Burgundy bus

Snapshot of a kombi spotted by DrM during his whine tasting campaign last week in Burgundy. Weird paint job, but interesting selfmade front bumper construction. Front indicators neither in the T2a nor T2b position. But rear bumper and air uptake openings in the back are T2b. Looks like someone put quite some work in modifying the front.

New front screen arrived, but not yet in

The new windscreen has arrived. All shiny and beautiful. Laminated safety glass which will not shatter into 1000 small pieces as the old tempered glas did. Made in Finland, delivered first to Boxershop in Bavaria and then shipped to Berlin. Took the Fins eight weeks to make and send it. Tonite we wanted to put it in, and we had it all perfectly prepared: Rubber seal made slippery with silicon spray and lots of liquid soap, a cable around the seal to pull the inner lip over the edge of the window frame. Two guys were pushing the screen from the outside while one was pulling the cable from the inside. The first half worked beautifully. Then the inner lip of the seal somehow ripped off over 20 cm. We had to give up for today and I have to order a new seal. Probably it was a mistake not to go for a new seal from the start.

Changing dashboards

I decided to swap the dashboard, together with oil temperatur gauge and battery voltmeter, from the old bus to the new bus. Will probably also swap the wind screen wiper motor. The dashboard removal allowed to clean the front panels and to have a look at the back of instrument panels. They carry date stamps. With the old bus, it fits to the manufacturing date of the car. For Taiga Lily someone seems to have fitted a 1979 instrument into the 1976 bus.

The old bus without the dasboard.

Dashboard from the old bus.

The main instrument block of Taiga Lily (upper one, VW clock on the left) and of the old bus (with a clock I had added in 1995).

VW Buses in the Movies, Part 2: The Beastie Boys

A new sub genre in this blog: VWs in the movies. Bran Nue Dae made the start. So here comes number 2: Looks like an old T2, hidden in the trailer for the very cool new Beastie Boys video. Enjoy!

And then there were three…

A friend of mine bought another T2b – the orange beauty. The hall slowly fills.

Summer of VW Bus Ads

Summer in Berlin, with an ad campaign starring a beautiful T2b VW Bus. Thanks to Uwe and Matti for the photos!

Back to work again

So, long time no blogging. What happened in the meantime: In mid May Tiger Lily came back from Boxershop, now with a new petrol tank, with a working tank gauge and better adjusted valves. But on the way back and while standing on a trailor, a stone must have hit the wind screen: The tempered safety glass first cracked and a few kilometers later came partly crushing into the driver’s cabin. The new windscreen, now up-to-date laminated safety glass, will take about 6-8 weeks to be made and delivered.
For the rest of May, I had no time to do any further work. In June we cleaned out the remainings of the wind screen and I also took the dash board out one more time, to get rid of some rust that was visible underneath the seal. Now, as one might have expected with a 35 year old car, there was more rust than we had initially thought. Probably the perfect way would have been to cut out the front mask left and right under the windscreen and weld in 2 to 3 cms of a replacement panel.  But at that point I had run out of patience. No more new sub projects. Taiga Lily needs to be back on the road and on a camping site this summer. So I went the faster way, closed the rusty patches with body filler, and yesterday sanded it down to a nice and smooth surface. Next step will be re-spraying it and then getting the windscreen back in.

Sad view...

Rust under the wind screen seal...

… and after treatment with filler and sanding.

Australian Combi Parade!

We are back in Germany and the weather is slowly heading towards summer. Taiga Lily is not yet ready. Boxer-Shop hopes to get the tank exchanged next week. So instead of news on Taiga Lily here are some more snapshots of Australian VW busses. Hope you enjoy!

 

 

Kombi Spotters’ Paradise

Australia is brilliant! Kombis everywhere! You hardly see them anymore on the roads in Germany, and here you drive through downtown Geelong and pass several VW busses on the way. Here is one apparently put aside for a while, with the bull bar to protect from kangaroo collisions:

 

There is wear and tear you would never find in a country with more rain, like this full blown surface rust:

Another kombi, at a local garage specialized on old VWs, with a campervan conversion which seems to be pretty standard in Australia: 

 

 And when you step into the garage there are these pearls – brilliant!

First Camping Weekend (Almost)

Long time no blog entry. What happened in the meantime: The first days of April in Berlin were predicted to be sunny and dry, and we started to get ready for the first camping weekend with the new bus. The interior is far from being ready, but we thought to just throw a mattress in the back and put our camping gear in the annex. This fine plan was ruined by the problem with the tank. A week before Taiga Lily ran well for 300 km around Berlin, but then she stopped three times on the last 1.5 kilometers back to the workshop. Now, on a test drive Thursday night before the camping weekend, she first drove smoothly, for most part of a round around the block. Then on the last 200 meters the engine stalled several times and she finally gave up altogether, just 100 meters before the hall. We had to tow her back into her parking place with another car. This all looks very much like a partially blocked fuel line/fuel filter, caused by dirt or rust from the tank. So that weekend we ordered a small car from our car sharing organisation (stadtmobil), booked a mobile home at the camp site and in the end had a beautiful sunny and relaxing weekend at our favorite camp site at the Schwielochsee in the Spreewald, 100 kms south east of Berlin. Just a bit of a shame that Taiga Lily is still not ready yet.