Tell me your favorite VW story!!

[DurocShark]

Oh, and here are two of my trip stories:

http://www.donimages.com/gwb/trips.html
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No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow.

[twinfalls]

[metropoj]

We took our 77 Westy up van from Toronto Ontario Canada down to beautiful Colorado for 2 weeks.

1) While in Colorado, we decided to stop at the bottom of a mountain to get a picture of a large suspension bridge. I went to stop on the shoulder and we slid into 6 inches of mud right up to the bumpers and nearly into the Arkansas River ! Scared the hell out of my wife. After she climbed out the drivers side door onto the little bit of pavement we could touch, we thought for sure we needed to get towed out. I ended up getting out of the van first and sunk ankle deep into the shoulder. I then put the auto in low and proceeded somehow to get the one rear wheel spinning enough to spin the van out of the deep mud and safely back on the highway, Whew, that was close.

2) During our trip, I pushed our little 1.8l AFC 914 motor to the brink. Upon arriving into Colorado I noticed that the van was getting harder and harder to start and lost a lot of power. At one point, visiting "Cave of the Winds", the steep road was almost too much fro the old girl. I had to take a couple runs up the road to get her to the top ! Most of the time we were revved up high and moving a snails pace but she made it. On the way home, it started taking about 2 minutes of cranking to get the motor to start. We travelled all the way home with her, thankfully, nice and flat Iowa etc were kind to us, and after stopping at home, she never even started again. We had pulled the cylinder head studs because of overheating ... 5 to 10 psi in ALL cylinders ... )

SHE NEVER LEFT US STRANDED, now THAT'S a motor .... I retired her shortly thereafter because of rust issues. What a great bus she was...

Her legacy ( and lots of parts I kept ) live on in her nearly twin sister 79 ....

[surfdad]

I have a couple of good stories but I wont share.....you guys are too nice to put you in a position that may require your testimony in a court of law.

Neal
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71 Dormobile "The Sub"
78 Westy "Tikibus"

[hambone]

I wanna write a lil' tale of my summer hijinx, just in time for frostee time. Assuming I get off my ass, bah too much on my plate these days. Learning espanol is kickin my ass, I give major credit to any bilingual person....

[twinfalls]

On the boat ramp at Eden Lake Manitoba, next to Leaf Rapids.

I was near loosing: Trailer, bus and a friend under water.
E-brake cable failed at exactly the wrong time.

Thanks to a friendly rock, bus and trailer stopped rolling down. My friend did move out of the way.

From this, on a boat ramp, I never trust a parking brake, I use big stop blocks.

BTW, I have other favorite stories, as boring as this one.
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Stock 1974 US Westy, AW-A 1800cc dual carbs. Twin Falls is my favorite site on the Churchill river in Manitoba.

[brianbernal71]

This is a cool thread I found reading other people's stories, just recently remembered one of my own, I was driving my old 68 westy from Spokane to the Gorge in the summer of '98, I was half way there and heard a pop, and lost power, out in the middle of no where. My friend in the car behind us said he saw a puff of black smoke as it happened. I pulled off the freeway, and my friend and his girl kept on going to the Gorge, after all, Phish was there that night. Anyways, we got a push off the freeway by Washington's finest, right to an old gas station in some sort of ghost town. I checked over the motor, popped the valve cover off, and noticed one of the little clips on the end of the rocker arm shaft had broken. So, here we are, Saturday afternoon in a ghost town, needing a clip for a German motor, with no one around. So I started wandering. I happened to find an old abandoned American auto shop. No one for miles, I looked around back, saw a pile of stuff so I dug into it, and at the bottom was an old 1600, tore apart, but it still had the clip I needed and saved our weekend ( did I mention this was the first outing with my new girlfriend who would eventually become my wife of now, 14 years!). Anyways, I popped that clip on, fired her up, and made it to the show, about an hour behind or friends, but with plenty of time to prepare for the show. By the way, we met Mike Gordon that night.

Well I'm hoping other people who have read this might want to keep this thread going. I know there are lots of stories out there...cheers!
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62/70 Dune Runner Mini Mercedes "Eugene"
83.5 Westy "Skippy"
81 Rabbit Pickup "Betsy".

