We Need to Drive it Where?

It has come time for our bus to be legal.  From the looks of things it hasn't been registered since between 1996-1999, but that's about to change.  Armed with the Utah title, bill of sale and a wad of cash we stroll into the court house on a mission.  The title clerk knocks us down a few rungs when she informs us that in order to get the title transferred to Wyoming a VIN inspection needs to be performed at the police station. This police station is inconveniently not located in front of our house and requires us to drive the bus there.  Drive?! And not just down the block, but on real roads!  This was going to be quite the feat.

The next day we arrive home on our lunch hour and cautiously get in the bus, realize that the seat belts are currently of no use and start her up.  Miraculously, between the squealing of miss-aligned front tires and the grinding of trying to find the evasive gears, we make it the mile to the downtown police station.  The officer's expression was priceless as he walked out of the station and caught a glimpse of our yellow beauty.  He remained stern and made no comment, but a look was worth a thousands in this case.  He confirmed the VIN matched the title and sent us on our way.

After a few more lines, forms and signatures at the courthouse we were officially co-owners of a shiny new 1973 VW Westfaila Campmobile.  Maybe those adjectives are a bit too flowery for our new baby, but sometimes it's a face only a mother and father can love...rust spots, squealy tires and all.

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Surprise...It's Leaking!

If you have read the previous posts and looked through the pictures, it should come as no surprise to you that our VW bus was not watertight. The driver side of our bus came from the factory with a rear vent window that initially seemed like it was just jammed in a slightly open position.

After getting the bus home, closing the window and protecting the interior from further water damage was at the top of the to-do list (three plus years of sitting in a field with an open window had badly stained the wood paneling next to the fold out bed).

The Odyssey:

A check of the weather forecast revealed that we were in for a unseasonably wet week so, I headed outside armed with a screwdriver convinced that this was going to be an easy fix (oh the naivety of first time bus owners). It took a matter of peeling back the vent window's weather seal to reveal the cause of the frozen window. The entire upper part of the frame was rotten from years of leaking.

Well, I will just order a new one and we will have it fixed by the end of the week, I thought to myself. So, to BusDepot.com I went. Nothing. Ok, surely WolfsbergWest.com will have it, I reassured myself. Nothing. This continued until I exhausted the list of VW bus part websites. With hope dwindling and thoughts of what did we get ourselves into racing through my head, I checked the last place I could think of.

TheSamba.com, for any other VW newbies, is the holy grail of VW information. Here I began to find out that I was not the only one that was trouble finding a driver side rear vent window for a VW bus. In fact, the rear vent window is such a sought after item that there are several forums solely dedicated to hunting them down. Here is a summary of my research: Good luck finding one. With my tail tucked between my legs, I sulked back outside to cover the window with plastic wrap and duct tape.

The next day, I was telling my dad (the person that taught me everything I know about cars) how I had struck out in my attempt to locate a vent window. In typical dad fashion he began to tell me a story of a time that he helped one of his buddies restore a VW bug and that they had found the hard-to-find parts in Fort Collins from a guy named Al.

Bria and I, got to Fort Collins as fast as we could.  We tracked down Al and he proceeded to tell us that he had sold all of his VW parts long ago, but pointed us in the direction of VRBA parts just down the street. The place was closed on Sundays so the search would have to wait until Monday.

Luckily, when I called on Monday, the guy that answered the phone knew exactly what I was looking for and headed into is parts yard to pull the window for me for $75. Finally, the bus would be watertight. If you are reading this because you are looking for a rear vent window for your bus, give this guy a call. You can find his number on his website www.vrbaparts.com.

The Installation:

The driver side rear vent window is a very simple design making removal very simple. Removing the rest of the rear window is unnecessary to replace the vent window. There are two tabs on the inside of the frame that keep the vent window frame in place. From the inside of the bus, use a screwdriver to peel back the weather stripping and reveal the tabs. Next, bend the tabs back and simply push the vent window out.  If there's any rust on the body metal after the window is removed spray a quick coat of rust encapsulating paint before you put the new one in.

