Pre August Mango Bus! Mango & Chutney.

[Sooty Sooty]

So after 2 years of owning this bus a lot has happened. It's build date and VIN were irrelevant when I first purchased it, and tbh I didn't know how limited the number of pressed bumber Mango's there were around.....

I have had a fair few VW's over the years, and all of them I have bought, done up, sold and bought another. It was a way into the hobby when busses were cheap (Importing from the US was great as shipping was low and the $ was 50% of the £)

Over 20 or so years I've never really connected to a VW like the wife has (She has only had one and will never sell it) So buying and selling was the fun part. Searching on TheSamba and waiting to see what arrived at the docks 6 months later!

As time progressed and family life changed I sold ones I possibly should of kept and ended up with a 71 Bay. It was good, but I always wanted to get back into the Split life.

so a few years ago I lost my Aunty (more like my mum) to Alzheimer's. It devastated me watching how the disease took over and changed her. It was a pretty dark time and I lost my way a bit in life.

With good family and friends by my side I thought fuck it life is too short and lets chase that dream.

My dream has always been a 1957 RHD Double Door Panel van. Basically a bloody unicorn in the VW world. I found a 56 RHD DD Panel, but the owner wasn't selling.... plus it wasn't a 57...

I spent every night clicking on 'New busses for sale' but none came up for sale (not surprisingly!)

But I kept seeing this Mango bus for sale... It was a good price and looked ok.... but it wasn't really what I wanted. Every night I would search and it was still there... I know the market was a bit stagnant and Covid had just been, but it should have sold. I kept clicking on it and looking at it....

Each night I looked at it, the more I could see what I wanted it to look like and the more it seemed like a bloody good deal.

I looked at the location and it was less than a few hours drive from my home! Surely there was no harm in a drive over to see the Bus........ TBC

[Lind]

Sometimes buses find you.
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[Sooty Sooty]

[Sooty Sooty]

So the date came and the weather was good. We got on the train and headed to the sellers town where he was waiting for us. He kindly met us and drove us to his house where the Mango was proudly waiting for its new owner.

The keys were there and the documentation ready to go. We signed and dotted all that needed and I sent the money across.

We stood there waiting..... another brew was had..... still waiting.

No money was transferred. I called the bank... over an hour on the phone, and basically as I was using my mobile to transfer a pretty large sum of money they had blocked it due to thinking it was fraudulent.

No matter what I said on the phone it wasn't going to happen. I had to call into my local branch with photo ID. Bollocks.

The return train was arriving and eventually we had to be rushed back to the station to get the last train home.

No Bus.... but at least a deposit had been paid to keep it.

I was pissed to say the least.... angry with the bank, but could understand why they had done it.

I thought i'd treat my daughter to a Hoodie as she was gutted also.... went on my banking app......

Yep.... the entire sum of the bus had gone out of my account. It wasn't a small amount.... and I was on a train going back home leaving the sellers house, who had the bus and all my money!!

I felt sick. The next stop was 45 mins away..... This wasn't good.

[Sooty Sooty]

I ended up calling the seller and said due to commitments I can’t go back but he may be significantly better off than an hour ago. He laughed and said no worries, he will screen shot it and send me it as a receipt to put my mind at rest.

It was another week before I could go again and the train was booked. It was a long week! But the seller was great and both sharing a passion for the same hobby made it easier.

The day came and it was a miserable March day. Cold and wet. The forecast said sleet…. Great. Driving a 1950’s Split back in sleet wasn’t the best but I’ve done crazier things in the past.

As the day passed the sleet turned to snow. Not just a little bit, but lots of snow. Roads were blocked and we couldn’t even get to the train station!

Another call to the seller and yet again I couldn’t get it.

Was this the sign of things to come? I had to laugh. This guy had had a huge chunk of my cash and I couldn’t get to him!

We got on really well and a few days later we booked another train to go over. The sun was shining, the roads were dry…..

It was bus time!

[Sooty Sooty]

Well we got to the train station in good time and we were on our way! Off to collect a Bus that I had paid for weeks before! Surely this was the day.

We were met by the seller at the train station and driven to his house. Again the bus was there waiting for us and looked good.

We exchanged pleasantries and soon me and my daughter were on our way home in the new bus! It drove really well, and the 1641cc was pokey enough for now.

We made it home in good time and our new bus was admired by the entire family including the dogs!

[LeRaph]

Nice story and beautiful bus !

[Sooty Sooty]

[Sooty Sooty]

Unfortunately over the years the bus had been repaired poorly and had filler added to dints. One of my things is repair properly and panel beat it flat, replace the panel, or show the dints with pride!
We looked at the dints and the filler and I decided as the front wasn't the correct colour anyway (from the previous repairs) that I would remove every part of filler on the bus! This was probably a turning point in driving the bus and doing a lot of work! But once I started I couldn't stop.

