A Bit Easier Welding, Cleaning the Underbody and Working on Some Easier Stuff
Restoring the Rear Panel
Before moving on to the left rear corner, I decided for a change to fix the rear panel (VW p/n 251 813 193 H). The rear panel lower part needed some straightening and a couple of places needed some welding. Overall, there were no big surprises this time, which is good, of course.
Cleaning the Underbody
For a while now, there has been cleaning out the bottom of the bus on the to do list. At first, the aim was to remove the fuel tank and auxiliary heater, that at some point had started to get in the way of upcoming work, which were straightening the floor of the cabin and some more welding here and there.
The fuel tank definitely met my expectations – rusted all the way through on the edges and covered with thick layer of dirt on top. It seemed like there was a layer of dirt from every ride the bus had ever taken throughout the years
Removing the next piece was somewhat more interesting, since I had no previous experience with auxiliary heater. In general, it seems like an interesting thing that has been put down there at some point. It seems like the idea is to take the air from the cabin from under the back seat, heat it up with the heat from burning the diesel and then blow the warm air on the driver’s feet and to the front of the cabin. It is weird though, that there is no air duct added for the passenger seat.
It seems like we have an Eberspächer DA6 air heater that was base setup for military buses back then and thus had been installed already in the factory. Just by looking at it, I think that after some maintenance we could get it working again in the future.
Here, for now, the disassembly of the underbody ends. The pipes of the radiator and etc we’ll take off along with the engine and gear box, but we’ll get to that when most of the body is welded. For now, we want to keep the bus moving on its own.
Other Doings
A while ago I noticed, that an ’88 Caravelle that was in a pretty sad shape, was put up for sale for spare parts. What caught my eye was the brown interior, which is rather uncommon. Since we are planning to design our interior in lighter shades and this seemed like an opportunity one would not want to miss, we decided to get as many brown bits and pieces from that Caravelle as was possible. For sure, everything interior is a very far future for us right now, but lets just say that at least we have some small details stocked up.
