Owning a bus or three in the UK

[Zed999]

The rear I thought I'd have a 3/4 bed, but in the middle, with a seat opposite hiding the kitchen, all covered in leather. I got a bit CAD happy initially to design the hinges for the kitchen but then I just carried on. I superimposed them on the only pictures I had of the inside. There were a lot of stages on the way, but eventually this was more or less the plan for the kitchen seat.
Seat...

Kitchen...

How it ended up.
Seat...

Kitchen...

I hid rising roller blinds everywhere except the sliding door and hid a sub bass under the bench seat plus smaller speakers in the front and rear vents. The leather is called "rub off" leather, it's used for Chesterfields and the like, you rub off the top layer and it looks antique...kind of. I did it eventually as you see in one picture, but I also liked the deep red.

The bed is true R&R with original Westfalia hinges and thick ply. I could turn it from bed to seat with one hand standing outside. Anything else is not acceptable.

[Zed999]

Then it was time to finish the Orange one. I was getting divorced and needed the funds to complete the orange one so I had to sell the early. It was impossible to pull up my kacks in the tintop without lying down - ridiculous and time to grow up. The early was all look and no practicality, it was time to do my last camper and make it one that was easy and comfortable to camp in. More later...

[StefansBus]

Absolutely fantastic write-up. More please

[MorkC68]

[Zed999]

[Zed999]

[Zed999]

The Orange bus was named Pumpkin when I got it, the owners and their kids had painted pumpkin scenes on the windows...
Here it is as bought. I think I'm already pinching parts from it for someone elses.

That was maybe 10 years ago and at that time though we thought prices for parts were through the roof, we hadn't seen anything yet and used parts were still plentiful and cheap.

It had a 1600 engine, S/S 4:1 and box + twin ICTs. The interior was swollen chipboard with peeling, bubbling, shrinking stick on wood effect. Heavy pull out bed with cracked peeling plastic dip covering (a back breaker, not true rock and roll), I cut down the cooker, brushed it's stainless and used that in the early. The rest ended up in a skip.

[Zed999]

If there are problems above the lower 2" of window surrounds I won't buy a bus and wouldn't repair other peoples either. If water has been getting in right at the top the bus is doomed IMO.

Here's a flavour of it, it's not too bad compared to many. It originated from a large VW restore and sell place here in the UK. It was a large enough concern to have it's own MOT bay. In the course of restoring these over 8 years I saw 2 or 3 or their restored buses. On mine they had totally restored the expensive fiddly pop top, restored and painted the outer skin, had it mechanically good but tacked bean cans and underseal over anything underneath. In other words, do the bits that can be seen only. It then passed it's "free" MOT structurally for 3 or 4 years back at the trader until the trader lost their MOT licence. That year it had to be taken elsewhere and produced 3 pages of rust failure. Now if you can read these fail sheets you get to know there can be half a page of fails all relating to one small hole - fails for corrosion within blah of a suspension point, excessive corrosion within blah of a braking component, excessive corrosion likely to effect the structure of the vehicle and so on, so structurally it wasn't so bad as the seller thought.
The tub is pretty good, that's a rare thing.

The door is just for arch fitting, I had learnt to get good rust free originals from the USA by then.

Looks like it got a new deformation panel, I made up the other parts. I now wish I'd done the strip up the side of the front panel that's in contact with the A-post as I keep it outside, the windscreen has been leaking and it's bubbling 3 years on...

I did patch but I never scimp on the "hidden" bits, I enjoyed making up this kind of thing. You can buy them from Schofields now.

I was patching it up really, it was mine after all.

This side had a crash repair, I must have removed a bucket of filler from the middle panel to stop it looking pregnant.

Eventually it looked something like this, where I stopped for 5-6 years and it gathered dust. If I'd waited 5-6 years while I did other peoples, I'd have done quite a lot differently - more panels, less patching mainly, grind off spot welded parts rather than drilling spot welds, spotweld where you can in preference to plug. I didn't have a spot welder then.

The last picture reminds me I replaced the front panel from half way up the indicators to the screen. Schofields cut it off a front panel, binned the rest and charged me £10 less than a whole panel, £10 they saved on post. They packed it in a tight ex bicycle box, it got bent. They replaced it with another badly packaged and bent one then gave up. I actually stopped buying stuff from them because their packaging was appalling. I expect they have joined the modern world now.