The first job was to remove lights and badges and see what was under that wrong paint..... The lower Seagul grey was so wrong it was obvious it was hiding something, and the Mango was too green compared to the rest of the bus.

This is where it all started!

[Sooty Sooty]

The more we wet sanded the more it became obvious there was some crappy repair under the paint. The more we removed the more we found. Its not annoying as years ago busses weren't valuable. They were damaged and repaired cheaply to continue their working life.

I wanted to retain its history and age related marks, but wanted it to be solid and repaired properly. There was only one thing to do, remove all the paint until we found what was wrong with the metal under it.

We started to reveal filler under the paint. It all had to go. I wanted to show the busses scars, it's history.....

And then we got to the main part that was a repair....

It hadn't even been fully welded and finished! The lower nose had also significant damage so this was repaired and straightened and beat back into a shape we were happy with.

When I went back we added some etch and then some filler to smooth it out a little. I looked at it and although its what most people would of done, It looked too smooth and hid the work we had done. We removed the filler!

If your going to have a true bus.... show all its qualities, ugly and all!

So it was now fully repaired and etched and primed, showing all its abuse over the years.

This was just the start!!

[Sooty Sooty]

So once the front had been removed of all filler I started looking around the rest of the bus, tapping away.... I found more filler and in some cases I found some that was pretty thick and was hiding big dints. Luckily the bus was super dry and the filler was only hiding dints and not rust.

The more we looked the more we realised this bus was super solid and had pretty much zero rust at all! It was just covered in a lot of incorrect paint and filler dotted about!

It was time to remove all traces of filler. Lets have an honest bus.

Unfortunately we found some filler in the roof where previously it had been dinted. As this was the roof and we wanted it flat we chose to beat it from the inside till it was flat again and was somewhere near....

The rear lights had been sourced and put back to correct ones and the holes welded up. This was all done very well but the colour seemed a little off to the rest of the bus.... humm.... decisions.
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31/07/1958 Mango Bus

[Sooty Sooty]

So all the filler had been removed. It wasn't a lot but I was happy. I can now honestly say my bus has no filler on it at all. Even though it probably looks worse than it did before! But thats the way I like them!

So now it was down to painting and blending. The bus was a few different colours as new paint had been added over the years. The long panel hadn't been touched and showed lots of damage all the way down. But this was the original paint! The decision was to colour match this and not the paint from the rear wings. These had been repaired and painted and were slightly darker, but didn't match the long panel. Should I paint the rear quarters also? but then i'd start repainting other areas.....

It tells a story, it's not a show bus.... it's an honest bus showing 60 plus years of ownership..... lets just get it painted!

Then the roof..... we wanted to show that it had been repaired and we didn't want it to look new, so we came up with a plan to retain some old metal and to blend it.

Once the paint was applied we waited for ages for it to fully cure, as a lot of it was going to be coming off again!

This was all trial and error as this was our first big fauxtina project and it had to match the sides of the bus which had taken 60 plus years to get to where it was.... This was going to be fun!
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31/07/1958 Mango Bus

[Sooty Sooty]

So while the paint was curing and we wanted a break, I wanted to change my ribbed bumper colour. Yes I know they should be white, and they were, but i've never been a fan and I wanted to colour match them.
When colour matching them, everyone makes the ribbed colour the top colour and the main part of the bumper the lower body colour.

I wanted to do the opposite, so it made the bumpers stand out more, especially the ribs. Problem was I had a sticker on the rear that I wanted to keep. So I had to frog tape it up and hope it didnt stick and peel the sticker off or the years old print. We couldn't even test it on anything so I stuck the tape to a piece of metal first and then pulled it off, hopefully this would remove most of the adhesion.

We sanded a little with some wet/dry 2000 first.

The first colour to be applied was the seagull as I needed to rub the Mango down after....

Then mask up and apply the Mango!

So lets see if this has worked!

Perfect!

Then to remove the other tape before the paint dried fully so some came off. This would then be aged and rusted up...

Then we attacked the bumpers with lots of tools, so the paint was scratched and missing. We let the paint cure over a few days and then added an acidic salt solution (Unicorn piss) and let it to its magic.....

It was working well!

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31/07/1958 Mango Bus

[Sooty Sooty]

You can probably tell by now i'm not much of a purist and just do what I want to do.

I always have steels on any VW... I don't know why, they just look right to me, but wanted something slightly different.

I had some old rusted KDF caps stashed away, so I had an idea!

I took the caps back to the metal, then painstakingly masked up the KDF logo which took ages as I wanted to leave it bare metal.

