My 1976 Westfalia Deluxe Camper, A Love Story

[RONIN10]

[Xevin]

[RONIN10]

So I've been working on and off on restoring my passenger seat. There were mishaps along the way, but the process wasn't overly difficult just involved and requiring a solid time investment.

I didn't take in progress pictures, but here's a couple summary photos showing the unfinished drivers seat next to the finished passenger seat.

I powder coated the frames myself and had to do a little weld repair on one after my wife decided to "help" me with a cover and bent the lower backing brace. I bought my seat covers from GoWesty. They weren't cheap, but the finish is noticeably better than what I've seen from other sources. I also followed the general advice of using the Wolfsburg West seat pads. The bottom pad went of well and presented no issues, but the seat back gave me some challenges. First and foremost, the holes for the headrest didn't align as well as I would like.. Second, and maybe related, the lip at the top of the seat back pad didn't really "lock" into position on the top of the seat back. After getting the cover in place and cutting the holes for my headrests, I jabbed a large screwdriver with a tip covered in painter's tape beneath the cover and pressed the pad lip over the edge of the frame.

Things I would do different? The frame shows through the vinyl back of the seat rest. I don't know if there was something there originally that was missing or disintegrated from mine, but I would at least wrap these frame members with felt or batting or something to soften the frame lines showing through. I would also use a thinner felt on top of the seat pad. Overall I'm happy with how that turned out, but the rounded corners were hard to hide and don't look terribly great. Lastly, the seat adjustment makes a racket. I'm not certain where that is coming from exactly, but some prudent lubrication during reassembly would have helped.[/list]
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Andrew

Oscar: 1976 Westfalia Deluxe Camper, 2.0L FI, Manual Transaxle

[RONIN10]

I'm working on the restoring my driver's seat now. So the old passenger's seat has migrated to the driver's position for daily use and onward from there.

The seat had several known issues going in. First, I have been driving with a folded towel across the seat bottom since there's a broken spring in there that has torn more than a few pairs of pants. Secondly, the tension rod that acts as a seat return spring was missing. As I disassembled the seat, I also found that the spring that returns the backrest lever was missing as well. I never adjust my seat so I've never noticed it.

Here's the starting condition:

For those who have never torn down a seat, it's really straightforward. To remove the backrest, remove the two allen head bolts on either side of the seat and slide the backrest vertically. The bottom of the backrest frame has two guides that slot into the backrest adjustment bar.

I made a point of not straightening out the seat cover securing teeth any further than necessary. I did that when restoring my other seat and it made it hard to get the new cover in place with the securing rod installed. It also unnecessarily fatigues the metal and I broke off a portion of one of the teeth. Here's what they look like like with the teeth bent back just enough to remove the securing rod and seat cover:

I think the seat covers I had were still the original covers, but the seats themselves had been previously restuffed with carpet padding, some duct tape and even remnants of old vinyl seat covers. Whatever they had on hand, I guess.

One of the issues I had while restoring the other seat was correctly locating the holes for the headrest once the padding and seat cover were in place. So with some foresight I took some measurements prior to removing the plastic retainer plugs and seat cover itself. My measurements aren't super precise, but close enough to gain confidence when cutting the new seat cover. The left hole:

The right:

Backrest seat cover removed:

Remove and save the rods in the seat cover bottom. Be sure to label which rod came from what side of the seat cover. They aren't interchangeable.

Padding removed:

Overall, the backrest looks on the order of the backrest for the other seat before it was powder coated Lots of paint still present, but also lots of rust with some pitting. Nothing to destroy the integrity of the frame, but powder coating or painting the frames won't cover up the ugliness either.

For the seat bottom, flip it seat cover side down and remove the four allen bolts securing the front/back adjustment brackets and linkage to the seat bottom. My assembly is in pretty typical condition; it will be blasted and powder coated to match the rest of the frame. While this bracket is floating about the garage or being blasted, be careful that all the angles on the linkage connecting the two brackets do not get altered and that the rivets don't get warped. Those are easy to disturb and it influences how well the mechanism functions.

My backrest adjustment bar fell out at some point due to the missing tension rod:

To remove the bottom seat cover, press down on the underside of the seat frame and untuck the seat cover around the perimeter. The seat cover is folded in on itself once along the cardboard strips and tucked into a groove around the seat bottom:

Once it's fully untucked, you can work the cover off the seat bottom, remove the padding and inspect the frame. As noted before, I have a broken spring.

I think that's it for now. More progress to come over the next week or so. In the meantime, I have to do some searching to see if replacement seat parts are out there, but I suspect I'll have to procure a replacement seat.

Cheers.
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Andrew

Oscar: 1976 Westfalia Deluxe Camper, 2.0L FI, Manual Transaxle

[RONIN10]

I'm still working on my seat restoration. I did find a donor seat to pilfer springs from (thanks BusCo!) and am in the midst of blasting and powder coating the seat bottom. But that's slow going as I've been busy with numerous non-VW things in my life.

