Life in the slow lane or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the trip

[Andy]

It seems that every vacation glosses over the whole travel aspect. Most people hop on a plane and boom they are at their destination, or if they decide to drive they go well over the speed limit to get to their destination. This project is going to be the polar opposite. The vacation is the trip. This car won't go over 70 ever and its cruising speed will be around 60mph. Why be in a hurry?

After 2 years of searching every day for my project car and after many many getting sold from under me or sold before I could even find one, I have finally scored my car: A 60s VW Bus. Tomorrow morning I am heading out to trailer the car home and to start getting to work.

Plans are to get the car drivable, safe, and comfortable enough to be able to go camping and cross country road trips. I thought my 1.6 miata was slow but this bus on a good day has less than half the horsepower that my miata does and it weighs a good 500 pounds more than the miata. Oh what fun.

Pictures will be coming tomorrow and I plan on documenting every aspect of the build. At the moment the brakes don't work, there is some rust that needs to be addressed, doors don't open, sliding door is rough, speedometer doesn't work, needs a full interior, seats are beyond recognizable, I don't think it has seatbelt, pop top needs a new curtain, hideous wheels and hideous cb antennas on the front.... But let me say what is awesome. The engine and trans are great (and by great I mean it shows every ounce of 50 whp that it might have), rust isn't really that bad and only surface in some spots. It has new floor panels in both the front and back seat area.

[Andy]

We loaded the bus up yesterday to the trailer and then had to drive out to the owner to process the information to do the deal. The story is that the owner is not in good health and none of his kids wanted the old family camper van. He had a few people offer him money before but in both his and the mechanics opinions they seemed to want to flip the car on thesamba.com for more money, so they never made a deal with those people. Both he and the mechanic really liked me and were glad that it was going to me to be restored and used for its intended purpose. The owner gave me a few extra period correct license plates that I can get registered for the car. The mechanic gave me a 46mm matco impact socket to remove the rear axles if I ever need to. 46mm is a huge socket. Biggest one I now own by a large margin.

The bus had the original owners manual with quite a bit of service history from a dealer in Central Florida. The bus has never left the state for good but I did hear of stories going to the Smokies to go camping and Tennessee. The owner made it very clear to me that this bus on the title mentions MH for motor home. It is considered a motor home and qualifies as such. This doesn't really mean anything except that the owner was telling me if there is an open container of alcohol in the vehicle it isn't a problem since it has different restriction than a passenger vehicle i.e. you wont be arrested but you will be hassled. This would be cool to just about anyone else but me. I really dont drink at all, its not my thing so I guess that perk will go un used.


The trip home was interesting. Our vehicle that we were using to tow is rated to be able to pull both the trailer and the bus on it. That sounds fine in theory except that in June/July summer heat trying to go on the highway with the ac on made the car start to over heat. The bus we were towing was just so un aerodynamic and it was so hot (car indicated 97 outside) that we didnt want to risk it. The needle was already higher up than normal. Thankfully we found a Uhaul about 2-3 miles away and we rented a uhaul truck to trailer it the rest of the way home.

This is where the story gets more fun for lack of a better word. At the Uhaul we had to unload the bus from the trailer to swap the trailer over to the uhaul truck. The bus drove fine getting up the trailer but going to start it at the uhaul place we realized it now had a dead battery. We had to push it off of the trailer just barely and then ran around the parking lot with the bus trying to push start it. It was like a scene out of Little Miss Sunshine. Meanwhile this bus has no brakes at all. We finally got the bus started and had a few issues but no serious ones getting it back on the trailer. It is extremely weird putting it on a trailer and the front wheels are behind the driver.

We made it home no issue other than unloading it from the trailer and putting it in our driveway. I mention again. It has no brakes at all so getting it to stop on our rather steep inclined driveway was interesting. I had to match the clutch with the gas to hold it just right while my dad was scrambling to chalk the wheels.

This was all day one.

[Andy]

Somebody was asking me why I towed the bus with the rear wheels down if it is rear wheel drive.

The rear wheels are fine to be towed on the ground as long as the car is in neutral. I thought about turning it the other way but that would make the front wheels which would then be on the ground in my opinion too light, if for whatever reason my door opened they would be ripped off, if the pop top for some reason came loose it would fly off... It made more sense to tow it with the rear wheels on the ground and bungee cord the shifter to make sure if it popped into gear that it would pop out. It never popped into gear. We made it just fine and it drove fine once we made our 250 mile journey.

[Andy]

Stickers from its previous life. I'll keep some and lose some.






Engine was in an engine fire at some point.

[Andy]

These were hiding inside the bus.


I found the original child's cot. It mounts on the front a pillars and stretches to the rear b pillars. Petty neat feature.





Mans got to eat. Table for eating.

I know it all looks like a bucket of crap but this is just so neat.

[Andy]

Original 1969 owners manual for my car complete with service records detailing work done by Volkswagen.



Ohh. The car is numbers matching with the engine. Now how cool is that. I don't think I have ever seen a Volkswagen with a numbers matching engine. So many were needing rebuilds at 50k miles that they just swapped them out and swapped in a new one.

[Andy]

Progress today was cleaning out the interior to some degree and removing the big 46mm nut that holds the rear drum on. Progress came to a halt because I can not get the rear drum off and the mosquitos came out. So did my good friends dad with his 73 Super Beetle to see how everything is going.

[OBD1 kenobi]

Cool story. I love VW as much as I love miatas. Old VW even better.

[— kung fu jesus —]

I like where this is going.

My roommate in college did this. He rebuilt a bus to travel the US to sort some stuff out. He had some pretty bad PTSD from the GW, and this helped him work through it.

He said traveling in one of these means all your plans and timelines are penciled in suggestions. You get there when you get there.

[Andy]

Thankfully I have a good high-school friend that I have been hanging out with a lot for the past few years. For the last few years we have been going to just about every VW show there was in Florida.

Thankfully both he and his dad know quite a bit about old aircooled engines. When I get stumped, and that might happen sooner than I think, I have a life line to ask. The mechanic that worked on the car for the last few years told me that it has the original air intake (which it appears to have) and a 32 or 30 pict carb.

[Andy]

7/1/15
Today's goal was to remove the passenger rear drum. It was on there tight, I mean real tight. My dad and I decided that what we needed to do was get some chain and bolt the chain to the drum via the lug bolts and bolt the other side of the chain to the 3 jaw puller instead of the jaws. I put the impact to the 3 jaw puller and bam. It popped off the drum like it was nothing. I also found out that the brake fluid reservoir is cracked and leaked out quite a bit of fluid. A new one needs to be ordered. I also found out that the passenger side e brake cable is broken.

[Andy]

This is the original craigslist ad for my bus. I sent various messages to people for their buses. I couldn't find the ad again but by this time I had the contact number so it was a null point. I guess this goes to show don't discount any ad because you never know what you will end up with. This is literally the worst craigslist ad I have stumbled upon so far.

[Andy]

7/6/15

I bit the bullet and bought a drum puller for the rear. That drivers side rear drum was seized. The drum puller should be here tomorrow so I can get on with the rest of the bus.
I am also picking up a new master brake cylinder and wheel cylinders along with new shoes. The "mechanic" told me that the brakes were done in the last few years but I didn't want to chance much. The rubber lines did look new so I am not replacing those yet.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...f_rd_i=desktop

[— kung fu jesus —]

Ah yes, German cars and the 'specialty' tools needed to repair them. There will be more.

[Rogue]

Traveling the old way is quite the experience, it changed a lot for us.
We traveled Route 66 in a 1959 Ford Ranch Wagon with our friends in their 1960 Ranch Wagon.
We are now building a 1941 Chevrolet to travel for our retirement.
Wilson in Zion.jpgWilson and Ebabe near Paige.jpg