Hi all, I thought I will let you know about my 1979 bay window project. Honestly I am completely new to air cooled VW’s and the last 12 months have been a massive learning exercise. I have plenty of experience of classic and modern cars that have had to work on over the years but this VW is something else! So to start the story. My wife has wanted a VW Baywindow for some years and we made the decision to try and find a bit of a project as completed finished cars are very expensive as most of you guys will know and they are not getting any cheaper. We had a fixed budget and we had looked at one other before we found this one. It had the benefit of having been converted with the westfalia front hinge roof at some point and had a continental interior fitted. It was out of MOT for about 3 years and had what I know now as the usual baywindow rot problem. It drove OK and had most of the bits in it to get going again as the previous owner had planned to complete the work himself and had bout various panels etc. Anyway there are some photos of what it was like as we picked it up.
So 1st job was to get it back to a unit that I had hired to assess what level of work was required. Because it had no current MOT and because they are quite heavy required paying a truck to move the van. Once dropped off a quick drive up a private lane was in order just for fun and to prove to myself that it was Ok mechanically. Typically when it was dropped off it was raining quite heavily and a few minutes of cursing was caused when I struggled to find reverse only to discover that where reverse was marked on the gear knob v’s what it shows in the van was different. However it did drive OK and it was then into the unit for a real look. Job I knew it needed were both steps replacing, rear battery tray, 1 outrigger/jacking point and both lower front arch areas that had rotted out. However when digging deeper it needed another outrigger to be completely replaced and one outrigger repaired. And in addition there was no battery tray present any more.
Good luck with the resto. Is it deffo a 79, looks like it's got a few earlier parts fitted such as the sliding door.
Best of luck with the resto and keep the pictures coming We like lots of pictures Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I know I have been a bit quiet as of late, but I have done plenty of little jobs over the last few months. The problem is that I have a MK1 Escort that I rally and that car can absorb huge amounts of time when getting ready for, or when fixing after a rally, but I have blocked booked (in my head) the next 3 months to crack on with the camper. I will stick some photos up of what I have done so far ASAP.
So the original battery tray had completely rotted away. There for the only option was to weld in a new one and replace the rear corner at the same time.
I found some rot in the corner off one off the chassis rails so had to make up a fresh metal piece to weld into it.
Anyway - while moving the van around the unit I noticed a strange hissing sound around the back of it like water boiling of something. Well it turned out that there was definitely a liquid evaporating of the exhaust manifolds. You guessed it - petrol! It looked like the rubber pipe that connects into the hard pipe had fractured near the end. After a little bit of investigation it seams that petrol, VW T2's, leaks and fires seam very very common. So I hopefully will take some time soon to renew all the rubber pipes to try and eliminate this problem in the future.
You may find this of interest http://m.vwaircooledworks.co.uk/Fuel-Hose-Safety-Campaign.html And there are many threads on this forum and others about the problem Cheers A
