Posts by Ankor

Hi Khao,

Our mini-motorhome has a manual driver's door, an air-operated passenger door (like on buses), and double doors across the entire rear.

Our mini-motorhome is 7m long and 2.45m wide—that's already a respectable size for a motorhome.

Empty weight is 4.4T and 6.9T GVWR. We still have 2.5T of payload capacity. That's awesome.

The advice we can give you is to go to the Heavy Vehicles department of the DRIRE where you're planning to get it registered, and ask them for a vehicle modification file—specifying that it's for building a motorhome.

The issue of doors and emergency exits is well explained in their documentation.

See you soon,

Tibo and Mélaine

🙂Salut Patrick et Jiceel,

Nous suivons depuis le début le projet de Patrick, et nous lisons attentivement votre discussion.

Il y a pourtant une chose que nous ne comprenont pas, Qu'est-ce que VERITAS???

Nous vous remercions d'avance, entre deux emballages cadeaux, de prendre le temps d'eclairer nos esprits!

Mélaine et Tibo

🙂 Hi Magalie and Franck!

Tibo and I (Mélaine) are happy to welcome you to this Forum that François did a great job creating!!!

We also bought a Mercedes 613D mini-coach two weeks ago, a great deal at 6T9 GVWR (I have a Class D license). It belonged to the town hall and was used for school routes. The fact is that since the town didn't have an in-house mechanic, all maintenance and repairs were done at Mercedes-Benz; we have all the maintenance records from the first technical inspection and first oil change right up to the last wiper blade changed!!! And the "little" bonus: 2 years ago Mercedes changed everything: engine, clutch, gearbox, steering, brakes, new rear tires; the town spent just under 100,000 francs on it!... In short, the chassis has 300,000 km and the engine 80,000 km! I'm a mechanics enthusiast and I never would have thought I'd find such an old coach (23 years old) in such good mechanical and bodywork condition. To give you an idea: it's 7 meters long by 2.45m wide, and it has a 6-cylinder 130 hp engine, with a very interesting payload: 4T4 and 6T9 GVWR.

So, with Tibo, we already have quite a few ideas and information to convert it into a campervan. Regarding the messages from Patrick and Jean-Claude above, we want to build a campervan that's "road-worthy", we prefer to take our time but have something that's well and properly done. We're private individuals and our own finances will dictate the pace of the conversion, but we hope to have done the bulk of the essential work over the next 6 months.

In any case, as far as you're concerned, I recommend (as everyone here will tell you) getting the "Campervan Conversion Guide" from AFNOR:

AFNOR 11, avenue Francis de Pressencé 93571 Saint Denis La Plaine Cedex Tel:01.41.62.80.00 Fax:01.49.17.90.00

Next, a nice thing that gives plenty of ideas when you really don't know anything about campervans is "The Solutions Guide" from Narbonne Accessories (#1 for campervan and caravan accessories in France). I came across it by chance at the Super U bookstore, just to say you'll find it easily, and you probably have a store nearby. The guide is basically a catalog of everything you need in a campervan from A to Z, covering everything from insulation to electrics to water...etc, and plus they explain roughly how to install all of this. But of course you can't do everything with just this catalog, and that's exactly why a forum like this is essential to our projects.

How's your 308D? What tonnage? The engine? What do you want to have inside?

It's been 2 weeks we've had our mini-coach and we've already started:

1st step: we removed 10 two-seater benches and kept only 4 benches (which makes 10 seats with the driver and escort seat so it stays in the car category, otherwise with fewer seats it would become a heavy vehicle and would require a Class C license). Then we started removing the trim—that is the carpet, the side panels in fine plywood and the fiberglass. We're going to go through the entire bodywork with a fine-tooth comb and if needed sand and apply rust inhibitor, and we'll definitely need to!

For now the big question is the windows: the coach is completely glazed, it has 3 coach windows on each side. At first we thought about replacing some with panels but given the messages above we won't be able to do it ourselves if it requires stretching the panel at 3 tons of pressure!!! So we'll probably film them and cover them from the inside.

What a pleasure we'll all have driving around with our vehicles finally ready, but all in good time! Best of luck to everyone!

Tibo and Mélaine

Hey Kaxero,

I saw the photo of the bus you'd like to buy. Patrick already gave a really good answer.

I just want to tell you that you'd need to look into what this bus was actually designed for. I mean, there's a real difference between a coach and a bus—a bus is designed only for city routes (some are even speed-limited to 50km/h, and have automatic transmissions). Whereas a coach, which is designed to carry only seated passengers, is speed-limited to 100km/h and is built for real highway driving. Obviously, the speed limits I'm giving are for France, and it's very easy to remove the speed limiter anyway! But you really need to know what kind of use you want to make of it and how long you'd like it to last. You'd need to get the engine specs—power and at what RPM, engine torque (Nm), and of course displacement. It's also good to know if it has a decent turning radius, especially if it's long, plus a good wheelbase! But obviously, you can't have it all, and you'd need to win the lottery to get the "perfect bus that does everything"!

