1978 Westfalia Build

[daniel5560]

Hi all

I'm doing my first build thread here to both share the work I am doing on my new Camper as well as keep a record of all the work I've done.

The bus itself is a beige 1978 Westfalia with an automatic transmission. It's been sitting in a barn for about the past 20 years and was recently rescued by Andrew Flint (Flint European Auto). He offered it to me early last week and I really didn't need another project.....so I went out and looked at it on Friday.

The camper is a bit crusty around the edges--typical of buses that have lived in the northeast. However, the body is straight, it appears to be more or less complete and the undercarriage seems alright. It's definitely a bus worth saving so I am happy to begin bringing it back to roadworthiness. (And now I'll have my 72 for summer commuting and the camper for weekend trips )

First order of business is airing the thing out and ripping out the interior. The mouse smell in this bus is biblical in intensity. (Definitely going to need a respirator for this one...)

Anyway, here are some pictures!

Some were taken by Andrew on the recovery. This bus came with a big folder full of service records dating back to 1980 including the used car guarantee from the VW Dealer one of the prior owners purchased the bus from. (Sold for $7850 with a $1200 down payment)

Looking forward to getting this one back on the road

[championbaum]

Cool, we are in the middle of getting out 78 camper in shape for a trip in July. Hopefully I can get some ideas from your thread when we start digging deeper into things!

[xoo00oox]

Glad to see this go to a good home! I'm glad I'm not the one that gets to empty this thing out, it's one of the worst smelling vans I've seen.
I was happy to also pull out of that barn some window frames from the 1800's and an old Diamondback racing mountain bike from about 1993.

[daniel5560]

Today was a nice bright sunny to go pick up the Westy from Andrews shop. Fortunately, he let me borrow his flatbed trailer so I did not need to hire a towtruck. Me, my step dad and my neighbor got it loaded up today.

And got it unloaded at the house early this afternoon

And now the fun task of getting it all cleaned out has begun. I had the doors open all afternoon to air it out and began spraying down the interior surfaces with disinfectant.

I'm trying to take it slow with the clean out---don't want to get sick from all these mice droppings. Cleaning messes like these you need to air out and disinfect and avoid stirring up dust.

Getting a little closer look at the body....

I expected the rockers to be rustier And the underside looks decent, a product of being stored in a good dry barn.

Rear corners need a little bit of work however...

Tomorrow, picking up some more disinfectant and face masks and the clean out continues

[KentABQ]

Very cool! Mud flaps and over riders and a propane tank??? Now I'm jealous...

Have fun with it!
_________________
-Kent-
1976 Riviera, 1.8l FI chrome yellow VAN - "Chloe"

"I must say, how can you be in a bad mood driving this vehicle full of vibrant color.
Cars of today are so bland in comparison. It's like driving a celebration!" ---WildIdea

Bus ownership via emoticons:
---williamM

[busdaddy]

[xoo00oox]

The trailer has definitely seen better days but it’s still able to get the job done. Danny has it loaded correctly with the center of the weight being slightly more toward the tongue of the trailer. That is a good point you bring up Busdaddy, you don’t want a tail heavy trailer or else it can take over your control very quickly.
I’m looking forward to getting a good look inside this bus once he’s got it cleaned out, I wasn’t brave enough to venture in it. Hope you’re going to let the old decals on the windows stay there.

[daniel5560]

Busdaddy, thanks for the tip on the trailering. I will keep that in mind if/when the next time this is on the trailer.

I am happy to see the original body seams--there might be crust but at least I know the likelihood of discovering a bondo nightmare is lower.

Well, the weather today was less than ideal but I wanted to make a little more progress on the Camper. I headed down to Home Depot to get more cleaner, some better gloves and more masks. I opted to get a respirator with P100 filters instead of another package of N95 facemasks. Also picked up a gallon jug of concentrated disinfectant and another spray bottle and some longer neoprene gloves.

Got the rear trunk cleaned out better. I've been soaking every surface with the disinfectant to try and kill the smell and any other diseases that may lie in all this crap.

Popped the roof to get that airing out. Down in the back is a rather large mouse nest Once this airs out for a few days I'll get to work cleaning it out. Too bad they got to it, it looks like the canvas was in good shape when it was put away.