[Zed999]

By the time I got back to it 6 years later I had got fed up with painters stalling for months when they'd agreed to paint one of my vans and had kitted out a small unit for 2-pac painting. Amazingly, if I said I'd prep and mix paint, professional auto painters would come and paint a bus for £80, but eventually I had to do it myself, something I had zero desire to do. Mine was the first whole bus I'd painted.

I got ahead with the doors and bumpers, getting the insides prepped too, it's as big a job as the shell, maybe bigger.

Then VW pastel white on the inside, the more modern creamier one. Foggy in there...

and …er…a VW green on the outside. I copied a customer's choice here. I'd done theirs all over one colour, it looked great we all thought - same pop top. This one...

Shall I tell you something that annoys me? I spend ages fitting a cab door to it's opening and new front panel, then another age fitting the arch to the perfectly aligned door so the shuts are super flush, then everyone takes and posts pictures without shutting their cab doors properly. Have they no respect for artistry?

My doors...

The advantage of painting flat for me was loading on a good coat with no runs. The disadvantage is poop in the paint...

Hardly surprising, this is a botch up paint shop. The equipment is good, the shop is horrible, but all I could afford as I rarely used it.

[Zed999]

I was getting divorced and right now the house had to be cleared and vacated and I was intending moving into the van then driving around leisurely looking for a boat to live on. However, I couldn't stall the house sale any longer and had agreed a date. With a few days to clear the last of the junk from the house (which turned out to be a truck load) I was at the workshop prepping the shell. I realised I needed to paint it quick.

At 4pm I started to mix the high build, painted it one covering coat inside and 2 outside, scuffed and dusted inside and went wet on wet with the L90D. I got home by Midnight, not bad.

[Zed999]

After a couple of days house clearing and letting the high build go off I went back, flatted, cleaned up, masked up and painted it green in a day. There is the odd dry area and a one run but overall I was relieved to get it done. No time left to even sweep the floor, back to the house to get my few things and chuck out the rest. I was moving from a big house with cellars to a camper, there was a hell of a lot to get rid of. Anyway, here's the bus painted....

I know VW would have painted more of the arch with the outside colour but I like them like this - just enough so you don't see whit around the seal with the door shut.

Dent in roof I like.

Got to love shiny 2-pac from a decent gun. I used to think it looked like a layer of plastic, now I know it's my friend.

The next day I was sleeping in that ^. I had plenty of money but I needed to start from a real low. I found I had to stick my feet between the front seats. Winter was coming...

[Zed999]

The engine bay was still a mess at this point and unpainted. I'd almost run out of paint but mixed the last of the green and the last of the white and painted the engine bay a slightly lighter green. I rattle canned zinc primer then brush painted one thick coat of 2-pac with 1/2 the normal hardener as I couldn't face masking up and I was living in it. It survived well. I cleaned up the firewall and steel grills above the engine with oven cleaner - good to go.

Grim...

Better...

[Zed999]

Paint done.

Engine.

I liked the engine I'd built for the early, the 2020 wasser crank C35 cam, big valve one, but for a bus it was too weak at lower rpm, Cruising along at anywhere between 40 and 65 in fourth it wasn't "on cam" i.e. it wanted to be in 3rd gear revving higher and would sing at 70mph in 3rd.

As it was the biggest wasser crank with 92mm pistons I couldn't make it bigger. When push came to shove I needed a new race case, a stroker crank, new B&P's, a different cam... It seemed stupid to just pinch the heads off it so I ordered a race case, sold the long block then realised it was madness and expensive to build a big type-1 bus engine at all when the type-4 equivalent to a type-1 1835 is 2.4L. Yes I thought, a bit of machining then slap some big barrels on a 2L and that's it.

So I resold the new case, bought a £500 turnkey ebay engine from someone in Wales...when I say turnkey, it didn't run but all the tin and ancillaries were there in various states of decay. The story went that it had been a few people's spare engine for decades, sold on when owners sold their buses, but never needed and the original owner said it ran. I thought it sounded plausible, I know of other such engines and the one I got for the Westy had the same history and turned out well. Better a whole one than one someone has stripped. I can't think why anyone would sell a dismantled engine apart from that they discovered it was a pile of scrap?