Let me give you an example with the small coach that Tibo and I will be getting very soon (Yeah! Here we are, it's ready (new tires and just passed technical inspection) it's just waiting for us at the garage's lot). Anyway! It's a Mercedes 613D, weighing 6.9T GVWR. It has a 6-cylinder engine with 130 hp, and it barely has 80,000 km on it. And engines like this easily last for very high mileage if you maintain them properly!

These days, a lot of small coaches are built on a van chassis with a van engine (Sprinter, Master, ...). They only have 4 or 5 cylinders and are much less "robust" than what they used to make 20 years ago! So will they last over 999,999 km like real heavy-duty engines? I don't think so.

In any case, I hope you find what you're looking for. We're thrilled about the idea of soon having the small bus at home. Actually, we were waiting for the mechanic selling it to pass the small bus through technical inspection, and we thought we'd have to wait at least 3 weeks, maybe even a month, to get an appointment. But he got an appointment through a cancellation—meaning as soon as someone cancels, the inspection office calls him to bring the bus in. He registered on Monday and Tuesday the inspection office was already calling him!!! How cool is that! For people who are in a hurry, that can be really useful.

There you go, good luck to you!

And hi to everyone, Mélaine and Tibo

Hi Sputnick,

Thanks so much for your reply, we just have a quick clarification to ask you:

Do you drive your bus with fewer than 10 seats, with a Category D license, and is all of this completely legal?

Anyway, we went and picked up the vehicle modification paperwork for converting to a motorhome from the administrative office and it already gave us a lot of useful information about what needs to be done.

For now, we're waiting for the garage selling it to us to get it registered with the authorities.

Tell me Sputnick, what kind of music do you like? We're really into electronic music (I do live music on PC). If you're into that, maybe we could meet up at a festival sometime.

Hi BomBaKlak,

For insurance, you need to visit all of them in person. For us, the quotes ranged from basic to triple the cost. But in any case, go in person—don't call.

Well, thanks everyone for chatting on this forum. It's really helpful. See you later!

Mélaine and Tibo.

🙂Hi Patrick, and thanks for your reply.

Let us describe our future mini campervan a bit more: It's L=7m, w=2.45m. There's a manual driver door, a pneumatic front passenger door, and then 1 double-hinged rear door spanning the whole back of the bus with a large step. It's completely glazed (3 large bus windows on each side, 2 at the rear).

in this case, the regulations require a driver door (no requirement for the front passenger!), and a door giving direct access to the converted section (which must be at least 45cm wide and 1.59m tall, if I'm not mistaken). so the door leading into the cargo section cannot be counted! the front door either, since it doesn't provide direct access to the converted section. furthermore, an emergency exit of at least 2500 cm² must exist on the opposite side from the door. doors must have access less than 45cm from the ground (so it's impossible to just cut a door at chassis level, you need to build stairs!).

We're not sure we understood correctly. Based on the description we gave, do you think the current doors will be sufficient for 10-seater bus homologation with campervan conversion (without cargo section)?

To drive a heavy-duty campervan bus, we need to call the prefecture on Monday. We'll keep you updated.

Another question: Once a file is established and approved, will we be allowed to drive the minibus normally while we do the conversion bit by bit?

Do the authorities accept vehicles in the middle of conversion? Our first step: remove 20 seats so the registration reflects 10 seats. The authorities told us that if we planned to keep the rest of the bus empty (utility), we had to put a partition between the passenger seats and the cargo section (we had told them we wanted to transport equipment). Now that we're planning to make it a campervan, can we remove the 20 seats without partitioning and submit a conversion file afterwards?

Are we required to go to the authorities in our region or can we go somewhere else (we were told that all authorities were different, meaning more or less lenient)?

That's all for now but we'll have plenty of other questions later.

Thanks to you and to everyone else who's written on this forum because you've already helped us so much. 😉 (What a blessing this forum is)

All the best,

Mélaine and Tibo

🙂Hi, we're Mélaine and Tibo.

Finally some info, thanks!

We're planning to buy a Mercedes 613D minibus, PTAC 6.9t, 30 seats from 1981. But that's where the problems start! We thought about removing 20 seats, keeping just 10, and leaving the rest of the bus empty for now, and then gradually converting it into a campervan. But before we take the plunge on this adventure, we want to find out if it's all possible. We called the DRIRE, and found out that we'd need a partition between the passenger area and the utility area of the bus, which would also mean revising the emergency exits. That option doesn't work for us.

The question is about Mélaine's Class D license and what she can drive with it:

Can she drive a bus reclassified as a heavy-duty vehicle (under 10 passenger seats)?

Can she drive a bus reclassified as a heavy-duty campervan?

There are also two terms we're having trouble understanding: At what point does a vehicle become NSPC or VASP? And what's the difference?

Thanks for your answers and safe travels to everyone!

Mélaine and Tibo