BLAUHAUS: 1984 Adventurewagen refresh

[SnowDaySyncro]

[SnowDaySyncro]

With winter on the way, I got heartbreaking news about my friend Jason, who test drove Blauhaus for me and with whom I had been brainstorming and updating about the project by phone since. His cancer took a serious turn for the worst. The planned road trip to hang and wrench on his Syncro was no longer feasible. He began in-home hospice care, with his wife, kids, dogs, and other family close by. We kept up our usual phone conversations while he could still speak, and a few texts after that. A few days later, he died peacefully. He was an absolutely stand-up guy, a great father, husband, friend, hobbyist, and mechanic, cut down in his mid-40s. Just devastating. His absence will be felt by many for many years to come.

[SnowDaySyncro]

THE GREAT VINYL AND VELOUR HARVEST
The 1984 factory rear seat yielded the six houndstooth velour inserts I needed for the 1990 seat-bed, but the solid light blue velour panels in between were not going to work on account of the armrests and "bolster" panels that were more intricate versus the simpler wider panels in between the inserts for 1990. I decided to just eliminate the solid lighter blue because of that and the fact that I wasn't crazy about that look anyhow. What I planned to do instead is substitute the same solid blue vinyl as the side and front panels, which I like more aesthetically and which actually matches the door panels and other interior panels.

For vinyl, I salvaged what I could from the rear seat, but again the segmented design of the 1984 seat didn't make for large panels. I supplemented my factory blue vinyl reserves from two sources: a circa 1984 Wolfsburg Edition seat-bed, which had different fabric but a solid flap of blue vinyl on the back of the backrest, and a 1984 middle 2/3 bench seat that I spotted in my friend Dale's truck barn.

The bench seat was about as dirty as you might imagine a 40 year old cloth seat in a barn might be. The difference between the exposed and hidden areas of velour were dramatic.

A series of soakings and machine and hand washings made the original rear seat panels look excellent and made the backrest panels from the middle bench look good. The cushion panels, while much improved, came out duller than everything else. The two good panels were enugh to re-do the jump seat, which was the most important part. My tertiary plan to make matching throw pillows from the other two panels can wait until I come across some more fabric. I placed a wanted ad in the classifieds that I'll keep renewing. The good thing is that,s a bonus detail that won't hold up the project. Even the best of the velour panels are visibly faded, which I don't mind at all, because they will match the rest of the matching fabric in the interior and look like they've always belonged there.

[dobryan]

So sorry for the loss of your friend.
_________________
Dave O
'87 Westy w/ 2002 Subaru EJ25 and Peloquin TBD

"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive." Robert Louis Stevenson

MD>Canada>AK>WA>OR>CA>AZ>UT>WY>SD
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=620646

Building a bus for travel in Europe (euroBus)
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=695371

The Western Syncro build
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=746794

[TrashPanda]

[xflyer]

My 2 Cents about your power and gearing with the 16" wheels. Long story shortened: My 84 tintop has a 2.1 motor, basically stock, except for 1.25 rockers, and OG S & S header (stock CAT and muffler) and slightly higher compression ratio. It has a 4.57 R & P as opposed to the stock 4.83. So the ratio is about the same as your 16" wheels with a 4.83. (I'm too lazy to do the math). It runs quite well. Sure it won't go up a 20% grade at 80 MPH, but it gets about 22 MPG average.
_________________
1989 Campmobile, 1984 7 passenger beater Vanagon
Both with cool A/C

[SnowDaySyncro]

While I had collected a decent amount of original vinyl for this project, it was going to be tricky, if not impossible, to replace all of the needed panels in the seat-bed AND the jump seat, let alone the large piece needed to cover the rear bed cushion. I decided to order new vinyl for the rear seat-bed and reuse original vinyl for the jump seat, which would be back-to-back with the front passenger seat, making any mismatch obvious. This would would also leave me enough original vinyl to replace the plain blue velour wing/bolster panels on the front seats so that everything matched. Ideally, I would have visited the upholstery shop in NJ where I used to work to see if they had or could get a good match, but I didn't have the time, and the Connecticut auto upholstery shops I knew have
all closed. Sewfine had Vanagon blue vinyl listed, so I took a chance on their generally good reputation and ordered three yards at $40/yard. It arrived and looked to be close, but not perfect, match. The grain is an excellent match, but the shade of blue is a touch lighter with mottling versus the original stuff. In some light, it's very close, in other light, it's less so. It does look very good with the houndstooth velour and I own it now, so I'm using it!

