It may vary from State to State.
The OKA was a bus when I bought it.
In one week-end, I ripped out most of the seats, built a bed at the back and a bench along one side with some plastic box drawers and fitted an Engel fridge and a portable stove in a box. It was done with raw chip board.
It needed to be inspected by the Rego mob.
They wanted to see that it could not be used for load carrying and that it had permanently installed sleeping and food prep. areas.
The rego was then changed to be a "motor caravan" with seating for 4 and the rego costs almost halved.
That did us until I did the 'proper' conversion a year or so later.

Note that just removing seats needs approval.
Talk to the rego approvals branch in your State.

Cheers,
Peter

Gazook wrote:

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Recently acquired a 1989 long wheel base Toyota Coaster bus complete with seating and want to convert it into a motorhome.

If I remove the bus seating, would that be enough to register it as a motorhome/campervan here in NSW and to avoid the twice a year over the pit inspection.

Any idea's, thanks.

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 Hi Gazook,

In NSW that is not enough to register it as a motorhome. There are restrictions which include having as many beds as seats and having cooking and water facilities etc. You can ring the technical hot line for more information. Do not waste your time at the local registry office IMHO, they are only paper pushers and will only accept an engineers certificate to do any changes.

However you can remove as many seats as you want, tidy it up and then re-weigh it and get an engineers inspection to be reclassified a panelvan or whatever. I have recently done this for a Sprinter bus and kept it as a 6 seater. The RMS web site has a list of authorised engineers and their locations. Then you can fit it out as you want so long as it is safe !

Actually the twice a year inspection would not be required as long as it is not registered as a public passenger vehicle. But the pit inspection will be required because of the weight. You can just transfer the rego and reclassify it as a private vehicle. When you have an engineering inspection and if the weight is low enough he can reclassify it as a light vehicle below 4.5T which helps too. Normal inspection then. This is commonly done with these LWB Toyota Coasters. My advice is to ditch everything including the spare when getting it weighed, empty fuel tank etc, as it will save money on the rego.

Jaahn 

 

-- Edited by Jaahn on Wednesday 18th of November 2015 10:26:46 AM

Many thanks for the replies.
Very helpful and gives me idea's on how to deal with it.

We already use a short wheel base Coaster and have for a number of years ... just wanted something bigger.
Thanks again.