I wet-sanded and polished the dash and the drivers side half of the nose. With this complete it allowed installation of parts to begin. The safari windows and dash instrumentation were all installed. The dash and nose were the first parts I painted so I expect that more wetsanding an polishing will be needed here when I see it in direct sunlight for the first time; it should be minor though so I’ll be able to do this without removing anything.
I cleaned the engine and checked everything out. I had noticed that it would lock up just short of completing a full rev so I pulled the cylinder heads and discovered a small piece of metal in cylinder #2. The origins of this piece of metal are unclear but there is no damage anywhere, so it does not appear that this happened while it was running. The intake manifold has been off for some time now so the metal piece probably just fell into the open intake port. Overall it’s in great shape with very little wear and good compression, I have a gasket kit on the way since some of the seals are questionable and they’re much easier to replace now then when everything is back together.
Best of all, the lightweight magnesium construction means I can, for now at least, move it around by hand.
There’s been another months-long break in bus progress due to house projects, traveling, and the Golf restoration. I’m back to working on it now since there is less than a year left until it must be completed. This weekend I started by degreasing the engine and polishing some of the aluminum trim.
The plan currently is:
#1 – Install everything that can be installed that won’t be in the way later. This includes trim, gauges, headliner, etc. This will get stuff onto the bus and out of the way.
#2 – Finish restoring all ‘small parts’, particularly engine parts over the winter since it’s now too cold to paint the blue area around the bottom of the bus. As parts are completed they can be installed.
#3 – Reassemble engine and get the bus drivable. This will allow more flexibility in where the bus is worked on (i.e. can drive it into driveway to paint, avoiding overspray) and also allow progress on the rehabilitation of the garage floor.
#4 – When the weather warms up all that should be left to do is mask off the entire top and paint the bottom blue. The entire bus can then be wetsanded/polished under direct sunlight in the driveway.
Yet another giant spider, this time in the garage. It stayed still long enough to get a ruler next to it.
I had been keeping an eye out online for a very specific car: 2010+ 4dr golf TDI w/ sunroof and 6spd, in any color other than the ubiquitous VW silver. Each of these criteria alone are the low-volume options in the US; in combination it means that there are only a few for sale anywhere along the east coast at a given time. So when I did occasionally see one it was either exorbitantly priced or wrecked beyond repair. When I came across this one with relatively superficial damage at a reasonable price I went for it and spent a few weeks of nights/weekends bringing it back to new. In this case I had a body shop do the paint since I’m not ready to venture into metallic painting yet; runs cannot be wet-sanded out of metallic paint like they can on the bus’s non-metallic paint.
The summer has also been busy with traveling and house/yard projects, hopefully I’ll get back to working on the bus soon.
The roof was painted today, it’s starting to look very different. There were a few minor runs and other problems but these can be wet-sanded/polished out fairly easily.
Roof sealed with epoxy primer to isolate the bodywork from the top coats. The bodywork and high build layers can slowly absorb moisture and cause rust if they have any path to the elements; the epoxy sealer is impervious to moisture and prevents this from happening.
Roof primed in high-build primer to smooth any imperfections in the bodywork.
Progress made on the roof bodywork. The roof doesn’t have any major damage or warping but there is some minor distortion along the roof hard points that makes it look like the roof was used as seating on occasion. It’s also giant spider season, there are dozens like the one shown around the garage.
Bus moved even lower to allow better roof access; working on smoothing out front of roof