[Lil Lulu]

Told this story before but here goes:
They call it Indian Summer here. Late August the winds calm down, the Mercury hovers around 80 until late evening, love is in the air and livin' is smooth as butter.

The scene is 1972, a number of dirt hippies in my 67 with the first slider door. Damn I was proud of that bus. Cruisin' around about dusk, 10 mph on the beach road on the Lower Columbia with the slider open and doin' uh, well doin' what hippies do.

Suddenly a Columbia White Tail buck (tiny deer, like a Great Dane with horns, they're endangered now) jumps out of the bushes and across the road in front of us and into the Columbia current. They spend half their lives in the water.

The hitchhiker from Alaska who we picked up a week or two before, jumps up, rips off his shirt, pulls out his lockback knife and explodes out the slider door, jets down the bank and dives into the water, where he proceeds to swim to intercept the deer who, now spooked, is trying to get back to the bank.

When he reaches the deer he grabs one horn and stabs the deer in the neck, the deer kicks him with a foreleg but to no avail. Slowly the cat swims the 20 yards to the bank dragging the now-limp little buck up to the bus. All this takes place in about 7 min. max.

The females in the group are screaming and crying to the top of their lungs which draws a close-by farmer out in his driveway to witness us driving off with the door open and the carcass hanging half out of the bus with the girls still screaming and hollering at the cat. Him hollerin' back "Fuck You"

Bout this time I'm ready to crap my duds, I just wanted out of there before the heat shows. I can just see the headlines "Dope Fiend Vagrants Stung In Deer Poaching Scheme" So we haul-ass back to the river beach where we had camped/passed-out for a few days. The women demanded I take them out of there as the hitchhiker removed a rope from his pack, hung the carcass from a tree and began to dress it. The other two local guys on the cruise are googlin' their eyes at me like Jerry Colonna. "We're goin' with YOU, man. We're goin' with YOU" they sez.

When I returned the next day the guy had the deer roasting on a spit over a driftwood fire. Few days later he walked off into the sunset, never to be laid eyes on again. Cat's been a beachfire legend there ever since.

This was just one of the weird highlights in what turned out to be the best summer of my young life. Not sure how we stayed both alive and unincarcerated. "Son, you can't get any freern' free"
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'65 Beetle "Lil' Lulu"- Ruby Red
1600 stock from '71 bus

'72 Deluxe - Niagara Blue w/pastelwiess Camper Special 2L dual 40 Webers 002

'74 Hightop Weekender "Dixie" 1800 34 Del singles

[Xevin]

Lil Lulu, what a trip
When you meet Katie again keep that one in your pocket.
Look forward to hangin again when the weather gets better. Or anytime for that matter

[Stuartzickefoose]

Stories must be made....
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Stuart Zickefoose

2011 Jetta Sportwagen TDi 6 speed manual

206-841-7324
[email protected]

[sodbuster]

It was back in 1975 my friend Jon and I were traveling to Parker Arizona with our good friend Tom in Tom’s 1960 Baja bug. Tom had a chance to co-drive a class 5 unlimited Baja in the Parker 400 that year belonging to our neighbor Butch. Part of the deal on Tom’s end was to allow the use of his ’60 Baja as a pre runner. Tom agreed. So in preparation he went through thing on his car and added a few improvements in regard to performance and safety. Unfortunately in the process of making said improvements, he neglected to fit a skid plate to the car. Never the less off we go to Parker Az.

To give this more perspective I’ll pause here to add that Tom and Jon were 17 years old at the time and I was 15 years old. Well Tom’s car was used to pre run the Arizona side of the race course sans skid plate and the next day the race was run. The race car was a DNF with a broken axle on the California side of the course. Come Sunday morning while packing up to drive home it was discovered that the “pre run” had not been too kind to the bottom of Tom’s motor. The strainer plate cover had a nice bend in it now and was leaking oil at a fairly rapid rate! Fast enough that we would have to stop every 10 miles or so to check and top up the oil. First we tried to locate a new strainer plate cover but none was to be had.

