Category: Uncategorized

Another week with no bus… It’s kind of hard to have a blog about restoring a VW bus when said bus is sitting outside a shop for 3 weeks! While I do think that the bus is good hands, I’m hoping that it doesn’t have to sit outside in the elements for much longer.

Since its been hard to get my VW fix lately, I went to a local swap meet – it was pretty fun!  The VW crowd is an interesting bunch of people – down-to-earth, kind of crazy with just a little bit of grubbiness.  Yeah I pretty much fit in perfectly.  I bought a couple t-shirts, and a sweet pair of vintage 40’s safety glasses – I think they are “steampunk” style – cool!

Hopefully it won’t be too much longer, I’ll have the bus back and ready to drive!

The bus is still at the shop – and probably will be for a while more.

They are going to make a few adjustments to the brakes, and have re-greased everything they can.  More importantly, we are working out the details on swapping my current transmission and running gear for another ’67 bus’s gear.  That bus has the stock setup with reduction gear boxes and all – mine is a bug transmission with lowered spring plates and drop spindles.  I’m hoping to take my bus back up to stock height w/ stock gear, and he’s hoping to lower his bus – we might have a deal!

I also got the quote on bodywork – with that number still ringing in my ears, I signed up for a welding class – if I can only do part of the metal work/ sheet metal work, I’ll save a ton!

I also found this old photo:

While its impossible to tell if this is my bus, it has the right features, is in the right place at the right time, and given the fact that it sat neglected in a field for multiple decades, i’m sure it was owned by a bunch of Florida hippies – I’m cool with that!

Not much happening with the bus right now – the shop is working up an estimate for more than a few projects that they might help me out with.

I did get a pretty good deal on this set of pop out window latches from thesamba.com.  They need cleaned up (and one is all rusty and broken – its the runt of the litter), but I only need 4, so I’ll sell back the remaining.  Getting all of the windows cleaned up and functioning is pretty high on my list of spring projects!

While I don’t have $ estimates from the shop yet, they did do a full inspection on the bus.  I was kind of dreading this, but it turned out to be not that bad (again, I haven’t seen any dollar figures yet, so I might live to regret that sentence!).  The brakes need a little adjusting, but are otherwise in good working order.  The steering is ok, a little slop but not too much.  The shifter is missing a bushing, and the coupler is loose (I don’t really know what that means, but it doesn’t sound expensive right??)  The engine runs decent, but is leaking oil – its an air-cooled VW so thats just a given.  Overall, nothing is fatally amiss mechanically!  Body work is another story for another day.

We made a second attempt at getting the bus up to the VW shop – this time, Success! I’m taking the bus to Midwest Autosavers, about 35 miles north, and I’ve been wanting to get it up there to get a thorough mechanical inspection and body work estimate.

We set off around 8am – the bus started up like a charm – and Noelle followed behind.  I made it easily past the spot where we had to turn around last time, made it through the harrowing Rt. 59 / I88 interchange, and trundled on up the road.  After the first couple of red light stops I had pretty much figured out how to get the thing to shift from 1st to 2nd and up to 3rd smoothly without hesitation or backfiring – yay!  Eventually, I got up the nerve to accelerate and shift up to 4th gear – press the gas, get the speedo to read about 40MPH, press the in clutch, lift off the gas, pull the shifter to 4th, let out the clutch while reapplying the gas – yeah I’m that good!  The bus felt most at home running in 4^th gear at what the speedometer said was between 40 and 45mph.  Anything over that and the steering started to feel a little wild, or maybe it was the fact that I was hurtling headfirst down a road in a frickin bouncy tin can.

In fact, the bus kind of felt like it was bouncing all over the place with every bump in the road – and with the Illinois roads in as bad a shape as they are, sometimes I wondered if anything would break!  We did have one (well actually two) mishaps. After hitting one particularly nasty bump in the road, I thought I heard a metal clanging noise – a minute later Noelle called me on the phone: “Do you realize you just lost another hubcap”  I’m like “WTF another one?? Why didn’t you call me after the first one?!”  Turns out the first one fell off early on, Noelle just stopped in the road and picked it up – I kept trundling on in the bus completely clueless (its loud in there ok).  The second hubcap went flying into the trees on the side of the road, so we parked the bus and circled back to retrieve our precious escapees.

With that being the only real problem, I’m calling this trip an extreme success – the bus ran well in all gears, I have learned how to drive it, and the engine performed beautifully.  We’ve got it to the shop, and I’m looking forward to getting a professional opinion on how much this baby is going to cost!