Mice had even built nests around the edges of the poptop! Boy I hate mice, that rust is the result of the packed grass and nut shells they left in there. I soaked it all with cleaner and blasted it out with the hose. Fortunately, the rust is superficial and I should be able to blast it and get some epoxy primer on it for now.

Looked over the engine. It all seems to be there, even the EGR setup is still hooked up. It's not seized either! Turned over with a wrench and seemed to have compression.

[daniel5560]

[daniel5560]

Well now the weather in New England is finally clearing up!

Such a beautiful day today, I decided to get a little more cleaning done on the 78 after work.

Picked this up to shampoo the carpets and upholstery. So far I'm very pleased with it, and it sucked a lot of dirt out of the seats and floors!

Rear seat is in pretty nice shape.

The front seats look alright, most of the horsehair filling has long since degraded and only the wire frames are underneath the cloth.

Did a quick shampoo of the front carpet and center carpet.

And ripped out the old headliner. Up above the headline was the largest mouse nest I have ever seen....and the wood was pretty well shot. So into the fire pit it goes.

Bit by bit I'm getting this all cleaned out, once that's done I can focus on getting it back into showroom condition

[Gregg in the 603]

Nice man. It was a beautiful day right? Decent bones on this. The rust kind of sucks, but plenty of other things to help you overlook it, like overriders etc. Will take some significant work though. Which direction you looking to go with the motor?
Looks like you have some good bootlegs tapes there, what shows? Judging by the bumper stickers, you have a late 90's Phish fan's bus. Much like my first bus!
_________________
1979 Mexico Beige Westy auto
Dirty Dover, NH

[daniel5560]

[curtp07]

If the bus smells bad you need to pull the interior and the carpet. Remove the top, you’ll replace the canvas anyway.

There’s a subfloor under the carpet thats probably full of mold. All sorts of bad stuff stuck behind the bed, under the cabinets...no amount of cleaner could get to it otherwise. New carpet.

Did 2. They were absolutely disgusting, and in way better shape than that Bus.

Good luck!
_________________
Subaru

[71whitewesty]

Make sure you make a pattern off your old headliner so you can make a new one. I also had a bus filled with mice stuff and one of my main areas was the fresh air boxes right where your kick panels go. Hard to clean then but they were stuffed with mice nesting.
Otherwise that’s a keeper.
_________________
71 Westy 1600 DP, all stock Bus 1
1970's Snow Trac 1600 SP (sold 12/2016)
1968 Tucker sno cat, sold 2021
1969 Tucker Sno cat 542
2017 VW Alltrac
71 tin top stock 1600 DP (project but runs)
Twin 71 White Westy, Bus 2, that I pulled from a 15 year slumber in a dry eastern WA field in 2015.
1966 Sundial Camper "Boomer"

[Busstom]

I'm a bit late to the show, but......

Hanta virus has always been a fear of mine. So a couple weeks back, while resurrecting a friend's old 1600, I pulled the fan shroud and found loads of mouse poop. So it compelled me to go online and search info on Hanta. Despite reading a fair bit about it years ago, I discovered this time around that the virus only survives for a week or so in the feces and urine (only a couple days in sunlight).

So even though you're probably wrapped up cleaning, at least you can rest knowing that at least THAT virus wasn't active. But man, I hear you, I wrap fully and wear a respirator when I gotta work aroud that crap!

Best wishes.

[daniel5560]

[vwwestyman]

[daniel5560]

Ripped out most of the interior yesterday to clean behind the cabinets and underneath the subfloor. Pulled out some more mouse nests behind the panels and soaked everything with cleaner.

The easiest thing to do was just grab the hose and a scrub brush and spray it all out

The cargo floor in this thing is near perfect, a few small dime sized spots of surface rust.

The sub floor was also surprisingly decent. I was expecting it to be trashed. I'll probably replace it before I start using the camper but for now it will do.

Tossed all the camper interior back in for now, nothing is bolted down it's just sitting in place. All the interior I cleaned while it was out, and found most of the shelves and misc. pieces to the main stove cabinet.

Next on the agenda is removing the upper bunk and poptop canvas.