my first split. 1967 13 window deluxe

[74volksrodwv]

Im very new to the split world, only reading through these pages drooling over everyones great buses. Well I fell into my opportunity last week. A friend of mine was trying to talk me into his 71 westy and jokingly I said im done buying VWs for a while(I already have 4 at the moment) unless I happen across a split. He pulls out his phone and says well I found this one and they would sell it. Fast forward a couple days, I go out there, knock on the door, no answer. neighbors said theyre at church but I can see it out back just sitting there where it had been for 2 years. Wait and wait but no one comes home. Finally I left them a note with my name and number asking them to call me when they get in. We went out the next morning and talked to them and looked it over. They bought it in Arizona and drove it home to WV then took it back to Arizona for a vacation. They also had the original 1500 rebuilt as a 1641 with dual port heads the year before they parked it. I offered them the cash I had in my pocket and we made a deal. Went back out this past Saturday to pull it out since we were trying to give his yard a day or two to dry up so we wouldn't destroy it. I took my bag of tools, battery, new fuel line and a can of gas. It fired up on the third crank and I actually drove it out! it had no brakes at all so when I got to the street I was working the emergency brake. being from out west its really dry and very little rust. Theres bondo in a couple places but after knocking it out it appears to be from body work that didn't straighten it out enough instead of hiding rust holes.. Theres a couple places that need addressed and some surface rust that I will clean up. The biggest irritation is all those popouts were sealed up with silicone. Ordered all new seals for everything except the windshield which had been replaced and were still very good. We even found some buses by the bridge windshield stickers on it once we cleaned them up from around 2004 and 2005. I decided to try and get the faded black spray paint off of it and get to the titian red underneath and underneath the black was more black with green ferns stenciled across the whole thing. why, just why.... But its under there, I can see it starting to come through as I take this new layer of strange paint off of it. Overall it needs some love but Im still beyond excited and cant wait to start enjoying it.

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1960 euro beetle
1964 beetle (for sale)
1970 beetle (sold)
1973 beetle(deceased)
1967 13 window deluxe
1968 deluxe bus
1973 bus(sold)
1978 westfalia(deceased)
1979 deluxe westfalia(sold)

[easy e]

Nice pull...

The silicone seems ugly and inconvenient now... but up to this point... think of it as having helped avoid more rust.
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aka: Evan
Spreadsheet for Bus RPM, based on gearing & tire size (Excel format)
Searchable, click-navigable 1958 Bus Parts List
“They are about as worthless as the tits on the boars that live in the woods behind their junk yard.” -Weatherly

[BulliBill]

Welcome to the Club! Buy and correctly install all new brake components before anything else. It's got to STOP well before it can GO anywhere. Think of you family's safety and the others around you before you work on anything else. Read up a lot on this forum, tons of good info, buy a Bentley Workshop Service Manual for your Bus, it's the best! Have fun, fix/repair one thing at a time and pretty soon you'll have a nice, safe and collectible "runner".

Bill Bowman
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I'm looking for these license plate frames from old Volkswagen dealerships for my fleet:
Coeur D'Alene - Lake Shore Volkswagen
Mission VW - San Fernando
Thornton VW - Stockton

Thanks for any help!

[Abscate]

I choked up a bit seeing that roof vent but lets face it - the person who put that it also took good care of that Bus, so they redeemed themselves..

Nice find and good luck with it!!
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🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🍊 🍊 🍊

[74volksrodwv]

I have a piece of donor metal that's gonna fill that roof vent. Someone also did it twice to my bay...

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1960 euro beetle
1964 beetle (for sale)
1970 beetle (sold)
1973 beetle(deceased)
1967 13 window deluxe
1968 deluxe bus
1973 bus(sold)
1978 westfalia(deceased)
1979 deluxe westfalia(sold)

[Pinetops]

Great score!

I am subscribed to your other bus thread and remember you saying recently you wanted a split but didn't know if you'd ever get one. Who would have thought you'd have a good one in your driveway such a short time later! Congratulations man, I'm really happy for you!
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"A rolling bus gathers no rust."