I stripped it to long block and took that, a whole 1700, some heads, a couple of cranks and cams and a bunch of other parts, gave them to a mate/builder to pick over along with the 104mm barrels and pistons and some half weight rods. Make me a big low revving torquey engine like a mild turbo diesel I said. It would have been better to buy a stroker crank he said. Well I got these pistons instead I said, still loads of capacity? There won't be much left of the heads he said...or the case, but it will be interesting to see how it goes. I promised not to hold him in any way responsible if it self destructed and onwards we went. Generally I asked him to do whatever needed but not go crazy buying aftermarket parts and use VW everything possible including the cam, followers, oil pump, heads, crank...
That was my case...

Heads opened up for the barrels...

ferocious valve seat job...

Building it up...

I'd got together a set of tinware and had it powder coated, found some battered original heat exchangers and reskinned them/fitted new end flanges, I had the original distributor and my faithful Pertronix 1 that's been on every bus since I dropped the valve seat on the Westy about 15-20 years ago through not setting the timing.

original and after market heat exchanger fins...more fool me - all that trouble and my torquey big engine runs so cool I get barely enough heat to demist the windscreen. Best heat I ever had from a bus was the early with it's original heat exchangers on a 1600 that had to be thrashed everywhere. I had to turn the heat down in that even when it was snowing.

I had DRLA 40's from the last engine and new type-4 manifolds and a linkage. These centre linkages are designed for a Porsche shroud type-4 into type-1 car conversion and to miss the shroud are on the gearbox side of the carbs. That's hopeless for me, I don't have an engine hatch as this was originally a type-1 powered bus and only type-4's got them. I made these brackets to mount the centre pull on the rear hatch side.

To get them to pull evenly and miss the HT leads was a pinch. They do in fact hit the leads lightly which is not ideal but was the best compromise I could come up with.

I cobbled these together to adjust the carbs without adjusting the rods which is a fumbly hit and miss job.

The manifolds are match ported to the heads with the outer bolts sleeved for accurate location.

I made some flap brackets, then painted up and fitted some flaps from my stash.

Retro fitted a servo...

[Zed999]

I'd salvaged my 6-rib box from the early before I sold it so I fitted that.

Then the brakes - they looked ok but mostly of course they weren't. I had new backing plates in my stash so they went on front and back with new flexible hoses, some new solid pipes, new calipers and pads, new rear drums, cylinders and shoes/springs, new handbrake cables. Just saved the discs which looked almost new - probably the lack of servo.

New CV's and boots, new shocks, new donuts, new track rod ends, new steering coupler, dash top repaired, painted, back together, in and wired - I always push the switches and speedo cluster back through the dash and bag them when I paint. I detach and leave the fuse box dangling in the same way. When I put this one back together 6 years later everything worked. That's a great moment. I quite like tracing wiring faults, sad I know, but I like not having to trace wiring faults more.

I had a pile of headlights - I like the earlier ones with the domed lense but I didn't have a matching pair so I fitted what I had - after market flat front, pattern on the reflector with a blue dot in the middle. I probably took them off the mango green bus in disgust in an earlier life!

Windows in, new seals, new door seals and adjustment, louvre cleaned up.
Wheels prepped and powder coated plus 5 new van rated tyres. Damn, we're still on the shell! Painted is halfway I think.

Oil cooler under the van, Empi in line oil thermostat, sandwhich plate... Fit a large belly pan it was missing and the front one.

Build up the cab doors - how could I forget, with new winder handles, chrome bits new green panels and opening 1/4lights.

Fit bumpers (fenders - I thought they were guitars?), new lenses and seals all round, number plate light, radio aerial, number plates...it goes on and on.

[Zed999]

I painted the pop top GRP base, replaced the timber fitting frame and having previous weld repaired the roof hole that must have been cut out with tin snips I could refit the pop top. As I said earlier I got really lucky, it's a type with a concertina bellows. These were £500+ in the UK 15 years ago and the person who made them now refuses to make any more as they are too time consuming even at that price. Mine had been replaced and was just a bit dirty. The rest of it had been repaired too, they have a flimsy aluminium frame that is always broken and a large aluminium sheet centre panel (the whole roof) held in place with a seal like a window seal. Hellish and costly to renovate. Maybe that's part of why they cut corners underneath?
I fitted a fiamma awning on the side too. I don't need a full awning and it's another thing out of the van that doesn't have to be packed away wet then got back out and aired and all that.

I had to butcher some T3 brackets, these awning don't fit very well on T2's so they don't make brakets.

It fits quite snug to the pop top.

Also out of the van in the engine compartment, by removing the tyre well I fitted an intelligent 10A charger, a big leisure battery in a new tray and an eberspacher heater with a solar controller on the other side of the bay and glued a 100W panel to the roof.
Inside there's 1 240V socket and the fuses and trips are under the bed. More interior later.

