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Sat Mar 29, 2014 10:49 am

This is the story of my 13 year journey with my 1977 Sage Green Campmobile.

History:

I purchased the camper from a friend back in college. I have always wanted one and the opportunity came along so I took it without a second thought. My friend had been driving the bus as his primary means of transport. One unfortunate day he pulled into the gas station only to have the attendant run towards him shouting fire. The dreaded engine fire consumed the engine compartment but was put out in time to save the bus. He offered the bus to me for $300 and I have owned it ever since.

The previous owners of the bus had done some minor body work behind the front wheels in the typical area but aside from the melted engine bay the bus was in pretty decent condition from what I could tell. The interior was prime with nearly everything in good condition except a missing upper cabinet and some orange plaid front seats instead of the green.

The fuel injection and original motor had been removed and replaced with a Porsche 914 motor and single center mount Weber carb which was all destroyed in the fire.

I was able to find a used stock 2.0 motor to swap in which my buddies and I did in the driveway of our college apartment. I replaced the burnt wiring harness with a harness I pulled out of the junk yard. At the time I was still learning about cars so I simply cut the old harness at the fire wall and spliced in the salvaged harness. I resurrected the fire damaged carburetor and anything else I could from the burnt motor. By the end of the summer I did get the bus running but it never ran right and was I never registered it for the road. My friends and I did take numerous cruises around the neighborhood however.

The bus sat for a couple of years until my friends and I moved into a rental house off campus which had a big enough basement to do some real work in. I bought all the books I could find and set to pulling the motor and tearing it down. I didn't take long to determine why the engine didn't run right. The carb body had actually melted slightly in the fire and really never should have been put back on a motor. A bigger problem was discovered when I pulled the heads off the supposedly good condition used motor. I found a hole in one of the pistons the size of a quarter.

Scraping my pennies together I ordered everything I needed to rebuild the motor and set to work. The heads turned out to be cracked around the valve seats so I found some good used heads and a local VW shop gave them a good clean up and valve job. I cleaned and or replaced everything in the bottom end and installed new jugs and pistons. By the end of the winter I had the rebuilt engine together with a new Weber DFEV carb and 009 distributor and it went back into the bus that spring.

I managed to get the bus running pretty well considering the terrible Weber/009 combination and I set out to register and inspect the bus. I never did pass inspection due to bad front brakes and body rot in the front wheel arches.

The bus sat for another year or s as my future wife and I bounced around from apartment to apartment while she finished school. I would move the bus with us either late at night or by registering it and driving during the inspection grace period.

In the first 7-8 years of owning the bus we only ever actually truly used it once but it was a great trip and will never be forgotten. We drove from NH up to northern Maine for a 3 day concert festival with another car full of friends. I had replaced the brakes on the bus just days before and registered the bus right before we left so we had a 10 day grace period of semi-legality. We left at night for the journey and we cruised along pretty well for a while until the bus started bucking at anything over 30 miles an hour. We made a pit stop to try and determine the issue and I set to work. I had learned an enormous amount about cars over the years including swapping and rebuilding a 16v engine into my 92 GTi and writing a very extensive swap guide on VWVortex. I was well prepared with tools and spare parts just for this occasion. After some fiddling with the carb tune and a new fuel filter we were back on the road and cruising beautifully for the rest of the trip.

After the concert we traveled down to Cape Cod to meet my entire family for a week long vacation. The rental house we had bought was too small for all of us to sleep in so my wife and I spent the week in the camper and loved every minute of it. On our way back to NH we were finally pulled over one day after the inspection grace period had ended and we received a ticket for driving a vehicle without an inspection sticker. $70 well spent, the trip was worth that and more.

After my wife finished school I decided to go back to finish my engineering degree. The bus again sat for several years while I worked and went to school full time. I dabbled in some body work on the bus here and there and I even stripped out the whole interior of the bus.

My wife and I bought a house with an ample garage and got married in the same year. The first winter that we were in the house I truly started the restoration. I stripped the entire bus down to the body shell. The second winter I got it on a rotisserie and continued stripping and poking to find the rusted areas. I repaired a major problem area around the rear beam by cutting out sections of the frame and beam itself and welding in repair panels with my new welder that I purchased as a graduation present for myself two years prior.

Last fall I had the entire body media blasted in my driveway by a guy who does mobile blasting. It made a mess but saved me the headache of doing it myself and or transporting the body somewhere. I did attempt to blast the body myself at first and I bought a nice pot blaster and curtained off the garage but two days of that dirty awful work was enough for me.

Since this fall I have continued to strip the body panels and rotted sections out of the bus. I am still in the sheet metal repair stage.

I have a lot to cover here to catch up on everything I have done and more pictures to sort through than I have time but I am hoping to get as much as I can into this thread to document the restoration.

My restoration goal is to restore the bus as close to stock as possible but with as many modern upgrades as I can without interfering with the classic look of the bus.

I hope you enjoy watching my progress! 8)

These are the only photos I have of when the bus was on the road. That's the wife in the first pic and me in the red shirt white hat in the second pic.

Please be patient with me I have an enormous amount of pictures to sort through and upload

Thanks for following, I hope you enjoy!

Sat Mar 29, 2014 11:03 am

This is what the bus looked like prior to starting the restoration.

Transporting the bus from the storage unit I was renting to our new home.

Interior Prior to Removal

Sat Mar 29, 2014 11:51 am

Nice!

Looks like Coventry :?:

Sun Mar 30, 2014 9:32 pm

Welcome! It'll be exciting to see it taking shape. Will be real good to see another Sage Green Deluxe Westy getting restored!

Mon Mar 31, 2014 8:32 am

Love it! I'll be watching your thread. :)

Tue Apr 01, 2014 6:09 pm

Yondermtn wrote: Nice!

Looks like Coventry :?:

Close :D "IT"

Sun Apr 13, 2014 8:27 am

I'm still pulling pictures out of the archives and sorting through them. I have a long way to got to get caught up to the current state of the restoration. For now it will be mostly just pictures. I'll start adding more dialog as I get closer to current state. In retrospect I wish I had started a journal to document my thoughts and process along the way. Thankfully I am a religious bagger and tagger of parts to make reassembly after many years a little easier. I also take tons of photo's.

Interior Removal

We bought our house while I was in the middle of removing the interior so I ended up packing everything in the moving truck to transport it to our new home and nice new garage :lol: I had left the driver seat in so that I could drive the bus to its new home. That's the last time it was driven (May 2010)

New Home for the Bus

Sat May 17, 2014 9:11 am

Teardown of the Bus continues....

Haven't had a lot of time lately to work on the bus or post pictures. Eventually I will get caught up to the real meat of the project.

Doors and Windows:

Engine Removal

May not look it here but the engine was completely rebuilt several years ago by myself including a new clutch and pressure plate, all internal wear components, jugs and cylinder heads. I will dig into the engine again once the body work is complete but for now I put it on the engine stand and rolled it to the corner of the garage.

Sat May 17, 2014 9:20 am

Nice Bus is a classic Westy color. Looks like it'll look great once you're done.

Sat May 17, 2014 9:26 am

Great story! Good luck to you and your wife...that's a great story to share with the kids and grandkids one day.

Sat May 17, 2014 10:11 am

Awesome story. Looking forward to watching the restoration. I say don't be too hung up on restoring to original. There are so many modern enhancements for the interior available now. I'm just finishing my 77 Riviera rebuild and the interior took the longest, but was definitely the most fun.