Also check out this sweet action shot; yeah, I’m way too cool for school:

This post is about 3 weeks in the making.  I bought three original Hehr jalousie camper windows a few weeks ago, and planned to do a complete restoration.  A couple hundred bucks and more than a few hours of blood, sweat, and aluminum polishing later, I’ve got some great looking camper windows for the bus!

This post will be a little long, but I’m going to walk through the steps I’ve taken to get these windows looking good – this is the first real resto project that I’ve undertaken; it took a lot longer than I thought, but overall I’m very happy with the results. I’ve got two of the three done, and plan on selling the extra window to recoup at least some of the costs. I used this Samba post as my primary research, and I definitely appreciate all of the people who have attempted this crazy project on their busses!

Step 1) Start taking the window assembly apart by removing the outer frame screws.  My windows came off a 1967 camper in Pennsylvania, the frames are complete, and in decent shape, but all of the screws and rivets are old, rusty, and crusty – they need replaced.

Step 2) Pull out the fuzzy weatherstripping, and the rubber exterior seals.  You can buy these replacement kits from Wolfsburg West for $25 – looking back, I probably should have just gotten them, but instead opted to find my own cheaper replacements, and reuse the original hard rubber seals.

Step 3) Pry off interior spacer frame. This thing is stuck to the exterior frame with rubbery grey sealant.  I put the window aside and cleaned this frame first ( I didn’t do that for the first window, and it was somewhat demoralizing to get all of the pieces of the window cleaned only to realize this stupid frame is still sitting there all caked in crud).  I will replace the grey sealant with modern silicone caulk.

Step 4) Remove one side of the window frame – carefully pull out the glass.  This is by far easier than trying to pry the glass out from the back with the frame still together. I had a couple screws that were rusted tight and stripped out.  I saturated with my illegal-for-individual-use Kroil penetrating oil, and then eventually needed to grind in a slot for a flat-head screwdriver before I was able to get them out.

Step 5) Disassemble rest of window frame; I did one window at a time so I could remember how to put everything back together.

Step 6) Drill out old rusty rivets.  I struggled for a bit to get a good system for this. My method: drill off the end of the semi-tubular rivet; with the end gone, punch the old rivet out of the hole using an old square drill bit.  I put a paper-towel cushioned socket under the rivet to avoid smooshing or warping the soft aluminum pieces.  This project was frustrating because the slightest error or excessive force would result in an immediate and irreversible scuff mark or dimple in the metal!

Step 7) Clean window frame pieces.  My method: wipe with wet paper towel to get started, scrub vigorously with 00 fine steel wool with a glob of Brasso aluminum polish, use a stainless steel dremel wire brush for any stubborn spots, another pass with Brasso steel wool, and then a final pass with a clean steel wool pad.  I also used the nylon polishing wheel and felt buffing wheel attachments for the small holder pieces. The first window took me a week, the second window 2 days, I’m hoping the third goes even better.

Step 8) Replace rivets:  This was particularly challenging. I got replacement rivets from Hansen Rivet in California.  I used the Samba post mentioned above to purchase the right stuff; got 100 semi tubular rivets, and the “rivet clincher” tool that I needed to fold over the tubular part of the rivet.  I ended up buying a bench vise to use as a suitable spot to hammer against.  I also convinced Noelle to hold the pieces while I slammed away at the clincher with my hammer – I made a few mistakes with some scuff marks and split rivet heads, but after doing 24 rivets so far, we are getting really good!

Step 9) Reassemble 3/4 of the window frame – I left one side open to slide in the new glass

Step 10) Put in the new rubber glass holders (I used clear sticky cabinet door stoppers from Hobby Lobby).  Insert the jalousie glass pieces into each frame section.

Step 11) Attach the final frame piece, attach the window mechanism and breath a sigh of relief!

Old window:

New window:

This project was difficult, tedious, and had way too much opportunity for error!  Having said that, the windows look awesome, and it feels good to be restoring this stuff from the ground up.  I spent more on this project than anything else so far: $170 for the windows, $115 for the new glass, $54 for the rivets and tool (includes shipping), another $50 or so on screws, cleaning supplies, etc.  I’m not counting the cost of the bench vise or dremel tool – that’s just overhead, and I’ll use them on other projects.  I also haven’t applied new silicone sealant to the frame, but will do that when it comes time to install in the bus.

Whew! That was a long post for a long project (and I still have one more window to go!)