64 VW Double-Door camper bus
Our camping rig. This is the one we take camping.
Pictures from the 2012 Burgermeet at Burger Master at U-village courtesy of Shane with Dub-box.
In addition to the restoration I have converted a 1776 engine to run Megasquirt and has been installed in the bus. Megasquirt is an open-source fuel injection system that I have pieced together over the past several months even soldering the circuit board together. Next Megasquirt I do I will just buy one of the pre-assembled kits because they just aren't that much more money...
This started as a 1964 VW doubledoor ez-camper conversion.
Modifications include:
911 Porsche front brakes
Ball joint front suspension with adjustable Koni shocks
Power brakes using 70's bus vacuum booster
IRS rear suspension with CB disk brakes
75-79 fuel injected 17 gallon tank
Custom oil cooler mounted above the transaxle
Westy bed and cabinet
Three point retractable seat belts front and back
Megasquirt fuel injection
Dual batteries
Custom front over-rider made out of several old over-riders
Custom rear tire carrier
Webasto Diesel heater mounted in the small cavity under the driver's seat
Suspension raised about 1.5"
930 CV joints to deal with the high angle
Pictures of before the restoration process...
Here we are taking the van up some tractor trails.
Here it is prior to restoration. The rust around the top doesn't look to bad until I start scraping off paint...
Pictures of the rust repair process...
The roof right above the rain gutter was all rusted out. I cut many sections out and replaced them with new metal. At the time I was doing this no one was making these sections so I had to make my own.
Sections both above and below the rain gutter above the back hatch needed replaced as well due to rust.
The front passenger floor was rusted out so it needed to be replaced.
Here is the funky green panel trimmed and preped to be welded in.
Here it is looking from the driver side after being welded in.
Passenger side rocker was rusted out... The rear passenger side cargo door was also rusted far to much to fix so it was replaced with a door from another bus.
So it got replaced as well... Only the outer needed to replaced. The inner rocker was still very solid. Used funky green panels for this as well. They really do fit nice.
Floor just inside the passenger rocker was also all rusted out so it also got replaced.
I installed this one by drilling a ton of holes and doing a bunch of plug welds.
Area above the passenger rear wheel was all messed up and so I replaced it... Didn't find out this was that bad until it got back from the media blaster.
Rear tire carrier...
I decided I didn't like any of the standard places to store the spare tire and figured the best place for it was hanging off the back. After a bunch of research I couldn't find anything available so I had to make my own. Here is the roughed in spare tire carrier. It started as a Toyota 4Runner piece but I cut it all apart and reworked it to fit the bus.
You can see the brackets that fit against the body had to be completely redone using 3/16 plate. I got it to shape with a bunch of small cuts and liberal use of a 5 lb sledge hammer.
Bracket on the rear hatch was drastically modified.
Three point belt install...
I started by cutting a hole below where the mount would be so I could slide the mounting plate up inside the B pillar. I used the mounting plate as a guide to drill a whole for the bolt and 4 plug welds to hold it in place.
I slid the plate up in the b pillar and used a bolt to hold it in place while I welded the plugs I had drilled. The plugs hold the plate in place but the real holding power is the bolt itself.
Here it is welded in place and the welds ground down ready for body work and paint
Here it is with the belt mounted in place to test it out.
Time for paint...
After all the rust repair it went to the media/sand blaster to get the many layers of old paint removed. The area above the rear fender looked ok prior to media blast but when all the paint and old bondo was removed it was clear that it needed cut out and replaced as seen in the rust repair section above.
It is now at the body shop getting prepped for paint. Here are a couple of pictures of that process.
Work done since the restoration...
During the main restoration I didn't touch the underside of the bus as it was pretty solid already and I could do it later. The first big project was the front end. It was completely disassembled, cleaned, sanded and painted with por-15. At the same time the beam was replaced with a ball joint until with new ball joints and a brake booster with adjustable proportioning valve was installed. Below is a picture that doesn't do justice to how clean and nice it is under there. There are plenty of runs in the paint as this was done for longevity and not for mirror displays at car shows.
Here is stuff from prior to the restoration
Here are the bracket I had made to install the 911 front brakes. I made templates out of plywood and had
Jerry at NWCR make them out of 1/2 plate.
Here it is with the 911 hub rotor and caliper. I also had to get a space made to fit into the 911 hub so the
bearings lines up on the spindle.
Here is the IRS with CB performance bug disk brake kit installed.
Here is the control arm bracket from the Wolfgang IRS kit. It also shows the bracket
I made to get all the brake lines to work.
Here you can see the whole IRS setup minus the passenger axle. I used thing
stubs axles and drive flanges so I could use bus CV joints. This was necessary
since I am keeping the van at stock height. Bug CV joints can't deal with the angle
required to keep the bus at stock height.
Here is the oil cooler I built that mounts above the transmission. The fan pulls air
through the cooler when the oil reaches temperature.
TV commercial for RV show staring...
It is famous... The above picture is from the TV commercial shoot that it was in for an RV show.