Bad Bad Leroy Brown Gets some more huevos.

[Charla]

12/25/14

Well, doors have gotten a lot more expensive in the last few years, more than doubling in price. :yikes

Ben was able to pop the dent out of the driver side door and there is actually very little rust damage so we've decided not to replace that one.

There's a VW boneyard down in Walsenburg (3 hours from here) that we're going to try to get to this weekend. Ben doesn't want to go any further welding the nose until he has the door he's going to be working with in case adjustments need to be made. We're also going to try to pick up both rear hatch doors. If we can work a good deal maybe a slider too but I doubt I'll have that much cash.

[Charla]

1/6/15

[QUOTE=Bendejo;739580]Well the door wasn't the magic bullett I had hoped for, so once the weather warms up and my soul crushing job improves, Im going to have to get creative and maybe remount the nose skin. Man that fucker took a hard hit.[/QUOTE]

[Charla]

1/6/15

Ben doesn't want me to post pics right now because he's super pissed but I'm going to anyway because...

A. Badass flair

And

B. I'm supremely confident that he will figure out how to correct this.

It looks like the nose is mounted just a skosh off center.

Driver side lower seam

Passenger side lower seam

The nose is only tack welded in a few places but the whole driver side vertical line has been folded and hammered into place. Adjusting the nose would be a days worth of work but Ben is concerned about causing damage to it.

Decisions decisions.

[Charla]

1/18/15

Ben has been working hard today. He peeled back the nose a bit and was able to hammer things back to get that door gap closed up. Then I bought him a new air sander and he's been going crazy with it.

[Charla]

4/26/15

Things have been slow in the shop for a while (cold weather, vacation, and a new job have kept us busy and not wanting sand paint) but we've finally decided to go big this time and Leroy Brown is not going back on the road this summer.

Bought some dollies so we can move him around the shop as needed.

We shuttled some interior stuff into the house to keep it out of the way and started dismantling more and removing windows. We managed to get all the windows out with breaking any of them or ruining the new window seals.

We're toying with the idea of converting to a full width Z Bed, but we'll tackle that issue later. The rest of the interior furniture will come out soon and after that we'll pull the camper top. :yikes

[Charla]

5/3/15 (today!)

Big day today.

We decided to pull the top today and there was a bit of headscratching going on trying to figure out how to get it done without having enough vertical clearance in the shop to actually pop up the top. We decided on setting up our strap system and using that to hold the top up to get the space to work on releasing the tent.

Detaching the rear brackets.

No space for a socket.

Hanging the eye bolts.

Not much space.

We had to be super careful with the spring loaded arms so they didn't damage anything or us. We used Velcro straps to hold them closed for removal.

Now there's a bit more space.

Rain gutters aren't quite as bad as we thought.

Under the front cap was yuckier than we expected. Lots of peeling paint from poor prep on a respray.

Crazy

Time for a beer.

[Sloride]

Looks like a well deserved cold one. Keep at it. Too bad for the substandard pieces you have to work with. You are doing a great job.

Craig
_________________
1972 Westfalia - 1.8 VW in-line h2o conversion
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Link to the engine swap:
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=565304&highlight=

1964 Ruby Red Beetle

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=705757&highlight=ruby+red

[Sloride]

How goes the battle? any updates? I'm thinking of stripping my bus down this winter as well.

Craig
_________________
1972 Westfalia - 1.8 VW in-line h2o conversion
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Link to the engine swap:
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=565304&highlight=

1964 Ruby Red Beetle

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=705757&highlight=ruby+red

[Charla]

Interesting that you should ask. Our story has taken an interesting turn that almost deserves a thread if it's own...

[Charla]

Back to May

We went to VW's on the Green to check out all the cool machines and scrounge for parts. This beauty became a huge source of inspiration.

LB is done!

[Charla]

Haha, I wish.

We picked up some parts from jtauxe, and found a driver side door at the NuVintage booth. We got to talking with those guys and found out that they had a parts bus back at their yard that sounded like a good candidate for the slider door and rear hatch that we were still looking for.

Ben went and checked it out a few days later but couldn't really get to the doors because of the way it was crammed in the yard. He came home and said the doors were good and mentioned that the bus he looked at was heading for the scrapper soon.

I was sad to hear that and I convinced Ben to call them back and make an offer on the whole thing. It was just a shell, no engine, trans, or any interior but it still had lots of good metal parts. They struck a deal and a few weeks later Ben went to retrieve it. He had to rent a flatbed and drive though a crazy thunderstorm after work. It was a pretty epic day.

We refer to this bus as Winky, aka The Hippy Simulator.

[Charla]

Things start to get REAL interesting from here.

Winky has been sitting in the driveway for a few days waiting for good weather and available time. It was full of crap that needed to get cleaned out, random beetle parts, a few bus parts, some random hippy shit, a foam Bronco head, and lots and lots of empty boxes.

It was Friday evening and we were trying to decide if we wanted to head to the bar and play in the Friday night pool tournament or stay home and mess with the bus. The piles of crap on the lawn grew bigger.

Our house is on a fairly busy street in a small town and it's not uncommon for friends to stop by, so we didn't think much when an unfamiliar Jeep pulled into the driveway.

[Charla]

We had no idea who the guy that jumped out of the Jeep was but we're friendly people so I immediately said "Hey there! How are you?"

He was equally friendly and we chatted while he walked over toward the bus. "Oh wow! Are you guys going to restore this thing?"

