Upcoming Plans and Preperations for the Body Work
The bus has been at home for a couple of days now and we have been planning how and in which order to proceed. One of the first things I did during the first weekend was inspecting the body’s condition thoroughly. The aim was to get an initial idea of which details definitely need to be replaced and which might be restorable.
Initial list of repair panels that we need:
- Left and right rear wheel arch
- Left and right front wheel arch
- Left and right front cab step
- Left outer sill
- Left bottom section of the side panel where the side panel meets the sill
- Left and right bottom section of the B-pillar
- Left and right rear lower corners
- Left and right bottom sections of the rear corners
- Left and right side panels above rear jacking points
Also, it was obvious that many parts will be added to this list that no longer are available as repair panels or there is no reason to replace the current original one yet. So, there’s a significant amount of tinsmith’s work ahead of me to make some of the pieces we need.
As it was clear that the greatest undertaking is probably going to be restoring this body, we started to strip the interior of all the unnecessary on the next weekend. I have to say though, it is rather easily done if you have a military bus, since basically there are no insulating materials which would be very annoying to remove.
All in all, the list of things that had to be removed was short:
- The seats
- Upholstery
- Ceiling
- Seat belts
- Floor mats
The Engine, the Gearbox and the Drivetrain
Originally our Transporter has a 1.6D 39kW CS-coded powerhouse, which we are planning to replace with a little bit more modern VW Sharan 1.9TDI 81kW AFN engine. We chose this particular engine, because it allows us to make the engine swap as close to the original and with as little rebuilds as possible.
The ABF-coded 4-speed and 5.89 final drive gear box, that we currently have and which probably is meant for driving around in the woods and fields, we are planning to swap as well. Right now we have thought that we would fit the new engine with a faster 5-speed gearbox. E.g. out of diesel engine gearboxes AAS, ASS, 3H, ASR would fit or we would rebuild a 4.57 final drive petrol engine gearbox (AAR, AAP, ASL, AST) to fit for diesel.
As for the drivetrain, we are planning to renovate it rather close to the original. The changes would be using 16″ MB alloys in Gowesty style. We also might need to lift the suspension slightly to fit those 16″ wheels.
To sum up
As the days got colder, I figured I’d go make one last round in the woods before we move the bus to the garage. I did make the planned round, but right before I got to the garage, the fuel tank decided to get rid of all of the remaining liters of the summer diesel. To be honest, the previous owner had warned us about the poor condition of the fuel tank and he had given us a brand new tank as well, but I guess the bus just wanted to leave its mark to the end of the season too.
Right now we are (or at least I am) already doing the body work and the next posts will be about that. We chose to start at the rear end and as for now, there seem to be the most time-consuming jobs and probably many unpleasant surprises as well, that didn’t show just yet.
