Hi Everyone , I'm John and I thought it's about time I made my first post. Like all of you I'm the proud owner of a bay. I've always wanted a vw camper since I was a kid and last August I was able to purchase a well loved 1977 Westfalia, which was imported by the previous owner from the USA in 2005. My wife named it Amber, for obvious reasons : Thankfully the previous owner had kept it in really good condition and stored it in a garage. The UK road licence expired shortly after we purchased it, which meant that we had to transfer the registration over to the Isle of Man. Not a problem I thought, but then I remembered that it would be going for one off test! Sorry folks, we don't have an annual MOT test over here... just a really tough one off. So instead of just changing the odd worn part here and there like most people would, I decided to give her a full restoration underneath. 3 months later and with depleted savings she was ready for test. I was so nervous on the day and the examiner could see it too, but thankfully all our hard work had paid off. I especially felt good when all the other examiners came to admire all our hard work. I was well chuffed I'm no mechanic, but I think VW really made these vehicles easy to work on. Plus there are hundreds people out there willing to help with advice just like our very own "Weed" aka Mr R A Stephenson from Weedspeed in the Isle of Man. What that man doesn’t know about VW's and (LR) is not worth knowing. I'd also like to thank everyone else who gave us help and advise during the resto, to name a few: the teams at VW Heritage, JK, Mega Bug, TES and of course you fellow bay owners who use this site. Reading your forums over the past 8 months has been a great help. We've now completed our first 1,000 miles since the resto, which included our second trip to Camper Jam (yes it rained, but that didn't stop us from having a blast) and apart from a few small problems along the way (1) the horn sounding on it's own (2) a drive shaft dropped off the gearbox, oops... it's all been worth it. Now, we long for each weekend so we can enjoy using our beloved camper "Amber". I'll try and get some pictures on soon, but failing that I'll be at Busfest in September, so might see some of you then. Thanks, J http://s1058.photobucket.com/albums/t417/jcstaines/#!cpZZ3QQtppZZ20