It was at this point that one of our team drivers, Mr. Rodger Shaw (a plumber by trade) suggested the following. Buy a case of motor oil and a loaf of Wonder bread. Jam as much of the bread as you can into the leak. (It took a slice or two.) Top up the oil and go! But stop every ten miles or so to jam in more bread and to top up the oil. We all looked at Rodger like he was crazy! “No no” he assured us “it’ll work you’ll see!” So we did and off we went. At the first stop the leak was still flowing. So we jammed in more bread and added more oil. After doing this every 10 miles over 50 miles the leak stopped completely and we only checked it after that when we stopped for gas. The Wonder bread got us home.

But how? You ask. It turned out to be a fairly simple explanation. The soft white Wonder bread once jammed into the leak started to soak up oil. After enough bread was applied over the course of the first fifty miles it turned into oil soaked bread dough. The heat of the motor did the rest baking the oil soaked bread dough concoction back to a solid wonder bread oil plug.

The best part is I have 8mm movie film of the whole thing. The footage is kind of goofy because we were all on day one of a weeklong hangover. We had done a bit of underage drinking that weekend to say the least.

[johnl]

I pulled into Sonic and placed my order. When the carhop came out with my food I leaned over to get some change off the floor between the seats. When I raised up,she had her head stuck in the window looking back towards the rear of the bus. She said "you don't have a back seat." and i said "It's a camper, the seat in the back folds out into a bed". That's when she looked up at me with all the doe-eyed innocence I could stand and asked "what's the bed for?"To which I replied "It's for f@%king little girls on roller skates." then she said "O" and rolled back inside. And that is why I don't eat at Sonic anymore.

[BusPriest]

^ lol oh wow.

[SGKent]

that sonic story is sick.

Spooked somewhere between lightning strikes and a tornado 12 am one night on the Will Rogers turnpike in Oklahoma with a girlfriend and two canine partners sleeping in the back of the bus, while I was twitching from a lightning strike while dodging the tornado.
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“Most people don’t know what they’re doing, and a lot of them are really good at it.” - George Carlin

[Brian]

leaving work in the bug; axle popped when I went to go get lunch. Long story short the bolts were not torqued. Torque your bolts!! I had a buddy tow my into the parting lot of the mall. I called a buddy up and had him pick me up, we went to my house and grabbed my tools, then back to the parking lot. Packed some CVs and replaced an axle. Cops roll up asking us whose car it was. My friend was like "I have no idea, this guy just wanted me to help him 'fix' this car he spotted"

Cops were cool after I gave them info on the car al while fixing the axle. Good times.
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Wash your hands

'69 Bug
'68 Baja Truck
'71 Bug
'68 Camper

Only losers litter

[williamM]

Was driving dads ghia to work for a week when on Fri lunch it broke a crankshaft leaving the restaurant. Drove it clanking back to work and dad came and towed it home. Then said "I want to drive this to work on Mon. "

So- having just finished a bus motor for my trip to Or from NJ- (another story") That motor pushed the giha to work on mon for dad.- I'm sure he thought I raced it or something, but it just broke when I let out the clutch to join traffic.
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some days I get up and just sit and think. Some days I just sit.

opinion untempered by fact is ignorance.

Don't step in any!

[andrewtf]

I've told a small portion of this story before and sorry this ended up kinda long..

Our daughter was graduating with her undergraduate degree from college in Germany (that is a story in itself) where she attends school as a ‘regular’ student – not in an exchange program. Apparently, college graduation in Germany is no big deal – but hell - we are fine upstanding Americans who feel graduation presents are a convention to be upheld. Her plan was to take several weeks in the summer and drive across the US with three of her German friends and room mates (all male) and see the sites. She was going to borrow her brothers SUV, but we had better ideas. As a surprise we decided to buy her a…. you guessed it…. A bus.

We scoured all the adds, websites and whatever else we could come across to find the best bus for our budget. We came across what seemed to be the perfect bus being sold by Samba member Wurzelsurf. The problem was that the bus was in Bar Harbor Maine, and I am in the middle of Illinois. Never-the-less, we pursued the purchase and worked out the details of my arrival, and plans to drive it all the way home…about 1350 miles, and agreed to haggle a little on price once I had seen the bus.

