The Bus Project Begins!

Well, as the story goes, there are two wonderful days in the life of every restoration project. The day you tow it home, and the day of the first ride once it is completed (my version anyway!) 7-August- 2009 was the bring-it-home day for my bus. I don’t really know what possessed me to buy a bus. I guess I have always wanted one in some form or another. My first car was a 1968 Beetle. I had it for over 100,000 miles and ten years or so. You learn a lot about a car in that amount of time. What I learned most of all is that I really enjoy working on these crazy quirky vehicles.

As I was headed to go look at the bus, lots of things were running through my head. “Lots of work, Looks like fun, lots of time, really cool, lots of work” etc. By the time I arrived about an hour later, I had pretty much decided I wasn’t going to buy it unless it was really nice. I was not in the mood for a big rust rework project.

Well, it didn’t take too much looking to figure out the bus was structurally sound. There was a bit of surface rust, but there were no holes rusted through. The normal rust spots were sound, the battery box was original and in pretty good shape. The rocker under the slider, the floors under your feet, and even the metal around the front windshield were all very solid. Almost everything was there, it has new tires (still has the blue on the whitewalls!) and the battery is only one year old and holds a charge great. This owner had done a wonderful job of keeping this bus dry. It had obviously been sitting in a barn or garage. The bus has a California RV tag on it from 1970 and it’s a Westphalia conversion with no pop up top. I guess they affectionately call these “Tin top Westies”.
Well after a couple of hours of discussing plans and pricing, the owner was to call me back the next day with his decision. I picked it up the following evening for $1500 and a promise to keep the PO in the loop as I progress through the project.