The installation is just as simple with one caveat. Apply petroleum jelly (thanks to the nice folks at theSamba.com, we now know that petroleum jelly eats rubber so use dish soap) to the weather stripping before attempting to re-install the window.

Once the window is in, simply bend the tabs back in place and voilà, you have a nice watertight window.

A Little Dirt Never Hurt Anyone

Cleaning is one of my least favorite things to do in life.  People who work with in a 500 foot vicinity of my desk can attest to that fact.  Mind you, I'm not a dirty person (I do shower) I just selfishly hate spending my time picking up after myself or others. (I realize it's not one of my better qualities)  Be that as it may, one of the first orders of business on this new acquisition of ours was a deep clean.

The bus (from here on out known as she - according to some she's temperamental like some females who are clearly not me) had been sitting, unloved somewhere in Utah for the past 3+ years.  Seems like the last time she was registered was in 1999, so more emphasis on the + part of those years.  I was expecting bugs, roadkill and other unmentionables to be stuffed in every nook and cranny, so we prepared ourselves.

After a trip to the dollar store to stock up on any and every bargain priced cleaning supply they had, we ventured in.  To my surprise it wasn't as bad as I was expecting!  No bugs, no nested creatures in the cushion foam and no STD filled used condoms (although the germs could still be lurking).

A few hours of hard scouring, scrubbing and a healthy dose of the Tom Petty station on Pandora found our bus much closer to shiny then it was before.  I would show you an after picture, but I'm not sure you would really notice a difference (dirt and rust all look the same in pictures, right?)  But nonetheless I feel much less icky sitting in the bus now then I did before and that is what I call progress.

Utah Bound

Bidding is so easy, really just the click of the mouse. Such a big commitment in one tiny finger motion.  I clicked and then picked up the phone, "Jason, I bid on a bus."

We had been talking about investing in a fixer-upper VW Westfalia Campmobile for a few months, but hadn't found the right one.  How could anything be more right then an email from eBay in my inbox stating that one of our watched items had been re-listed.  Sold.  Apparently we were Salt Lake City bound and one more vehicle heavy - the total now being 4, in addition to the 2010 Tundra, 2007 Mini and 1968 Mustang.   

        

The 6.5 hour drive was long, but made a little shorter when we reached Utah and actually had some scenery to take in. (Western Wyoming isn't the most attractive road trip route, in case you were thinking of taking a drive.) Mid-afternoon we reached an unmarked store front which matched the address on the PayPal invoice. (Strange?)  We were let in and discovered that it was a buzzing office attached to a warehouse which appeared to house tons of items for sale on eBay and similar sites.

Five guys pushing, two wooden boards and 30 mins later our new-to-us bus was loaded onto the trailer. It begrudgingly started up which was a good sign, although it sounded like the engine had definitely seen better days.  I kept pointing out it's potential to Jason, secretly hoping that he wasn't hating me for my semi-impulsive bidding.   Come to find out, 10 minutes later, he wasn't hating me for my bidding, but he was hating my choice of a hotel smack in the center of downtown Salt Lake City.  After we de-stressed a bit from towing our new "toaster on wheels" through the unfamiliar city blocks (more him then me since I was just the backseat driver) we settled in for the night and tried to forget that we had to pull this thing out of the deep valley that is Salt Lake the following day.  After 2 hours of searching we finally found a restaurant that had a bottle of wine to serve us after our long day. (We're not Mormon, give us some booze!)

The next day after 8 hours of scenery-less driving back through Where's the Next Town Wyoming we found ourselves home safe, plus one relatively unattractive vehicle (it has potential!) and hoping that the neighbors were going to have mercy on our new project that has to be parked outside the house.

What did we get ourselves into?  Hopefully by next summer the potential I saw on eBay will be realized in the form of a beautifully restored white and grey 1973 VW Westfalia Campmobile with a kick-ass HGTV'd interior.  Wish us luck!