Ok – everyone all at once now….”What a moron. Buying a bus site unseen!! And then, three weeks later, letting his daughter and her friends drive it another 7000 miles on their own” (another story on its own) And you are all partially right (but only partially). My illogical brain also figured – they are all German – and engineering students to boot. Surely that could fix anything that might crop up. But also as you all certainly realize, I was really buying it for me – not for her. I have always worked on cars and love to tinker. My first was a 1940 Chevy Master Deluxe that I bought out of a farmer’s field for $100 when I was 12 and used it as my car until I left for college. I also currently have a 1963 Austin Healey MKII.

So…. Early one Saturday morning I hopped on a small plane at our local airport, made connections at O’Hare and Philadelphia, on my way to Bangor Maine (the nearest large airport to the bus) to meet the current Owner and our (hopefully) new bus. Now my advice for everyone about this part of the adventure is never… never…… fly one way across the country with no luggage and a huge wad of cash in your pocket. I was questioned, prodded and groped multiple times. I half expected to need a shotgun wedding after some of them were thru with me.

I got off the plane in Bangor about 2 pm and……… no one is there to meet me………
I called the owner and got a phone that went right to voice mail so I think I’m screwed and need to find some way to get back to Illinois. At least I got money with me! Eventually, after about an hour, the Owner shows up. I give the bus a very quick once over (about 2 minutes) and we both hop in for the hour and a half trip back to Bar Harbor so we can negotiate and I can give the bus a proper inspection. The Owner and I traded some stories. His were mostly all bus related. He and his wife and small child actually lived in the bus for over a year and a half traveling all around the country, to Mexico etc. He bought the bus as a 7 passenger vehicle – but I never really understood how it got a Riviera top. He was a cabinet maker and built all the inside cabinets in his own custom layout out of walnut with hickory tops. It was, and still is, beautiful.

Now – admittedly at the time all I knew about busses was what I had read, discovered thru Samba and my knowledge of other vehicles. But at least I knew the right things to look for and listen to. I was the passenger back to Bar Harbor so between conversations I listened to the engine, transmission, brakes and every other little sound. That part seemed much better than expected. We arrived at the drop off point where I could do a proper inspection and we could negotiate the final price. The bus seemed mechanically very sound but cosmetically pretty tired. Upon looking the bus over I was actually amazed at how rust free it was. There was a lot of surface rust (from a sub par paint job). I ran my magnet over nearly the entire bus and found no bondo at all. The only real rust was a very little along the bottom edge of the sliding door. Even the battery tray seemed original and was nearly as clean as could be. Mechanically, the owner had a list of every item he had ever done to the bus, all the oil changes, gas fill ups, compression tests on cylinders… you name it. The only thing that didn’t operate properly was the gas gage – which didn’t work at all.

We arrived at a price of $4,500 and I threw in a bit more for some of the extra camping equipment that they needed to unload. On top of that there were bins of parts that came along with it…..damn near enough to build another entire bus.

So the fun and ironic part of this segment of the story……. The Owner’s name was Andres and he is a ‘real’ German. Andres is the German form of Andrew (my name). He was selling the bus because he is moving back to Germany. They were going back to the town where my daughter’s boyfriend’s family is from. He was born in the town where my daughter lives (Braunschweig). And the most ironic thing…. Painted on the bumper was the name ‘EMMA’. They had named the bus Emma…. And that is the name of our daughter – for whom we were purchasing the bus. It was Karma. We were meant to own this bus.

[Marleybus]

Wow that was a great story. That was meant to be for sure.
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1972 VW Westy (Hit by dumptruck)
1963 VW Beetle (RIP)
1974 VW Beetle (RIP)
1981 Vanagon Westfalia (Sold)
1969 VW Beetle Convertible (Wifes)
1977 VW Westy 2.0L FI Chrome Yellow
1978 VW Westy 2.0L FI (Under Restoration)
1973 VW Westy 1.7L Tourist Delivery Orange
Check out my thread!!http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=556709

[ChapinBusDude]

Last week my manager and I were headed out to his car for our weekly meeting as has become our custom / habit. My latest one (USC bus) was just about complete so I decided to drive it to work.

