TheSamba.com :: View topic - Restoration of a former '65 firetruck (21F)

Tue Jul 31, 2018 1:53 pm

I started recently to restore my first VW bus. I am now on 6th bus (T1, T2, 2x T3, T5, T3)

I am starting this thread to document what I am doing to it. But, I will start out with a brief history of the van.

It started out as a Firetruck (VW-Feuerlöschfahrzeug TSF-T or 21F) on September 10th, 1964. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures from when it was still in service.

The date on the M-plate is 27.8. The original registration papers were stamped 1.9.1964 and first date of registration was 10.9.1964.

The van was stationed in Niederstöcken which is a small Village 30km north of the VW factory in Hannover-Stöcken. Officially it had two owners before I got it. But, in reality it was only the Village volunteer fire department. the village was incorporated with Neustadt am Rübenberge in September 1979. The original Registration was NRÜ-J 551 and at this point in time it changed to H-H 63.

I was told, that it had only been to two emergencies in the 24 years of service. The only other use it got was for the yearly festivities in the village and the mandatory 50km per month drive (Bewegungsfahrt) to keep everything moving.

I bought the van in December 1988 with 14500km on the odometer.

The following pictures were taken the day I bought it.

On March 6th, 1989 I registered it to myself, after doing some rust repair and the conversion to a very simple camper. I removed what was left of the fire departments fixture to hold their equipment. And added a bed and a cupboard, the bare minimum to get a registration as a camper at the time. The insurance premium was much lower for campers at the time.

To be continued ...

Sun Aug 05, 2018 12:59 am

This will be the last post on the history of my van before I start on the restoration, I promise.

One more picture from the original state:

I drove the van as my daily driver for 9 years, all trough my alternate (civilian) service and studies. Germany still had mandatory military/civilian service for the male population. I served with one of the German scout organizations and got heavily involved in scouting. Of course my van got involved too.

Getting ready for a hike:

Small scout camp in Leun just leaders and young adults:

In 1994 I went on a three week camping trip to Sweden:

Unfortunately there was no more gas sold at this station:

During the course of time I converted the van to 12V, rebuilt the front axle, replace the 42hp 1500ccm motor with a 50hp 1600ccm. In '91 and '93 I spent my summers working in San Jose, CA and I used the occasion to do parts hunting. One year I cut the lower rear corners from two different buses in a Sacramento wrecking yard and the other year I found some cargo doors with windows in a Pick&Pull yard in San Jose. I managed to take all of the parts back as normal luggage. I miss those days when you were entitled to pieces of luggage 32kg each.

When I got my first job I had to move to Düsseldorf and I ended up with no place to work on my van anymore. And it was getting to a state where it would not pass the bi-yearly inspections anymore. I decided to keep it until I have a place where I can work on it.

In the meantime we bought an old house which needed a lot of work, got married, had kids and the van had to wait.

I was able to borrow this VW dump truck for some of my work on the house:

But, now more than twenty years later the time has come. Last winter I started to make some tools which I would use for the disassembly:

Then end of may I built the frame which I mounted the chassis on:

And a friend came to help me disassemble the van:

To be continued ...

Sun Aug 05, 2018 1:51 am

Wow. Such a cool story thanks for sharing it. I enjoyed the part you told about when you cut off the corners from a bus in a Sacramento junkyard. Or that bus at the San Jose Pick n Pull you snagged the cargo doors from. I remember that era well. A bus wouldn’t last 10 minutes at a P n P yard nowadays.
Look forward to the progress.

Fri Aug 10, 2018 1:22 pm

Next I continued to remove the cargo floor and the sub-frame members underneath. First I drilled out all of the spot-welds I could get at

Left side is out:

Both sides gone:

sub-frame members removed

scrap:

[removed the right rocker:

I also made some new parts.
Lower sections of the rear wheel arches and the lower section of the left hand side pillars:

Lower section of the left B-pillar:

Sun Aug 19, 2018 1:43 am

I finally pulled the steering box from the car and cleaned it up.

It hat virtually no wear, therefore I just cleaned it and repainted the part which is under the car. I haven't decided whether I will repaint all of it.

Sun Aug 19, 2018 1:53 am

I continued the work on the sheet metal too.

Her I pulled the car out from the garage, because I had to raise it up to pull out the steering box.

Lower sections of the wheelwells are done:

And also the lower parts here:

Next up is the left B-pillar:

Made some spare parts:

Sun Aug 26, 2018 10:54 am

I removed the rear part of the inner dogleg and patched it up with some new metal:

Then I started rebuilding the B-pillar:

Checking that it fits:

Putting thing back together:

Learned the painful way, that you don't want to paint parts before you weld them, this needs to be cleaned up.

Checking that the inner sill fits:

Still need to close this hole:

Sun Sep 02, 2018 10:09 am

Yesterdays progress, made a repair section for the bulkhead. The part which attaches to the left B-pillar.

Comparing new and old, not perfect but as close as I'll get. and much better than the flat stuff which is sold as repair panel:

In the process of welding it in:

Mon Sep 03, 2018 10:30 am

Your bus coming along great!... nice work!... and tool making.
Thanks for sharing the history too.
e

Mon Sep 03, 2018 11:14 am

Thank you for your encouraging words. I have set myself a goal. I would like to be on the road for the next "Splits at the Lake" in one year. http://www.spijlbustreffen.nl

Mon Sep 03, 2018 12:22 pm

:popcorn:

Tue Sep 04, 2018 5:57 pm

This thread reminds me of visiting a guys house who is an amazing guitar player. And you just quit playing out of shame.

NICE WORK!!!! :oops:

Wed Sep 05, 2018 9:05 am

Ganz Fliesig!

Sun Sep 09, 2018 2:50 am

just doing the same work on my 65 panel ;-) but you've already posted on it
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?p=8877568#8877568

Keep going ! :wink:

Sun Sep 09, 2018 11:53 am

Same procedure with the right side B-pillar:

I have to start painting stuff before it starts to rust again:

Mon Sep 10, 2018 1:13 am

nice to see that flanges instead of the common flat panel repair... You use a press and a template to shape it ?

Mon Sep 10, 2018 11:27 am

Yea, I made a stamp to shape the two steps as you can see here:

I then shaped the rest by hand:

Mon Sep 10, 2018 5:51 pm

mdege wrote: Yea, I made a stamp to shape the two steps as you can see here:

I then shaped the rest by hand:

are those safety flip-flops?

Tue Sep 11, 2018 12:51 pm

Yep, south east Asian safety shoes :D

Tue Sep 18, 2018 5:30 am

I need to get back to documenting. Here's what I have done the last couple of weeks.

I welded in the lower edge of the bulkhead. I did have some warppage at the end.

Grinding the welds down is the worst part of the job. I hope my neighbors aren't going to hate me :oops:

I was able to get rid of the warppage by hammering the welded area after I finished grinding the welds.

Most of the work isn't very spectacular. Just cleaning/sanding the main frame rails and the tubes. I painted them with Ovatrol, which is an oil which seeps into the left over rust. It keeps the rust from continuing it's destructive work. I also primed the new cross members.

And sometimes you need to take a break. There was a small VW meeting in Haan and I went with a friend and his family. I got to drive their "new" bug. It is freshly imported from Sweden. No turn signals yet, just semaphores 8)

It is kind of scary to drive because nobody expects cars to have semaphores these days. But then again many people don't use turn signals over here.