One of the things I do have to do is replace my tires. They were getting up there in mileage, but also suffered from having had a horrible camber adjustment at one point which ate up the inner edge of the tires. I simple could put it off any longer.

I used to have Nokian Hakkapaletta winter tires and I was happy with them, but they don't seem to be available any more. I decided to stick with Nokian and picked up their cLine Van tires:

I also took advantage of Wolfsburg West having genuine VW of Brazil rims available to fulfill my long held wish of having a set of tires and rims for summer and another for winter:

These will be mounted next Friday at TruLine in Seattle. I'll drive them for a month or so before getting some winter tires mounted to my existing rims and running those until March-ish. I don't know what those will be yet, but suggestions are welcome.

I've been diagnosing an intermittent bucking issue over the last month or so. I thought I had it figured last month when I found the #3 and #4 injectors firing, but the #1 and #2 injectors only firing intermittently. As I looked at all the connections, I discovered that the plastic hook on my ECU plug was worn away and not keeping the plug fully seated. It was successfully hooked at the bottom of the plug, but tilted away a bit.

That seemed to resolve the issue until this weekend. As I was driving to do some backpacking, everything was humming along great until I started driving up the Forest Service road approaching the trailhead. A buck, okay for a bit, another buck, and so on. When I got to the trailhead, I parked and hopped into the engine to see if the ECU plug had worked its way loose again. I was seated fine despite 4 miles of washboard road, but I could hear some gurgling and noticed a liquid dripping from my carbon canister. The first thing that occurred to me was that my fuel system was heavily pressurize. I disconnected the battery for safety (and to discourage the bus being stolen while I was hiking) and then disconnected the fuel vapor line. Sure enough, I got some sputtering liquid fuel and a steady stream of pressurized air and fuel vapor. I let it depressurize for a few minutes, but when it didn't show any sign of abating, I took off my fuel cap. That let out a big release and all was well. It was a warm day, but not too hot so I didn't understand why the system would pressurize like that until I stuck my finger down the filler port and felt how hot it was in there. And then it clicked, I had forgotten to put on my heater pods and tubes last time I was working under there. So all the heat from the heat exchangers was being directed onto the sheet metal underneath the fuel tank. What an idiot. That could've been costly.
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Andrew

Oscar: 1976 Westfalia Deluxe Camper, 2.0L FI, Manual Transaxle

[RONIN10]

Well, it's only been 8 months since my last post, suppose it's time for an update...

The Nokian cLine Van tires have been awesome for a true road tire. I never got the winter tires, but these did just fine through the rain. I wouldn't tempt them in the snow at all though.

The tires were put on back in mid September and I have several thousand miles on them now, if these are still available when these wear out, I don't see why I would switch to anything else. Nokian4Life!

Also, somewhere in November, I finally finished up recovering both seats. They're functional, look okay, but this is one of those jobs I'd really like a pro to do. Every time I look at these, I see all the little mistakes and that makes me a little sad. Here's the finished product though:

Back in January, I replace the rear glass with the glass from Bus Depot with a new heater element. It's really nice to have a clear rear window again in the winters. We don't generally don't get cool enough to frost up, but with all our PNW rain, defogging the rear glass is important, especially when trying to back up.

More on the glass front...I just replaced my driver side rear glass with a solid pane. I've been wanting to do this for years as we never use the vent window and I'd rather not have an additional leak source. Unfortunately, the Genuine VW seal we got from BusDepot kept tearing as I was pulling out the parachute cord; it is super soft and looks fantastic from the outside, but the softness allowed it to tear super easy. I've installed about ten different windows on multiple buses so this isn't my first time doing the install and I was frustrated that every couple inches of pull resulted in a tear. I ended up using a little tool to work the seam over the lip in lieu of the parachute cord and that worked okay, but it was super tedious. Anyway, it seals out the rain and most of the tears will be hidden by the cabinetry and curtains on the inside. Good enough until we repaint.

Let's see what else have I done recently...oh! I replace my front brake calipers! My left front caliper had a seized inner piston which resulted in a constant squeal while driving, no matter how much I tried to silence it. I used the Varga calipers from BusDepot. They are a bit different from the stock calipers as they don't have the "C" shaped piston surface to use with the brake shims. No pictures, but I'm happy with the braking performance. That was just a week or two ago, but I didn't take any pictures while I was in there. I replaced my wheel bearings at the same with some Koyo bearings and that's an amazing mess. Not as bad as CV joints, but still messy and I wasn't going to clean up to snap photos and then immediately get dirty again.

Other than that, I've picked up a new curtain set to replace my dry, faded ones and the textured ABS kick panels, but the bus needs a solid cleaning before I snap any picks from that. Going forward, I need to reinstall everything after the driver's side rear window replacement and then look into replacing the driver side rear pop top hinge. The slider track on my existing one is bent and I have a replacement, but need to investigate what's involved in swapping that out. I'm going to try and paint my pop top this summer as well.

