Bad Bad Leroy Brown Gets some more huevos.

[71whitewesty]

Fantastic! That's a great looking bus and love the back story!
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71 Westy 1600 DP, all stock Bus 1
1970's Snow Trac 1600 SP (sold 12/2016)
1968 Tucker sno cat, sold 2021
1969 Tucker Sno cat 542
2017 VW Alltrac
71 tin top stock 1600 DP (project but runs)
Twin 71 White Westy, Bus 2, that I pulled from a 15 year slumber in a dry eastern WA field in 2015.
1966 Sundial Camper "Boomer"

[Charla]

He was at Napa bright and early Saturday morning and they said they could have a starter for him by 2pm. Living near the city definitely has it's advantages.

New starter goes in, fuel delivery is rigged

And I'm instructed to hit the key again.

Success! She fires right up!

[Charla]

https://videos.smugmug.com/Other/Camera-Awesome-Photos/i-7w79k2D/0/SMIL/7w79k2D.smil/master.m3u8

[Charla]

After a bit we drove it two blocks down the street to the car wash so Ben could give the engine compartment a good wash.

Lots of oil smoke and figuring out how to find all the gears but the motor runs strong.

By now it's late July and our social calendar is about to kick into high gear.

[Charla]

[Charla]

Backing up a bit, let's not forget about poor Winky the parts bus. We saved him from the crusher to actually serve a purpose.

We have a pretty large yard and we were in need of some sort of shed to store random crap and pool supplies in and serve as a base to build a patio around. We had intended to build a wood shed but I thought how cool would it be to have a bus shed?

So it shall be.

Winky will eventually get a battery with solar panels to power a stereo and lights and a flagstone patio surround.

The interior is a rusty cut up mess, but when you're not worried about road worthiness you have a lot more options on how to "fix" things. Plywood and stick lumber are our new friends.

We grabbed the floor we had put in LB that we didn't really care for and reused it here. I have lots of this engineered hardwood flooring left over from a home improvement project.

Did away with a fold out bench and just built a six foot long "bed"

Wrap around benches.

The dog digs it.

That's all the interior I have done so far. Once we get all the doors swapped out we'll slap on some paint to make it looks decent.

[Charla]

We had our big summer party on August 1st. We had about 50 guests with at least 20 of them staying overnight.

Punk'n drove out onto the lawn to serve as the social center and stage since Leroy Brown was unavailable to fill the role this year.

https://videos.smugmug.com/Other/Camera-Awesome-Photos/i-ZFMZzCZ/0/SMIL/ZFMZzCZ.smil/master.m3u8

Everyone had a great time.

[Charla]

We've swapped the wheels with good tires from LB to Punk'n and the slider door and hatch from Winky to LB.

So many busses.....

Now we need to order a new windshield and mirrors for Punk'n so it can pass a road worthy inspection by CHP and we can start the bonded title process.

[vwwestyman]

I love the name Winky! At first it made me sad to see a Champagne cut up for parts, until I saw the inside. (I think that was done before you got it?) Especially since it had gotten a name!

Making it into a shed is a nice idea and it looks like it turned out nice. My bus has become a temporary shed more than once.
_________________
Dave Cook

President, Wild Westerner Club

1978 Champagne Edition Westy, repowered to '97 Jetta TDI
1973 Wild Westerner
My Thing

[Stuartzickefoose]

Updates?
_________________
Stuart Zickefoose

2011 Jetta Sportwagen TDi 6 speed manual

206-841-7324
[email protected]

[Charla]

Well hello there.... I’m guessing you all didn't expect to ever see an update on this thread again. Poor Leroy Brown, another project never to be completed.

We thought the same thing for quite a while as we were distracted for a couple years by expensive and labor intensive home improvement projects. Finally in August of last year right after our big summer party we decided it was time to take the bull by the horns and get refocused.

Back in February of 16 we moved LB to our front garage in hopes that seeing him every day would be a motivator. Obviously that didn’t work out as intended but here are a few pics to get us caught up to August.

By this time, almost all of the major body work was done but we just couldn’t get motivated to to all the sanding and filler work to get ready for paint.

[Charla]

We had been kind of stuck in a loop for a while since we both lean towards being perfectionists, but many nights of beers and discussion finally brought us to the conclusion

Fuck it. We could invest a thousand more hours in this and still not be perfect. I never want to pass up an interesting road just because I’m too scared to scratch my bus, that’s not what this is about. We’re not building a show car, we’re building a functional camper that we intend to use for years to come.

So here we go, a massive investment of time has us just about ready for this summer camping season!

Welding in a small patch.

[Charla]

The big goal was to get all the body work, primer, and paint done before the cold Colorado winter set in. If the paint wasn’t done by then we wouldn’t be able to start the reassembly process over the winter and would have to wait until the temperature was warm enough again to shoot the paint. We spent almost every weekend in the fall slaving away.

Stripping the previously applied sound deadener.

I felt like Spider-Man battling Venom.

Filler!

I proposed that it might be a good idea to test fit the windshield. How bad would it suck to get all this work and paint done only to discover that the windshield didn’t fit anymore?

[Charla]

This spot was bad, the previous layer of bondo on it was quite thick. Ben’s buddy Luis who is a pro auto body guy came over and spent a little bit of time working most of this dent out. I’m not sure what we would have done here without his help. It’s not perfect but a magnet will still stick to it so at least we got that going for us.

Ben scored this bitchin sander at the flea market for 5 bucks, after doing a bit of research he found that the newest version of this model runs about $400. Win!

So much dust. Yes he does usually wear a mask.

[Charla]

We pulled the wheel dollies so it would be easier to roll in and out of the garage for washing.

Masking for primer

Every stage is so time consuming.

Primer

More filler

Working doors separately.

More washing

More primer

More masking

This stage was prepping for the interior floor coating. Ben decided to go with a spray application of Monstaliner, mostly to get a tough coating to resist any future rust issues. Sorry if any heart attacks were caused by the viewing of these photos.

The rear deck didn’t get coated because Ben wants to eventually rework the enlarged engine hatch opening.

Happy guy.

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[Bendejo]

Paint and bodywork absolutely eats hours but it goes great with drinking beer.

It's what needed doing, so we did it.

[Charla]

Prepping for interior sealer and paint.

I got locked out. :cry
Not really, we were leaching heat off the house and had the security door closed to keep the dogs out. We also had a space heater blasting to bring the temperature up.

I didn’t get any action shots of this stage since I didn’t have a respirator.

[Charla]

Paint!

Sometimes it’s fun to watch paint dry.

[Charla]

Rehanging doors to prepare for exterior paint.

And of course, more sanding.

Blowing out the dust

Wet sanding, at the end of October, in Colorado, so fun.

Shiny

By this point we were just absolutely DONE with sanding. We should have shot another coat of primer and wet sanded again but we were completely out of fucks to give sooooo....

[Charla]

That last of the masking. Finally.

Luis came out to lend a hand.

I had to hold my breath and be quick like a bunny to get these shots.

After observing Ben shooting the sealer coat, Luis offered a few technique tips and then declared “You got this.” and left to go deal with his own weekend chores. He passed his Jedi robes down to Ben before he left.