[74volksrodwv]

Thanks! It's funny, the same guy that sold me my bay is the guy that gave me the lead on this bus. I'm going to drop the engine this weekend and go through the clutch. I cant shift into gear while the engine is running and if I try to shift into reverse it just grinds. That little bit of movement in the pedal before you feel the bearing push the pressure plate feels sort of sticky. Like it moves but its not free movement like it should. The bus sat for two years so Im not really surprised. I'll go ahead and replace all the fuel line and move the fuel filter out of the engine bay. hopefully my blaze cut shows up so I can get it installed while the engine is out All the new pop out seals will be here Friday so I'll be able to clean up the silicone around all of them. Looks like I'll have more updates this weekend!
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1960 euro beetle
1964 beetle (for sale)
1970 beetle (sold)
1973 beetle(deceased)
1967 13 window deluxe
1968 deluxe bus
1973 bus(sold)
1978 westfalia(deceased)
1979 deluxe westfalia(sold)

[74volksrodwv]

Well it doesn't feel like its been less than three weeks but we're moving along. mostly small stuff just cleaning up here and there changing out connectors and bulbs. I still have to go through my headlights to find where my problem is so they will come on. Also discovered that unless you hold the turn signal just right the passenger side rear signal/brake light wont work. So that's going to come apart to get cleaned and probably connections soldered. Other than that everything is pretty good. We ordered a bunch of seals for the doors and all the pop outs.

I did discover that the bottoms of most of the pop outs aren't rotted away but they were rusted just enough that the bottom of the outer frame seal wont stay in the frame when you pull it shut so I'm not sure where to go on that one yet. may end up getting new ones or trying to reuse these somehow. These windows probably hadn't been opened in over 9 years.

Talked a bit to Sehilliard1 and he came down to swap some parts. I now have a killer rear and middle seat and rear bumper.

Not long after he left I got a text from the previous owner saying they had a couple boxes of parts in the garage I could have if I wanted to come down and get them. I was beyond pleasantly surprised to see my nose emblem, original seat hardware, pop out latches, dwell meter, timing light and other goodies.

We knocked out all the bondo of the nose and its not perfect but its really not bad at all in comparison to some others I've seen. Sprayed some rust mort to kill anything trying to start and hit it with some primer for now. Ordered the clips I needed and got my emblem and rear script clipped on and it just looks so much better now.

I pulled my engine this past weekend to rebuild my carb, replace the throwout bearing clips and trans mounts. found the manufacture date on my transmission which I thought was pretty cool.

Everything is rolling along at a pretty good pace now. the back seats still need to come back out so I can kock out that surface rust and treat it then get some paint on it before the cargo floor mat goes down. I have fought that black and green paint with no luck until Saturday night. We took some of the suggestions I found here on the samba and decided to try Goof Off graffiti remover and wow, it made short work of it. before ya know it that OG titian red will be back. I'll worry about blending in the nose and rear drivers corner once its all stripped down but I'm happy with the progress so far.

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1960 euro beetle
1964 beetle (for sale)
1970 beetle (sold)
1973 beetle(deceased)
1967 13 window deluxe
1968 deluxe bus
1973 bus(sold)
1978 westfalia(deceased)
1979 deluxe westfalia(sold)

[scottvw]

Nice progress......keep it up.

[Pinetops]

+1

That is quite a stash of goodies the PO still had, thank goodness they didn't just throw it out!
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"A rolling bus gathers no rust."

[74volksrodwv]

Still chipping away at it and making some good progress. Mechanical is lined out, brakes are working as they should, so now were moving on to some of the fun work.

took everything apart on the dash. We used jb weld steelstik on the steering wheel, sanded it and repainted it. I tried to strip the layers of paint off the dash but sadly when it was painted the first time they took it down to bare metal all across the grill so we just gave it a good coat of paint as well.