Cheers to all and I hope you're all doing well in this unusual time.
_________________
Andrew

Oscar: 1976 Westfalia Deluxe Camper, 2.0L FI, Manual Transaxle

[wagohn]

Great thread. We're over in the Redmond area, maybe we will see you on the road. We have a '76 tintop with the broken seat springs issue. I need to take my seat apart as you did. Costing me a fortune in jeans.

[RONIN10]

[Xevin]

[will t]

[quote="RONIN10"]I received an e-mail this past Monday that my sliding windows were ready, about 3 weeks earlier than anticipated. I was out of town on business and unfortunately, didn't have them ship the windows since I was going to pick them up on my way to the RendezVW. Long story short, I got home on Friday morning, drove to Vancouver and back and got it installed tonight after a little rust cleanup:

I really like how it looks with the all black frame and it should seal substantially better than my older, rattling jalousie windows:

Hi, may I ask where you got the sliding windows? That looks like a nice upgrade. Are screens available for them too? Thanks!

[RONIN10]

[RONIN10]

[will t]

[Xevin]

So whatever happened to RONIN10? He hasn’t posted in his thread for a couple years. I’m bummed to report he is officially out of the ACVW hobby. He now tours the off road back country in a magnificent Toyota Tundra with one of those pop tent things above the bed. I am pleased to tell you I’m now the caretaker of his wonderful Sage buddy he put so much love into.

This is for Andrew.

Andrew, wife, and Juno the dog shows up around 10:30 this morning. They drove the Toyota down packed with a full truck bed of spare VW parts and the 76 bus from Seattle to my place in Portland. They had one last campout the night before.

The bus had to pass the Xatie test and the DEQ (Oregon emissions) test. My buddy J and his wife came over with His fancy gas analysis machine that can replicate exactly what the DEQ does. We get to pass but will need to swap the delightful 72-74 exhaust back to 76 with Cat since it’s a California bus. It needs to pass visual inspection. No worries we have all the parts to do it. Bummer I can’t run the superior early exhaust. Yet

Next was the Xatie test. She liked it. Need to take care of the sticky throttle pedal. It has a Buddy Bits and something just isn’t aligned right. The shifter is awkward so that needs to be sorted out. She gave it the approval.

I wasn’t in the market for another VW camper but Katie loves a late bay Deluxe Westfalia. Especially a rust free VW. My buddy J who is a Professional VW mechanic wasn’t going to let Katie say no anyway I’ll have to thin the herd one of these days.

It was a nice day to hang with friends and listen to music.

Andrew and my buddy grabbing lunch for the gang. Which would be perhaps his last drive in an ACVW.

Beer run

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Keep on Busin'

[outcaststudios]

excellent thread. glad you ended up with this bus, youre a good friend.
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'88Doka JX td
'69 westy
(rip)couple bugs
(rip)three type III"s
(rip) '81 vanagon
a bunch of french stuff,and 9 motorcycles.

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/detail.php?id=2573791

[airschooled]

Yaasss dude! One can never have enough fantastic examples of old VWs in one’s driveway.
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Learn how your vintage VW works. And why it doesn't!
One-on-one tech help for your Volkswagen:
www.airschooled.com

[otiswesty]

That is a real good buy there. It definitely is a cherry bus. Look forward to seeing it in person.
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1978 Sage Green P22 Westfalia
1989 T3 Syncro Single cab

Just a regular guy

[RONIN10]

I'd like to apologize for the tent encroaching on the cabin space in the above pictures...I was no longer responsible for popping or closing the top at that time.

I have had a wonderful time in the community comprised of many excellent folks and while it has it rough edges, it's nothing like the Toyota Tacoma community I've stepped into now. I will for sure miss the restoration process and indulging my inner "little boy in a fort" while camping. Having used one bus or another as my daily driver for the last 12 years and a bug for several years before that, I will not remotely miss having to get it running again before work the next day or abandoning weekend plans to address more significant issues that come up with owning a nearly 50 year old vehicle. Had I been able to afford a daily driver and restoring the bus, I probably wouldn't have sold it. It's already in great condition for a regular-use bus, but would also be an excellent platform to to take it to show quality if someone really wanted to go there.

I'll keep watching this thread for the many adventures it's sure to have. Certainly, Xevin is better at posting than I ever was or will be so I have no doubt he'll document it's adventures for the the greater community. I look forward to seeing it's travels.

Thanks to all for the support and community over the years! Many have been a great, great help on the Samba and in person with questions both dumb and profound. I have made good friends as a part of this community that I want to stay in contact with outside of the hobby; I'm glad life took this turn.
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Andrew

Oscar: 1976 Westfalia Deluxe Camper, 2.0L FI, Manual Transaxle