I started with the rear bed cushion, because it was the largest piece of vinyl and the simplest form by far. I reused the original charcoal carpet bottom panel, so the top and sides can be a single piece with four darted corners and a flap with a strip of Velcro. The '90 had air conditioning, so the cushion had cutouts for the ducts in the rear corners.

I eliminated those cutouts for the non-AC '84, trimming the foam to closely fit the right side with a squared-off left side. The resulting gap to the left side of the cushion is just right for a small cabinet for tools, spares, and fluids. I covered the still-resilient 1990 foam with a layer of headliner to smooth out the cut areas and keep things nice and taut (OE VW upholstery tended towards a looser fit than my preference).

It sewed up nicely and was a good, snug fit. The Velcro closure worked, but I would like to add some snaps in the future to be extra sure.

[SnowDaySyncro]

With the easy cushion done, it was time to get down and dirty (literally) with the rear cushion and backrest upholstery. This required marking out all of the sewn panels, then splitting the seams and using each piece to pattern its replacement. This is an involved process with any upholstery, but this had the added challenges of being dirty and kind of sticky, and easily misshapen.

A disadvantage of tweedy fabrics like this is that they are very stretchy and prone to unraveling, which makes getting an accurate pattern challenging. Also, the backing was coming loose, so the patterning marks needed to be made on the faces in some cases and then transferred to the backs afterwards. The process I developed was to remove a panel, immediately run it through the serger to bind the fabric face and backing together and prevent unraveling, then transfer the final markings to the back.

It was very tedious and slow, and the dirt of thirty years coated every surface I used, including the serger. The catch there was that I couldn't clean them until after they were stabilized, as they would have surely unraveled beyond repair from any cleaning process. They were bad enough with the gentlest handling I could do. One side of the backrest was torn and split, so I mirrored the other side when marking out the new panels. I stripped the cushion and backrest trims off of the jump seat and repeated the process. This seat was much less dirty, which was nice.

[SnowDaySyncro]

Above is an example of the aggressive unraveling that this particular fabric is prone to. The serger worked wonders on everything, though, and with that, it was bath time.

I soaked the newly-serged panels in warm water with Oxi-Clean, and the results were dramatic! The first few batches made a solution of brown filth that looked disturbingly similar to hot mulled apple cider. Many buckets later, the rinse water was clear and I set them out to dry. They looked good as new after that, I was pleasantly surprised at how well that worked. I cleaned my most recently-acquired '84 blue fabric and vinyl at the same time.

[shinyspokes]

Thanks for sharing your upholstery preservation! I am working on acquiring a 1986 passenger van that will need similar attention so I will be following along with your build.
Sorry to read about the loss of your friend, I hope working on the van brings some comfort since it sounds like he made the whole thing possible.

[SnowDaySyncro]

Time to pattern, cut, and do some serious sewing.

I assembled the 7-piece faces of the rear cushion and backrest trims together first, then did the sides and finished off with the listing tapes and sewn edges for the listing wire. The ready-made pre-folded listing tape I recalled using at the upholtery shop way back when was only available in much longer rolls than I would ever use for much more than I wanted to pay. I found some nice Carhartt-looking canvas in the fabric bin, ironed it, cut it into strips, serged the edges, and had nice strong listing tape for free.

[SnowDaySyncro]

The faces sewed together nicely

A couple of weeks passed while I sourced molded black piping (as opposed to the piping that is a strip of vinyl folded and sewn around a core) which I prefer for a bit more rigidity, especially on these Vanagon seats that are more prone than others to wavy sections of piping. I also discovered that Makerspace didn't have any piping feet for their sewing machines, but the instructor brought in a few zipper feet to try out and one of them worked well enough.

[SnowDaySyncro]

The seat foam wasn't bad, but I covered them on the spring side with jute carpet padding and covered the tops with a layer of headliner (not shown, forgot to take pics)

The masonite backing on the backrest was broken next to the release handle, so I splinted that area with a thin plywood backer and glued it back together.

[Abscate]

Watching the progress, and my belated condolences on your loss.
_________________
.ssS!

[SnowDaySyncro]

With the rear set-bed cushion and backrest trims sewn up, I did a litle fine-tuning to the frames, wrapping any spot where vinyl stretched over steel with trunk lining. This give things a better look and feel and reduces the chance of damage from minor impacts.

I measured and marked the centers of the seat frames, foam padding, and trims, so that everything will line up properly when installed in the camper.

Installation went well, everything was pretty taut and smooth. The only slight wrinkling was on the side panels that are against the walls anyway. I'm happy!
I still want to add headrests and I need to make new mounts for latch pins for the backrest, but the rear seat-bed is pretty much done.