I moved on to those god awful high back beetle front seats. A friend of mine had given me an extra pair of early bay lowback seats so I ripped out the beetle seats and we're in the process of modifying the bay seat frames to match the contour of the split pedestals. They're going to require work but I wont have nearly the amount of money in these as I would in buying a ratted out set of seat frames actually for a late walkthrough split.

spent a whole weekend on the pop outs. I tried to save the original frames but sadly the outside channels were rusted out and wouldn't hold the seal. So we opted for new ones from west coast metric and a couple I picked up in the classifieds here. I'm really pleased with how they turned out.

My blazecuts came in so they will be getting installed in both buses this weekend if the rain stays away

Then we moved on to the part that was the most fun. Picked up a towel bar off the classifieds here and found a set of front bumper guards. got them painted and ready to go on. Went to my local paint shop and they mixed me up a quart of single stage and loaded it into spray cans. Im going to replace the nose over next winter so I didn't want to go all out on a paint job but still wanted it to look good when I take it out this summer

Still need to take it and get new tires. Just a few more things to do and I'll actually start taking it out and enjoying it.
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1960 euro beetle
1964 beetle (for sale)
1970 beetle (sold)
1973 beetle(deceased)
1967 13 window deluxe
1968 deluxe bus
1973 bus(sold)
1978 westfalia(deceased)
1979 deluxe westfalia(sold)

[AS350driver]

It never ceases to amaze me how far a little time and elbow grease goes on these things. I'm very interested in the steering wheel repair. Did you take any before/during/after pics ?

[74volksrodwv]

Actually yes i did. I packed the steelstik putty into the cracks as good as i could. once it dried i sanded it smooth, scuffed the whole wheel and gave it a couple coats of paint over a couple days

You can see some of the cracks in the wheel. some were pretty bad.

putty packed in waiting on it to dry

sanded down and wheel scuffed up

first coat of paint done drying overnight

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1960 euro beetle
1964 beetle (for sale)
1970 beetle (sold)
1973 beetle(deceased)
1967 13 window deluxe
1968 deluxe bus
1973 bus(sold)
1978 westfalia(deceased)
1979 deluxe westfalia(sold)

[74volksrodwv]

Ended up spending most of our free time this weekend doing different things for the bay but did manage to get a couple things finished up on the split. A couple more weekends of good weather and it'll be ready to take out and enjoy.

Got my last window seal in the mail so we welded the hinge in place and got the last pop out installed on the driver side. Moved the stationary window to its spot at the end on the passenger side too. Lastly, we got the new seal in the rear hatch glass so all the windows are done. West coast metric rubber is pretty substantial stuff for sure.

Had a few minutes so I gave the football trick a second try to pop the big dent in the bottom of my nose V. If you get up close on it you can see its not perfect but its worlds better than it was.

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1960 euro beetle
1964 beetle (for sale)
1970 beetle (sold)
1973 beetle(deceased)
1967 13 window deluxe
1968 deluxe bus
1973 bus(sold)
1978 westfalia(deceased)
1979 deluxe westfalia(sold)

[LAGrunthaner]

[cru62]

Forgive me if I missed something, but why are you replacing the whole nose? What can be seen looks way nicer than most.
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"My biggest worry is that when I die, my wife will sell all my parts for what I told her I paid for them"-Jon

Jokes about German sausage are the wurst.

Stop dead photo links! Post your photos to The Samba Gallery!

[Ran When Parked]

You treated this bus really well. It is a fun read and informative too.

Thank you.

[74volksrodwv]

[Bruce Amacker]

[BulliBill]

Before you buy tires for your Bus, PLEASE do your research and do NOT buy passenger car rated tries. Buy a "C", or better yet "D" rated set of light truck/van tires that have much more reinforced sidewall plies (stiffer sidewall are what you want). They are what the VW engineers specified for all Transporters and are what you need to run to stay safe in an sudden evasive emergency maneuver. There is a nice thread on here that reviews the current range of HD tires for Transporters. Read up! Nice progress!

Bill
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I'm looking for these license plate frames from old Volkswagen dealerships for my fleet:
Coeur D'Alene - Lake Shore Volkswagen
Mission VW - San Fernando
Thornton VW - Stockton

Thanks for any help!