail, and knowing in advance what you built and how it comes apart makes the estimate accurate instead of hopeful. Photos taken during your build are genuinely useful here. Tell us where the bus came from. A California bus that lived in the San Gabriel Valley its whole life has a very different corrosion picture than one bought cheap out of the Midwest and driven west. We inspect for both, but the history tells us where to look hardest and it shortens the diagnostic. Call (949) 799-3387 to schedule an evaluation. Skoolie work is fabrication heavy and the conversation is longer than a parts lookup, so we would rather spend that time with the bus in front of us before anything is quoted. All work happens in shop at Yorba Linda. ## Frequently asked questions ### Can you repair a roof raise that somebody else did badly? Yes, and it is one of the more common jobs we see on skoolies. We open the splice seam, assess how it was joined and how much of the original rib structure was reconnected, then add the vertical extension pieces at each rib that were skipped, weld the splice with correct penetration and procedure, and rebuild the exterior surface. After that the area gets primed, blocked and refinished so the seam is not visible as a stripe down the side of the bus. ### How do I know whether my bus floor needs to come up before I build? Assume it does until it is proven otherwise. School bus floors are plywood over a steel deck that has been mopped weekly for fifteen or twenty years, and water sitting between those two layers corrodes the deck from above while road spray works it from below. We pull a section, take moisture readings and probe the deck to establish the real boundary. Finding out after a finished interior is in place means removing everything you built to reach it. ### Why does my ceiling have a stain nowhere near any roof opening? Because water travels along the underside of the roof sheet before it drops. The usual origin on a skoolie is a rack or solar mount whose fasteners went into thin sheet without spanning structure or backing. The mount develops a little movement, the sealant at each foot opens, water enters at the fastener and runs to the first low point, which may be several feet away. Chasing the stain finds nothing. We look at the mounts. ### My bus came from out of state. What should I be worried about? Corrosion behind things you cannot see, specifically the rub rails, the lower body rails, the wheel wells and the rockers. Those are formed sections that trap moisture by design, and a bus that spent winters on salted roads can look presentable from three feet while being perforated behind the rail. We probe and cut inspection access rather than guessing. If it is bad we tell you plainly, because a cosmetic repair and a real one are very different projects on a rusty bus. ### Do you weld window deletes, or only repair ones that cracked? Both. We fill openings with panel welded in with the corners detailed so stress does not concentrate there, using a process and heat input appropriate to thin sheet so the panel does not warp. Then the exterior is metal finished, primed, blocked and painted. We also repair deletes that another builder did that have since cracked, which usually means grinding out the crack, reworking the corner and reinforcing before any finish work starts. Call (949) 799-3387 to talk through your layout. --- OCRV Center, 23281 La Palma Ave, Yorba Linda, CA 92887. Phone (949) 799-3387. All work is performed in shop at the Yorba Linda facility. We do not run mobile, roadside or fleet route service. Ranges are planning figures, not a quote. Final numbers come from a written estimate on your vehicle.