[SnowDaySyncro]

Thanks for all of your condolences, by the way. I do, of course, have Jason on my mind as I do this work and it's comforting, if bittersweet.

[SnowDaySyncro]

Blauhaus will make you JUMP! JUMP!

Yes, dear reader, with the rear seat-bed upholstery all set, it was time to tackle the jump seat. This came from the same donor 1990 as said seat-bed. The donor will be retaining its passenger side jump seat, so this seat was originally the driver side one. The seat was reupholstered to 1984 blaue Spezifikation, and its mount will be modified to mirror its soon-to-be-former self.

The process was similar to the other seat trims, with a couple of differences:
-Because this seat will be back-to-back with the original 1984 passenger seat, all vinyl was original 1983/84 material for the best match
-This seat had the traditional VW hair padding on the backrest, which needed more tweaking than the foam on the rear seat-bed.

-Finally, because I couldn't salvage a large enough piece of original vinyl to replicate the single-piece rear panel (top, in gray) I made a three-piece substitute using carpet from the original 1984 rear backrest, flanked by two vinyl panels.

[SnowDaySyncro]

The cushion trim patterned, sewed up, and installed very nicely. Very happy with the results.

The backrest trim was a real challenge to sew. The thick composite back panel did not play nice with the tight curvy upper corners and piping.
I got it together, with some colorful muttering along the way. The backrest trim installation was also the most difficult of all by a significant margin, which made it even more dissappointing when I realized that I was going to have to remove and reinstall it.

If you look closely at these photos, you'll notice that the cloth cushion insert has a nice plump profile, with dips at the side panel listing seams. The backrest insert panel, however, is concave, with no dips at all. The insert is basically stretched between the listing seams with an air gap between the seat trim and the padding. I didn't like how that looked at all, but also was thinking this could put undue stress on the seams, so off it came.
I cut a piece of patterning paper to the width of the cloth insert and plotted the depth of the gap from top to bottom. With the trim removed, I built up the center with layers of headliner to match the topography of my paper template.

Reinstallation showed much improvement. I'm calling that good!

For a finishing touch, I covered the rather scuffed-up bottom panel for the cushion with charcoal trunk carpet. I'm happy with that as well!

[SnowDaySyncro]

With the jump seat looking passably 1984ish, I turned to reversing the 1990 driver's side jump seat bracket to fit the passenger side. Aside from facing the wrong way, it had also been modified by a previous owner with some extra holes, plus two added legs with threaded holes to mount an amplifier.

I lopped these off, leaving one small triangle of the inboard one in place as a gusset rather than grinding away at the inside corner that wasn't going to be modified (the inboard mounting holes are equidistant from the center line of the crossbar).
The outboard mounting tab is offset upwards, so I lopped that off as well. The wedge where the seat latches in place needed to be flipped 180 degrees to work in its new location (sidebar: this really seems like it could have been designed to be symmetrical for both sides of the vehicle). To remove the latch section intact required a cut comprising more than half of the cross-section, leaving only the flat side facing the front seat pedestal intact.

Since this is a pretty important structural piece, I cut some steel angle as an insert to reinforce the area. I drilled some holes to plug weld that in place.
Between those and the MIG beads filling the gaps from the cutoff wheel, I'm confident that it's at least as strong as an original factory part. I jigged up the outboard bracket to its upwards offset based on the mounting holes (which are not centered in their tab for reasons I do not know but it seems arbitrary), and welded everything up, including all of the extra holes that had been added.

Some spa time with a grinder and bead-blasting left it looking almost factory but for that little extra gusset on the now-left inboard side.

It's February and Blauhaus is being stored where welding is not really feasible, so the needed body modifications for this bracket and the floor sockets will have to wait until spring.

[SnowDaySyncro]

All those seats are in a nice neat pile inside the camper, time for a little progress towards actually bolting them in!

Early Vanagons like this '84 differ from late ones in that the early ones have a pair of threaded mounts for the latch posts for the rear seatbacks and the late ones have TWO pairs of threaded mounts, one just like in the above photo and another pair 100something millimeters forward, to accomodate either a fold-down armrest non-bed seat (rearward) or a full-width seat-bed (forward).
Because I don't have access to welding equipment where Blauhaus is now, and also because I don't want to remove more interior if I can avoid it, I'm going to make bolt-on adapters that will bolt to the existing M10-1.5 spot. Additionally, I'll attach the bracket to the recessed cove near the new M10 insert.
I took some measurements and made a profile gauge with cardboard and tape.
Tomorrow I can poke around Makerspace and see what metal scraps will do the trick.