Typing 2 Ink - by Jim Bryant
Chapter Four: Picking Up The Spare

Do you know the feeling?  You have the talent or you have read the instructions and now you're standing back far enough to line up everything in your sights and there's still one to knock down. No, this is not about bowling.  It's the about the blues.  Specifically, the I'm-ready-to-turn-this-bus-into-a-cherry-but-the-frame-is-rusted-beyond-help-blues.  I had them; I had them bad.  My '67 Deluxe was "complete."  Everything was there above the rocker panels, but I could poke a pencil through the beams just behind the front wheels.  I expected it to fold in half.  No amount of bondo would suffice, and I sure wasn't in any position to cut it all out and weld in new metal.  My only remaining course of action was to pick up a spare, a parts car if you will.  I my case the only part I needed was a BODY that was salvageable.

Since you're reading this you've already found a good source of parts and accessories, the "Old Bus Review."  When I started looking for a spare, there was no NEATO, there was no SOTO, there were just the local papers, the car and truck rag at the supermarket and VW magazines listing busses 500 miles away.  If you're looking for a parts car, just keep your eyes open.  Watch the ads.  Split-window busses get listed in the strangest categories.  Every new street, road or alley you venture down might just produce a bonanza.  I could say I got lucky, but honestly I just looked twice at everything that looked remotely like a bus, went around the block and looked again.  Sometimes it was a Chevy van with pop-out side windows that look like VW.  Sometimes it was a bus, but rusted even worse than mine.

Finally, looking through the local college newspaper paid off.  I called.  The woman on the other end of the line gave me a familiar story:  "My son went off to school and left it here for us to sell."  It was a '67 and in town and I made arrangements to see it.  Some colorblind fool with a broom had painted it purple and lavender.  Someone had reupholstered it with IBM blue Naugahyde and yellow shag carpet.  The engine compartment was charred from a previous fire.  The roof looked like it had taken down an overhead garage door somewhere along the way.  I pulled out my flashlight and crawled around on the ground looking up at something strange--paint.  It was stock VW paint (Granada Red?) and the frame had clean paint, the outriggers had clean paint, the cross members had clean paint.  Just what is it about VW people that a prospective purchase may look like an abomination sitting in a driveway, but ten minutes of laying on the ground looking up from a worm's view and paint starts looking like gold?  The owner wanted $1500, the parents accepted $1300, and the long process of transformation was about to begin.

I had two '67 busses, space to work and a desire to put some VW glory back on the road.  Somehow I was going to switch roofs, refurbish all the sheet metal, reupholster the interior, polish all the chrome, replace the broken parts, and make one bus look like new.  I knew I could polish and sew and sand and paint and rewire, but I knew I wasn't at all prepared to cut off two roofs and weld one back on, so I swallowed my pride and went in search of a body shop that was willing to make the switch for me.  In the amount of time I spent trying to find one, I could probably have done it myself.  I got laughs, jeers, indifference and insults from the "collision repair" industry until I found a shop that said it would undertake my project between Fords and Buicks and it'll take "a week or two."  It was three months.  Their finished product was towed home and into my barn.  Their final weld, the entire length of the drip channel, was rough and exposed.  Now it was my turn.

I had already stripped everything above the floor out of two busses.  Boxes and bags of parts littered the loft in my barn.  My plan was to use the summer to massage the body back to original form during the summer and spend the winter sterilizing and scouring the parts for a spring assembly.

Looking back, it was a good plan.  I reinstalled the engine in the summer of '93 and the old bus moved under its own power.  She looked great!  NEATO friends who saw her oohhhed and aahhhed at the shiny paint under the floor mats, the new cloth upholstery that looked original and the headliner of fresh white vinyl.  Unfortunately, my plans had called for disassembly in the summer of 1983, bodywork in 1984 and reassembly in the summer of 1985.  If you're making restoration plans of your own, allow a little extra time in hour schedule for completion.