Then the wheels we sprayed Mango.... again, against the grain, but hell.... why not!

Then the caps were ready to paint....

Once the paint was dry, we scuffed them up and added more Unicorn piss to the KDF logo and left it a few days.....

We pushed the bus outside for the first time in ages and before the correct tyres were ordered, we wanted to see how they would look.

So so happy with my vision for the wheels!

I also fitted my rear safari which was sprayed and aged to match.... looks so cool!

We had some paint left and as I knew I was eventually going to go for a big stroker motor, I had purchased some Khul-Tek scoops that we colour coded...

This of course was then to be aged and roughed up.....
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31/07/1958 Mango Bus

[oakman]

Killer bus!! Enjoying your thread!
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Brandon

[Sooty Sooty]

[Sooty Sooty]

I forgot to post these pics of the underside of the bus and also the tubs that were put in, as i'm planning on going low.

The underside is amazing and was only covered in a small layer of black protection. I will eventually protect this with a clear protective coating so it preserves the lovely condition.

I will do a better update soon....

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31/07/1958 Mango Bus

[Sooty Sooty]

So when I went to look at the bus it was a great layout inside, perfect for a one night stop over and something to eat in and chill. The colours were good and the PO had done a good job on the practicality of it. Over time it had become worn and as the PO had bought more parts it became a bit disjointed in colours and didn't match.

Now I'm all for originality and keeping history and what a PO has done is why the bus is the way it is today..... but certain things needed tweaking.

So the next stage was tackling the interior!

This is how I got it....

It had a great table in it that had a smaller table under it that pulled out! I presume this is like a Bay Westy table or something but it was fantastic for what I needed...

The upholstery was done to a good standard apart from a square was cut out of the rear, presumably for same kind of seatbelt fixing for a child as there was a bolt through the shelf into the engine bay.

The seat was a big bed when put down so overnight trips were going to be great.

I had a spare cargo door table that I had bought for another bus kicking about so I mounted that on the rear door.

It looked great and was super functional, but looking at it and the other surfaces and trims annoyed me. They didn't match and showed signs of damage and wear..... Out came the NLA catalogue as usual and I put an order in....

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31/07/1958 Mango Bus

[Sooty Sooty]

The decision was to strip all the tops and trim and to match them all in original pattern.

You can see the damage to the tables, the trim had shrunk, damage to other parts....

So the trim came off....

Then I used a head gun and a decorators paddle to carefully remove the old tops..

With the old tops, I used them as templates and made some new tops out of the new material.

Once done, all trimmed and sanded to the exact size, I frog taped one side to exactly where the top would fold down to

I then used some high strength carpet adhesive to both surfaces and folded together.

It worked really well, and after cleaning out all the joins for the side trim, I cut new lengths (all in black) and using some glue in the crease and a rubber mallet, I hammered the new trim into place.....

All matching and looking fresh.

Put them back into the Bus and I was happy!

In the last photo you can see the Khul-Tek air scoop that we painted all aged and matching.... even got the scrape down it!
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31/07/1958 Mango Bus

[Sooty Sooty]

So now it was onto the roof!

It had board up, but it wasn't the right colour and it was in too many parts....

When I took the boards down there was some old material that had disintegrated and was dusty and smelt awful. It was glued on also. This took hours and hours to remove. It was awful work and luckily I had my daughter to help.

Once it was cleaned I had some left over acoustic sheeting from another VW so installed that for sound proofing and a thermal layer. (apologies I forgot to take pictures)

We got some 3mm Birch wood and with a lot of swearing and measuring and cutting we made some new panels, test fitted them, adjusted, test fitted.... adjusted.... test fitted..... adjusted.... what a swine of a job that was. 100% a 2 person job. Luckily my daughter was there to help!

While we were doing the roof my mate called (the one who's helped me do the bus and paint) and asked how it was going. It wasn't a good time to speak, as I was upside down, feet pushing against a board to fit it in.... I was a bit off and short but he said he had a surprise for me.... something that would make me happy and was for the bus!

He would be round in a few hours!

After struggling for what seemed like hours, we finally got the boards up and in place..... I was so happy with the colour and fitment.... loved it.

As we were just finishing, Andi came round with my present. Now for some you may have spotted it in the last photo....

He had taken my airbox cover tray and had hand painted Auntie Jean on it. Oh my days...... my eyes filled.

The entire reason why I bought this bus.... live for today....

My Auntie Jean was the best......

Well that was it.... The Mango is my 42nd VW, and is here to stay.

The bus as sad as it may sound, is a constant reminder of Jean every time I go anywhere. What an absolutely amazing gift from Andi.....

To be continued.....
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31/07/1958 Mango Bus