Aluminium Profile Added to Door Step

Things are slowly coming together. In June I also added an aluminium profile to the edge of the floor plate at the sliding door. Apparently called a stair nosing (German: Trittstufenleiste or Kantenschutzschiene). Sealed against the floor plate and the car with acid-free silicone. The entrance now looks complete already.

Sandwhich of insulation mat and floor plate before the aluminium profile was added.

Now with aluminium profile in place, and sealed with acid-free silicone.

First Long Ride on the Autobahn

We finally managed to get Taiga Lily out for her first longer ride on the Autobahn. High time as, for one reason or the other, the new engine, already delivered and installed in January 2011, was not really heavily used since then. It urgently needed to be driven in on a longer trip where it could warm up and run for several hours. So last weekend the whole young family plus uncle Matti plus Leon dog wonder hopped on the bus and we went the 470 km from Berlin to Marburg to give the grandparents a chance to see our baby daughter’s latest developments. She just turned 9 months a week before.
I was a bit worried that some new trouble could show up, so we deliberately did not start on Friday evening but waited till Saturday morning. This way any break down could at least be dealt with in day light. But all went well, and after 7-8 hours and a mostly rainy trip with several coffee breaks and dog walking stops we arrived in Marburg in the late afternoon. To drive the new engine in, we kept accelerating slowly from 80 km/h to 110 or 115 km/h and then slowly decelerated again back down to 80 km/h. Must have been quite weird for anyone driving behind us, but then nobody drives that slowly anymore nowadays. The night before I had finally installed a power point under the dashboard so that we could run a smart phone with a GPS based speedo app. Turned out the old VW speedometer is almost correct, generally only 2 to 2.5 km/h faster than the GPS-derived speed.

Tank stop at Königslutter, just after the former inner-German border.

Checking the speedo with a GPS app.

Recovering in the sun in Marburg.

Stopover at a petrol station on the way back, near Magdeburg.

Seeing that the ride would take so long, we had taken the following Monday off. So after a wonderful and very sunny family weekend we started the long way back on Monday afternoon. Again accelerating and decelerating all the way, this time occasionally pulling her up to 120 km/h. The way back was fantastic summer weather all the way. Not ideal because so far none of the windows in the back can be opened. Before any future longer trip in summer I need to build in a louvered window. I bought one second hand already some time ago for the window opposite the sliding door. Better even to also add a sliding window in the back behind the sliding door. Petrol consumption was at 12.5 l/100km. I understand this is ok for this old engine (70 h.p. 2000 ccm CJ motor). With the additional oil cooler, the engine temperature usually stayed at a friendly 80 and 100°C and never went beyond 105°C. At the end of the trip it actually felt already as if the engine was running more willingly and smoothly up from 80 to 120 km/h, so this whole driving-her-in business may have already worked. Time from 80 to 120 km/h was 70 sec, with relaxed acceleration to treat the new old engine gently. I am happy that all went so well.

Wax-Sealed, At Last

Last November I had to rush things to get Taiga Lily road worthy and registered as a historic vehicle so that I could legally drive her within downtown Berlin. Now I have started to fix some of the quick solutions in a more permanent way. One of them was the overall wax sealing of all internal cavities. I am now part-time back at work, part-time baby-sitting our now eight-month-old daughter. No chance to get more time intensive things done quickly on my own, so I got the wax sealing done by Beetle Clinic, an air-cooled Volkswagen garage in Berlin. To reduce costs, I did all the disassembling of the car myself on the first weekend of May: All wall panels, door panels and underlying insulations mats went out again and I delivered a mostly naked Taiga Lily to the garage. I got her back a week later and about 10 kg of Mike Sanders wax heavier in mid-May. This rust prevention grease is heated up before application and then crawls into every corner of the cavities. Since mid-May I try to find some time on the weekends to put her back together again. More of this later. It is a bit of a shame that with wax sealing one spends quite some time and money, but afterwards everything looks just like before. On the bright side, this should keep the rust in check, or from developing at all, for the next couple of years. Below some shots of the excess wax dribbling from the car. More photos of the fully re-assembled and further improved interior hopefully soon on this channel.

All side panels and back bench out again for wax sealing. Yellow stuff in back door is sealing wax I had applied in August 2010.

Excess wax running out of opening at lower end of B-pillar.

Lower end of the sliding door.

Nasty surprise: The left side skirt leaked sealing wax – apparently welded at some time in the past and not properly sealed to the interior. Now the hot wax found its way out. Needs to be fixed in the future.

The M-Plate decoded: Taiga Lily’s Birth Certificate

Our sage green beauty…

... and some sage green sage on our balcony.

When we bought Taiga Lily in 2010, she did not come with much history. The few facts came from the German registration papers: First registered in Berlin on June 1976, five previous owners, all from Berlin, which kept her on the road from 1976 to 2003, when she was de-registered and put aside. A friend bought her in about 2007, got a few rusty patches welded and gave her a new paint job, but left her semi disassembled in storage. A new start in 2010 when we bought her and slowly put her together again – back on the road since 2011. Now it took me 17 years of driving VW buses to realize that there is another little treasure box of information, hidden in the car in the form of a credit-card sized metal plate, the M-Plate. This here is Taiga Lily’s M-Plate, riveted to the metal wall behind the driver seat:

Taiga Lily to Meet her New Husband, ahem, Engine

After one week of hard work on the bus in an old industry hall which was heated but still pretty cold in this Berlin winter, Taiga Lily was picked up again today and brought back to the garage to meet her new engine. For a new car, this step is actually called ‘the wedding’ in German.

Buses under Repair

Both buses in the workshop at Berlin Ostkreuz. Aren’t T2s just the best old buses ever?

And Here She is: Taiga Lily!

Today, the new bus was delivered to a hall in East Berlin where I will work on her for the next few weeks. I actually forgot to take photos when we bought her. So here she is – Taiga Lily!

… with her proud owner.