We explained that Winky was just a parts bus and that we had a bigger project back in Ben's shop and offered to show him. He accepted and we all headed to the shop to check out Leroy Brown. Our new friend Tom was digging LB and having some previous body work experience had a good grasp of the scope of the project we were working on. We continue to BS and he says "I have one of these at my house, do you guys want another one? It's in really good shape."

We explained that since we already had a bus and no money at all that we'd have to pass but if he wanted to sell it we could probably help him out. We continue to hang out talking and Tom has stories out the wazoo. It's very apparent that this guy is a wheeler dealer and he keeps talking up how nice the bus is that's sitting in his yard, but doesn't know quite enough about busses to give any solid details.

I'm finally intrigued enough I break down and look at Ben and say "Well, if it's as nice as he says we should probably go look at it."

Ben and Tom agree, so we hop in the truck and follow Tom a couple miles down the road to his house, where we see this guy in the line of derelict vehicles in Tom's yard.

Looking pretty sexy already.

[Charla]

Ben does a walk around fighting though the tall weeds. We knuckle rap all the corners, examine the window seals, and check all the usual spots for rust. This bus is remarkably straight with only a few serious rust spots.

Ben is in love.

[Charla]

Tom explained that this bus had belonged to a friend of his son's and had been parked there since 2008 when it stopped running. He couldn't recall exactly what the problem was but thought maybe it was a bad alternator. After a few years the friend had no interest in resurrecting it and told Tom to do whatever he wanted with it. He didn't have a title for it, but that's not a huge deal since Colorado has what is called a Bonded Title. You jump through a bunch of hoops and buy a title bond in case the previous owner reappears and they will title a vehicle in your name. I've recently gone through this process to get a title for my old CT90 so I'm familiar with the process.

We stand around and talk more and even Ben starts talking up about how nice he thinks this bus is which has me mentally slapping my forehead. Tom asks Ben what he thinks this bus is worth. Ben is reluctant to throw out a number so he asks Tom what he wants for it. Tom says "I don't know, what do you think it's worth?"

No one wants to be the first to throw out a number and we explain again that we REALLY don't have any money. We talk around in circles over half an hour with lots of stories thrown in.

In my head I'm thinking $2000, and knowing how terrible a negotiator Ben is I'm praying that he doesn't come up with a bigger number. He finally says to Tom "Well, since it doesn't have a title and it doesn't run I'd say that it's probably worth about $1200."

I'm shocked by that number but cheering on the inside when the thing that never ever happens in negotiations actually happens. Tom, the seller, says "Well I don't want that much for it!" Both of our jaws figuratively dropped. We were dumbfounded. Tom says "I just wanted to make sure you were honest people and weren't gonna say it was only worth $500 or something stupid."

Ben says "So how much DO you want for it?"

"I don't really need money, but I DO have a tractor that needs a new clutch." (Knowing that Ben is a diesel mechanic.) Now Ben is really interested. We walk around the house to check out the tractor. It's a big old Ford 545 from the 70's and as Ben checks it out he becomes confident that he can do the job. It's not a small job by any means, requiring the tractor to be split in two.

Ben agrees to do the job and we'll pay for parts up to a few hundred dollars. Tom is ecstatic. He has 35 acres and uses the tractor to keep all his weeds mowed and for snow removal in the winter. Having it non-operational is not good. Tom wants us to take the bus immediately, but Ben says no. He needs to leave it there for motivation to get the job done.

A couple weekends later he goes out on Saturday morning to separate the tractor, sources parts and gets the fly wheel machined during the week and puts it all back together the following Saturday. So for $450 in parts and machining and 9 hours of hard labor we have ourselves another bus.

[cdennisg]

HAHAHA Crazy how things that work out, eh?
_________________
nothing

[Charla]

[Charla]

Tom and Ben wound throwing a tow strap on the orange bus and bringing it home. Ben was really happy that all the steering parts and suspension felt good on the wash boarded back roads.

The interior was pretty grungy so I grabbed a vacuum, a bucket of hot water and some Pine Sol and did my best to chase out all the Hanta viruses.

Then we decided to push it into the garage with the help of our neighbor who ran over when she saw us failing miserably to get up the slope. Ben got to work figuring out why this thing wouldn't run.

[/list]

[Sloride]

Wow. Looks like a fairly solid bus with the exception of the dogleg and rockers. Complete as well. Even has the stool. Keep the updates coming. Tell Ben if he can't get the aircooled motor running he has another candidate for a 1.8 swap.

Craig
_________________
1972 Westfalia - 1.8 VW in-line h2o conversion
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Link to the engine swap:
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=565304&highlight=

1964 Ruby Red Beetle

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=705757&highlight=ruby+red

[Charla]

Tom had admitted that in one of their attempts to get the bus running he had put a screw through the gas tank. He had pulled the tank out to repair it and unfortunately cut the tank straps. We had a spare tank in the parts bus so we weren't to worried. Ben pulled the firewall and tank out, rigged up an external fuel tank, remounted the carb, reconnected some loose wires, checked for oil, and eyeballed the timing which was waaaay off. We grabbed LB's good battery and he swapped them out.

He had me turn the key......

Nothing.

Checked a couple more things, still nothing. He determined that the starter was bad. Dang, not much more to be done without a starter.

So we sat and pondered. I suggested borrowing the starter off of LB and he wasn't very keen on the idea at first but eventually decided to give it a go. It was a major PITA but he got it done only to find that they weren't the same.

Done with work for tonight.