1970 Bay (Outlaw-ish)

[markm]

Fantastic Rich, I'm sure this issuing to be some special bus when its finished.

[KS]

Watching with interest... No idea where the £12K+ for a Subaru conversion came from, and a 911 engine conversion is actually pretty straight forward. But the suggested spec of the engine looks fine, although I wouldn't run 48IDAs on a Camper used for, well, camping and long trips. I'd personally go with EFI these days (there are some good set-ups around now, specifically aimed at the VW engine) - or 45mm Dell'Orto DRLAs, if you can find some. As I'm sure Jim will tell you, cooling is everything on a Type 2 - I ran a big 21-row Serck cooler on my 1971 camper racecar tow wagon, along with the factory offset 'dog-house' cooler. Keep compression ratio to a sensible level - head temps can get pretty high. You'll have fun scaring other drivers on the motorway who'll all assume you're going to be in their way on the hills!

[Bootsy]

He's worth listening to this KS fella when it comes to VW Engines. Even wrote a book!

[murph2309]

Watching with interest... No idea where the £12K+ for a Subaru conversion came from, and a 911 engine conversion is actually pretty straight forward. But the suggested spec of the engine looks fine, although I wouldn't run 48IDAs on a Camper used for, well, camping and long trips. I'd personally go with EFI these days (there are some good set-ups around now, specifically aimed at the VW engine) - or 45mm Dell'Orto DRLAs, if you can find some. As I'm sure Jim will tell you, cooling is everything on a Type 2 - I ran a big 21-row Serck cooler on my 1971 camper racecar tow wagon, along with the factory offset 'dog-house' cooler. Keep compression ratio to a sensible level - head temps can get pretty high. You'll have fun scaring other drivers on the motorway who'll all assume you're going to be in their way on the hills!

Thanks Keith - I've checked with James - we're going Weber 44 IDFs (will edit the post...) I might go for EFI somewhere down the line, but could do with some advice on this - will PM you.

And for cooling we're going to use an additional external cooler from Concept Racing - a really lovely unit that sits underneath the van and has a built-in fan too. Looks like this....



Thanks for all the other advice too - this is whole new world for me and I'm entering it with some trepidation - so many people know so much more than me.....I also note that TSR will do full-on Subaru conversions for around £5.5 - £7.5k....so I was off there too....

[Darren65]

Bop at Concept Racing is a Porsche man too; he's great friends with Paul Howells who brought him on one of our Welsh trips.......amazing bloke and an incredibly gifted fabricator. He's currently building an air cooled 996!

I asked him to fabricate a fuel tank for my AZU!

[murph2309]

Ha! Small world then.... And it was the quality of the fab that I really liked too, it looks beautifully engineered and made.

[murph2309]

So - onto the main partners, the people around whom the bus would be built. James recommended a company called Johnson Autoworks, Based in Wymeswold Leics. They specialise in T2s and can do metalwork, paint, running gear, suspension and have partners to do cabinetry and interiors. Excellent. And on talking to Steve who owns it, quickly established the rapport that's so important when you're doing a project together - especially at a distance.

I'm about a 8 months into this build now and Steve and his team have been and are brilliant to work with. And he has a good eye for what's 'right' and has saved me from my 'brilliant' ideas (not) like wanting a shabby chic faded beach hut interior... yes I really was considering that.... more on that later.

I finally got to see the bus May '17, at Nick Fuljames' place, picking up my SC for Spa. And straight off the plane from Singapore and totally jet-lagged, I had my first cup of tea in the bus. It was rank in there



But cool. The bus has vibes. And a bit of an outlaw history.... in the glove box had a load of papers in it - including an arrest warrant, unpaid IRS bills and a bullet....!





But for now, we had to get the bus to Johnson's and see what we really had.





Love this badge and its flaws. We're going to put this back on, just as it is...











Looks like it hadn't done too many miles, but they did look like they'd been quite hard ones....

[murph2309]

But before we got too excited about the general state, we had to have a look underneath to see if all was as it had appeared in the photos... and for a sight unseen purchase, I really lucked out - untouched, no repairs, very little rust and even had a lot of the original paint under there....











So - overall, a tired but solid bus. Some dents, knocks, a big hole in the battery tray, a bit of rust on on of the door bottoms and some on the cab floor and cargo area.

But frankly, in seriously good shape - Steve reckons it's one of the best he's seen for a long time, and so a perfect base. Excellent.

[Bootsy]

Great base. Steve is the guy with the Orange Crew Crab on Foosh in the current issue of VoWo Camper Mag?

[murph2309]

Yes he is - apparently it took a trophy @ Volks World Show....

[sladey]

Cool stuff Rich - keep it coming!

I love that VW badge as well

[impmad2000]

Cool stuff Rich - keep it coming!

I love that VW badge as well

Great stuff Rich, and Wymeswold is very familiar to me. Used to run a kite club on the old airfield.... Some DDKers even joined me there once. Sadly the kite club is now closed

[DustyM]

Enjoying this. The first garage I worked at when leaving school one of the owners had a type 2 with a 3.0SC engine in the back, it was a hoot.

[murph2309]

So now for the tear-down. Everything off and out. Engine, gearbox, running gear, wiring loom, and that lovely, lovely interior....

You can also see that we've put a new engine lid on there - one of the things that I've noticed between a Porsche resto and a VW one is the cost of the parts.... it's really significant, like about half the cost often-times - this also goes for NOS stuff like lenses and things - I paid (5 years ago) $200 A CORNER for NOS lenses on the targa - who knows how much they'd be now - but a NOS set for this one? Less than $100 per lens. Still stupid for a titchy bit of plastic, but there you go.

Anyway, point of that was that it was cheaper to buy a new engine lid rather than pay the number of hours it would take to refab the old.

We're also not going to use this engine at all on the bus, but I'm going to keep it. It's worth chuff-all, but it is the original (we think) and in years to come, maybe I'll build it up with Joel and we'll put it in something else. Always fancied a beach buggy. Or maybe another bug. Or a sand-rail.....

But I digress.

























And as we got properly into the bus, the remarkable condition continued to impress. Lucky, lucky, lucky...

[murph2309]

M-Plate......

So each bus that was made has what's known as an M-plate. The M of which apparently stands for Mehrausstattung. Whatever that means. Never did get German at school.

What it contains though is a huge amount of information about the date of build, options, first destination and paint codes.

This is mine



And what it tells me is:



I like having that much info - especially as there's no history with the bus at all (apart from circumstantial evidence of warrants, unpaid bills, bullets and other nefarious activities it was involved in - why for example would anyone want cigarette papers in the bus.....? )

And its great it's a genuine Westy, the destination of USA East suggests it's spent it's entire life largely around the area I got it from. And that it's just over 48 years old.

Also good to get the paint code too.

So what with the tear-down and the M-codes, I was starting to get a good feel for the bus - and how we would start thinking about putting it together.

But before getting ahead of ourselves, first thing was to get a solid shell and get rid of all the rust.