As we rounded the corner together my manager John was the first to notice that someone had my front door open and was leaning into my bus. My first thought was that it was normal where people often do admire the buses after they are looking like this one does now, but I remember John saying that it was probably not a good thing this time. He and I walked to the bus and had walked up behind the guy before he saw us. As he turned around I realized that I did not recognize him at all and he had a rather wild look in his eyes. My time spent in Oregon meant that I often dealt with and could recognize a drug induced look pretty quickly. Then I looked into the bus over his shoulder and saw a large number of tools laid out around the seat and floor, and that my steering wheel column and ignition switch had been disassembled. John came up behind me and saw this as well. The guy backed away from the bus and started trying to come up with an alibi but it was pretty clear that he was trying to steal my bus and we had caught him red-handed. At this point most people I know would have taken off saying they would call the police for me, but John stayed right there. I was not planning on letting the guy take off running and John stayed beside me. The story the guy told was that the owner of the bus had met him on a nearby road and told him he had accidentally broken his key off in the ignition and he wanted to pay the guy $10 to get the broken key out. Then this guy reached into the bus and passed me a piece of metal as proof. It was the broken tip of a screwdriver. John started asking the guy his name – "Jeff Stephens" he said, then John asked him where the guy was that had asked him to do the work – “he walked off that way and was going to come back in a minute”. Then John asked if he knew the guy – "No". Then, What did he look like – “short white guy with black hair”. Later John ask him this question again, answer : "tall white guy with curly blond hair". I looked at John and he knew I wanted him to call the police. While I kept talking to the guy about the bus and the situation he was in, John calmly walked off a short distance and started looking for the police number and made the phone call. A little while later he came back and started asking the guy more questions. We started asking him crazy questions like had he ever been convicted before. "Yes, once for assault and once for breaking and entering". Who had he assaulted, his wife? "No, a bar fight". We kept him busy asking questions. His father lives in St Augustine Florida and drives an Orange VW bus. He was divorced and has a girlfriend now. He works as a mechanic and a painter but does not have a job right now. It went on and on. He kept telling me that he was not going to steal my bus, and that if we turned him in he would go to jail for a long time. He had been packing his two tool boxes and I thought he was getting ready to run. John asked him about the guy that had “hired” him again. He asked if he would stay long enough to give the police a report of what the guy looked like – "yes"?!?! But as we waited he was having second thoughts about hanging around. The guy was swarming with flies and looked like he had some disease. A big swollen face that looked like he had recently been in a fight. About that time the first police car went driving by except he was in the lower level of the parking lot – he had missed us! John got on the phone with the police dispatcher again and started trying to direct the police officer to where we were. The car passed us two more times without seeing us. By then John walked down to the lower level of the parking lot and pointed to my bus. I kept talking to the guy. He was not in very good mental shape and the more questions I asked the less he seemed to realize the situation he was in. About that time the cop finally pulled up, then was followed by another patrol car. One of the cops hand cuffed the thief and the other came over to talk to us. About 5 minutes later a third patrol car drove up but stayed at a distance of about 30-40 feet away. The first cop told the thief to face in the direction of the building… Then a few seconds later told him to face the patrol car off in the distance. After that a fourth patrol car pulled up and an investigator and his partner came out. He walked over to us and told us that the guy had already broken and entered one other car and an apartment that day, and everyone was quite happy to catch the guy. Inside the third car was one of the earlier victims that was scared to confront the guy, but was willing to identify him. The fourth cop pulled me to the side a bit later and asked how we had kept him here, said that when the word went out from dispatch that we still had the guy at the scene, they were afraid to see what had happened, they were afraid about finding us all in a mess. About an hour and a half later they finally all rolled away with the car thief in the back seat. But before they left they came over and shook our hands and thanked us for helping catch the guy. The latest report from the Police investigator is that the guy has confessed to breaking and entering on 11 occasions in the past year... Now I gotta replace a busted up ignition tumbler, but at least he didn't screw up the nice paint job.

[MaximumFinishes]

Awesome story Andrew! Serendipitous.
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'64 Type 3 "Noback" - Frank
'68 Squareback - Charlie
'73 Westy - Mac
'98 Honda CR-V - Dee
'97 Subaru Impreza Outback - Dennis