[MorkC68]

Phils bus is still going strong, he's just done some tlc here and there, I'll see him at Dubfreeze in February.

I did notice Dean Butlers bus, he's not been around for a fair few years, wonder what happened to him. He was a good lad, hope he and his family are keeping well!
_________________
Major; 1977 Westfalia Campmobile
- Subaru EJ20
- Koni Classic adjustable dampers & Empi Heavy Duty Anti Roll Bar
- 180W Solar System

My blog: https://twolatebays.wordpress.com/

[Zed999]

I haven't heard from Dean for a year or two, he was busy with young growing family. I replaced his front panel, front arches, sills...then tried to match his metallic silver. No chance! That's why the whole bus got painted and the chance for a colour change taken. It had lasted 10+ years after being carved from filler by some chancers under the railway arches in London.

There's a thing there about under the arches - another under the arches bunch made him an engine. It conked out, they gave him another under warrenty and within a few hundred miles it was billowing smoke - that's what happens when you fit both clips in the same end of a piston pin.

Strange "honing"? I guess a sheet of 40 grit but where's the x pattern! I won't name them but these guys are the UK Gex on a smaller scale. Really, they are where you go when needing a replacement engine is the last straw and you want to sell your bus with "rebuilt engine under warrenty", you don't buy these to drive!

To be fair their warranty is good, they don't quibble much and if you can drive there they'll do the swap for another one in an hour, pretty amazing. If you say oil is peeing out and you have a ferry to catch in the morning they will say drive it here, if it seizes we'll come and get you, we'll get you on the ferry, which they do. The boss hand delivered (80 miles each way) a replacement engine to me in his BMW. They've been going for decades and have obviously honed a business model - slap any old thing together - most people here do 1500 miles a year - 9/10 engines will make it. I had one that a piston kissed the head when it warmed up. This I KNEW, I have seen it before. They took it back and sold it to someone else without doing a thing to it, he told me they'd subsequently been to Scotland and back, 1,000 miles. I wonder how long an engine can last like this.

[MorkC68]

^ that looks messy.

I vaguely recall the post on tlb where you mentioned the motor in the BMW, it was a while back mind.

That motor I built still goes well, its just getting ready for a full service, the valves are a bit clattery but aside of that its okay. I'll sort it when I get some spare time!
_________________
Major; 1977 Westfalia Campmobile
- Subaru EJ20
- Koni Classic adjustable dampers & Empi Heavy Duty Anti Roll Bar
- 180W Solar System

My blog: https://twolatebays.wordpress.com/

[Zed999]

Interior. Comfort and practicality this time!
I covered the floor with the minimum thickness ply to level it, then a sheet of 1/8th ply and linoleum (now called Marmoleum here) the real deal, hessian and linseed with a crazy pattern. It's very hard wearing and resistant. My ex put a frying pan down on some cheap flooring and melted it. Since then I've used this stuff. I bought some ali profile for the edge. I stuck heavy acoustic pads until I ran out of it then a layer of 10mm sealed foam (can't remember the proper name for it).

Not everyone's taste.

New rubber arch matts and back in with cleaned up floor mats and painted heater vent - another reason to keep the floor thin.

This bus came with grey velour Ford seats which went in the skip. I fitted late runners for drivers seat, cut out the passenger side bulkhead, fitted a swivel and did a deal for a pair of late original seats which are a bit tatty but more than serviceable. I still haven't sorted those and probably won't, I tend to ruin upholstery. Otherwise the cab is in general stock, I like a stock cab.

I'll get to the furniture...

Cup holder from a Golf...

The dash had been clean a month earlier.

[Zed999]

Headlining next, it did have fabric but it was hideous Devon padded in the rear and the front wasn't great so that all got thrown away, the headlining fixings removed from the shell and replaced with home made panels, lights and a rear top locker. Router frenzy again...

Devon, on pain of death, were forced to fit these strengthening plates in the rear. I think other converters also had to fit them or maybe VW lashed them on?

Hideous! And they play havoc with the headlining. I know I shouldn't but I chopped it off. Looks like I at least had the foresight to remove this and the headlining fixings before paint. Phew.

I tried to keep this but in the end it went with the paint.

Ply is good enough for westfalia? Good enough for me too. I must have had some MDF ones to use as a router template. Probably.

Quite a bit of wiring, more than the photo shows, was routed along here...