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Wed Jun 02, 2010 3:15 pm

Sawsalesman wrote: How about some interior pics!
I'll work on getting some pics in. In my enthusiasm and haste, I took few "before" pics, but have a lot of "during" pics as I reinstall everything. I'll post some.
Sawsalesman wrote: Is that the bus you said you would trade me even for my panel?
Actually, it was not -- I was thinking of a 1977 Westy I have. But I want to learn more about that interesting firetruck panel. Do you have a thread here about it? Maybe we can negotiate.

Wed Jun 02, 2010 4:37 pm

In reality I don't think I would part with it. I have a lot of time into it and being that it is kind of an odd duck the chances of me trading it are slim. I'm a 1600DP kind of guy and to tell you the truth, the Type 4 motor kind of scares me.

It's kind of funny, I never started a resto thread on the site mainly because I just decided to ask a lot of questions about different topics as they came up during the rebuild. I say rebuild because it is not a restoration by any means.

The history of the panel is kind of murky at best. It's a 73 that made it here to the states somehow. It was an abandoned vehicle on a piece of property about 5 miles from here. It was never registered here in the US and it had a lot of cool things inside like a generator, military style gas cans, CV joint, extra carb, (2) German first aid kits, a space heater that plugged into a euro style plug which is in the bus and a few other odds and ends. It was covered in primer and after removing that I found out that it had the name of a volunteer fire dept. located in Germany. The motor was a replacement case and the whole vehicle has 96,000 KM's on it. Here are a few pictures the day I picked it up and few more of the rebuild.
This is the day that I picked it up.

Motor before going back in.

What it look like at this point.

Wed Jun 02, 2010 9:17 pm

Now, the photos of the '73 Deluxe Westy, Number 9:
(and for more, visit http://vw.tauxe.net/number9)

As I first saw it, near Taos Pueblo, New Mexico:

Hauling it home to Los Alamos, across the Rio Grande rift valley:

I removed the interior, and the floor looked pretty nice!

After a good cleaning, I started reassembling. Here's the original plywood subfloor:

And linoleum:

The air conditioner evaporator lives inside the rear-facing seat pedestal!

The old seat upholstery was completely shot. These new Sewfine seat covers are nice:

And I just had to repaint the hatch. I figured that I had to paint the other trim parts anyway, so I may as well. I apologize if I have violated the code of originality:

So, stay tuned as I get the rest of it put together. And, I may keep this for awhile to have fun driving it, but eventually it will be for sale. So, if you want to be on the list of interested buyers, shoot me a PM or email.

Wed Jun 02, 2010 9:23 pm

gotta get me a small airplane and fly around that area for a few days. MArk all the buses on a map and then me and Mr. GPS go see them.........................................

Wed Jun 02, 2010 9:30 pm

SGKent wrote: gotta get me a small airplane and fly around that area for a few days. MArk all the buses on a map and then me and Mr. GPS go see them.........................................
I almost hate to admit this, but i have a .kmz file of all the Google Earth locations of where I found each bus. In some of the StreetView photos and even some of the satellite photos, the bus is actually there. I would send it to you, but it's classified, as it contains the locations of two more buses that I know about but do not yet own. :)

This gives me an idea, though. I could provide the locations as .kmz files for each bus on the web page. I'll think about that.

Check out Los Alamos airport (LAM) as a location for flying into. It's nice except for the cross-mesa cross-winds.

Thu Jun 03, 2010 4:13 am

That is a really nice and clean bus! I've got to install Google Earth!!!!

Thu Jun 03, 2010 4:44 am

I work for my County Gov't doing streets and addresses, and I mark all the VWs I see in my database.

Thu Jun 03, 2010 9:45 am

For the record, this was was located at UTM 439903 m E 4040875 m N, or
latitude 36.511325°
longitude -105.671145°
You can see a white blob in Google Earth that is the bus.

Thu Jun 03, 2010 12:08 pm

I used to live in NM and visit Taoe Publo area a lot. The river there is so nice. I bet there are so many VW's out there in those hills and valleys. Now if we can right a script to search Google Earth for the shape of the bus roof we would be in business :wink: