Danbury Motorcaravans are holding their Spring 2018 Open Weekend on March 17-18th at their headquarters in England. If you’re in the U.K. and near Bristol this would be a lot of fun. If I could be there I’d seriously be looking at this bad boy, a 2012 VW T2 Rio. Although it is counter to my air-cooled sensibilities I must admit it is one cool ride. Hmm, I think I’d add a roof rack over the cab. I imagine the interior is what VW Westfalia conversions would have evolved to had our German friends been allowed to continue the manufacture of bay window buses post 1979. (this being a 2012 water-cooled T2 from Brazil)
From their newsletter: “Join us for our Spring Open Weekend, at our Bristol HQ, where you can view our full range of Danbury Campervans and also join in with some family-fun activities!”
I occasionally point out to my friends someone rich and famous who doesn’t own any vintage Volkswagens, for example I’ll say something like; “…do you know how many Volkswagens Madonna owns?…That’s right none! All that money and no air-cooled VWs.” Now here’s a guy I understand, comedian Gabriel Iglesias had a Volkswagen split window bus that was featured on Jay Leno’s Garage. After his visit to Jay’s a light bulb went on, as Gabriel was doing very well in his career he decided to start his own Leno like garage except devoted almost exclusively to air-cooled buses!!! Did he say thirty vintage buses? The collection must be worth several million dollars! Remember we love our buses because……….we love our buses! Not because they’re worth a lot of money these days. Enjoy this video tour by Salomondrin on YouTube.
This is stuff dreams are made of, imagine finding this gem in the forest. However, these guys take it to the limit by driving it out of the woods! It wasn’t easy, but they had all the right friends to help out. If not for the tin roofing covering the Volkswagen it might have been in much worse condition after four decades in the trees. YouTube‘s “Florian George” presents, “RESURRECTION – Rescue of a VW 1955 panelvan – Forest find !”
This is the other Camper Jam in Golden British Columbia. Western Canada is a great place to have a Volkswagen camper, meandering roads that head toward the Rocky Mountains etc. Golden is a pleasant town in the southeastern corner of the province near the B.C/Alberta border. This year has been particular bad for forest fires in B.C., but the air quality looked good at the event. Many Bay Window buses were in attendance. Credit and “thank you” to Milton Westy on YouTube for documenting the gathering so nicely.
This is a really well produced video that looks at the Volkswagen bus from the perspective of someone who is just starting their hunt for an affordable yet usable one. Join MattsRadShow as he visits Jerry at J.A.C. Auto, also a special guest appearance by his nephew “J” owner of Sunset Classics which often has vintage VW buses for sale. This is like a mini movie/documentary, thank you Matt!
I just found this couple on Youtube touring the States in their 1973 Hightop Volkswagen Bus. They are trying to do their bit for the environment with things like vegan food, but their one weakness is the vintage VW, gas mileage can be as good as 25 MPG…with a tail wind. They seem to have at least one dog which must be a bit of a challenge. However, in the continental U.S. it is possible to follow the sun. Look for them on Youtube, channel name: Wandxr Bus
Burger who? It’s funny to think that this one time fast food giant was once serious competition for McDonald’s. My personal experience as a child, the food was so-so and the giveaways were fairly lame, but the restaurant buildings were very nicely designed. While the very last Burger Chef is said to have disappeared as late as 1996 this TV commercial looks to be from 1971, the chain’s heyday in the early to mid 70s. A kids football team heads in to their local Burger Chef for some food after the game. Below, some screen capture highlights for VW van fans.
It’s 2017 and I’m delirious with envy, who will end up buying these beauties? My buses keep me busy and I don’t have a spare forty-one thousand pounds lying around, but this would make a great get around vehicle, or maybe a winery tour bus…dreaming. Nice to look at the site and imagine. My Last Kombi thread is here.
Although the bus was running very well at the beginning of spring I felt it had lost some of it’s get up and go by late summer after a number of reasonably long road trips. Certainly I had tuned it to perfection, but I had left out one thing, the valve adjustment. (note: later air-cooled engines featured self adjusting hydraulic valves, my ’74 has the manually adjustable type)
Driving the ‘74 Westfalia seasonally I probably put on about 3,000 miles in the past 3 summers, perhaps a bit more. Three thousand miles is the recommended interval for valve adjustment. To my surprise the valves were quite tight, .004 inch or less when I ran the feeler gauge through the tappets. As usual number 3 exhaust was the tightest as its cooling is impeded by the nearby oil cooler. The stock gap for intake valves on a 1974 Type 4 bus engine is .006 inch. The exhaust setting is a bit more confusing, if the motor still has the special sodium filled exhaust valves the gap should be .008 inch. However, I see debate on the Samba with some people setting them to .006 inch with good results. My personal experimentation found .008 to be a bit noisy and I settled for something closer to .006 or just closer to .007 for the exhaust. The fact is I don’t think I have sodium filled valves as a previous owner gave the engine a top end rebuild about fifteen thousand miles ago.
Then the great joy of sealing up the valve covers, finding they don’t leak, and putting the gas pedal down to find the bus has new found easy glide power. Like an almost new engine the bus is once again making as much as it can out of its potential 70 horse power. There is no need to jack up the car for this procedure. Happy motoring, and don’t be afraid to set your valves yourself.
The videos are from Chris Vallone at Classic VW Bugs dot com though the same principles apply to buses both upright and Type 4 engines.
It’s a simple thing but very useful as the parking brake cable on a bus is very long and can sometimes give way enough for the vehicle to start rolling. Call me paranoid, my dad’s bus once rolled down the driveway into a tree, and yes I park in gear. We often head to the beach in our ’74 Westfalia to enjoy an afternoon by the sea. I love looking at all the variations of beach wood, some natural or in this case man made. This block struck me as being the perfect shape and size to become a VW bus wheel chock that would fit easily behind the driver’s seat. I gave it a dash of orange paint from a rattle can and made a grip from the remains of some old lawn chair webbing, and voila!
Viva Westfalia! 
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