My 72 Deluxe Microbus

Howdy All

Just wanted to post a few pics of progress on our bus. Bought it about four months ago and plan to have it ready for the 3,000km Volks Enthusiasts trip called Ratex up to the Simpson Desert in a months time. So a pretty quick turnaround for someone who has never done a resto.

This pic was taken the day before I bought her. Having never owned a VW I took a mate who told me it was a bit over priced at $4,000 but I have been looking for a lowlight and reckoned it wasn't too bad. My reasoning was if I was doing a full resto and keeping the car then a grand here or there wasn't going to be the end of the world.

I have since learned it is the "cross-over" with disc brake front end and larger, late model style engine bay. The van was a runner but had no glass and rusty cab floor both sides. I honestly originally hoped to spend five or six grand and get her on the road however as you would know the scope of the project has blown out of all proportion and the van went on to spend 250 hours in panel and paint at our families panel shop. Needless to say, after that I found myself getting more and more fussy over how things looked.

Then I decided I would remove the motor to paint the engine bay and powder coat the tinware. Anyway. It grew legs and is looking pretty cool.

I chose a late 60's beetle colour called Bahama Blue for the bottom half. I saw a pic of another early bay with that scheme and I fell in love with it. The top is Blauweiss which is a bay window colour. Both colour codes I found on The Samba website paint code pages.

Anyway the scope grew and the dash came out. I had seen coloured dash's and they looked good but I wanted the ninterior colur to be the same so the dash was painted in the off-white. Then I started to fit all new lights, door seals, quarter vents and door glass seals and the car went to the trimmers.

I have a rock and roll bed being fitted to the rear and the whole car is being done in a fawn vinyl with a "factoryish" looking horizontal pleat in the front seats that follows through to the rear.

Here is a short video of progress to date. In addition to the video the front and rear seats are now in. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swmuP8eRkmw

Other goodies include six original 14" rims with white walls.

Ceramic coated headers and exhaust plus a dual stage progressive carby.

Original Deluxe belt line trim. Sanded then polished to within an inch of their lives.

And of course obligatory sub-woofer and amp hooked up to a 7" in dash digital DVD player with Digital TV receiver.

Fitment of Rock'n'Roll bed.

It is now only four weeks until Ratex and I have some work to do on the running gear yet.

So stay tuned for Part 2.