Well I finally got around to taking some photos of the Bus!
It's a 1970 eight seater, a family vehicle, daily driver and on-going project. As a daily driver and three small kids in the family it will never be a show car but I do try and keep it somewhat neat and tidy.
Slowly I have added accessories to make it more comfortable.
To reduce the risk of rust around the side window areas, I removed all original windows that had the small flipper windows that are prone to rust. There are now two solid windows at the back and the middle windows have been replaced with sliding windows. These provide great ventilation for the kids on hot days. To further improve the air flow the back window has been replaced with a rear safari window. Up front new quarter windows have been installed on the passenger and driver sides (that's a #$%^ of a job to do on a hot day!!).
On top of the Bus is a 3 metre wood and stainless steel roofrack from Creative Engineering. Sometimes there's a bit of a wind whistle but the rack comes in handy and I like the look too. A new aluminium mesh sun visor has been added to the front along with eyelids on the headlights and a set of '70s Hella fog lights. The low light indicators have been changed to clear lenses with orange bulbs. The rear lights are the small oval type as found on late Splitties which look great but at night provide very little illumination when reversing so I added an old school reversing light.
I have started work on replacing the interior panels which were starting to show their age and that is now almost complete. The front seats are comfy but I'm not sure what they are from (suggestions have included Mazda, Prelude and Telstar). The middle and rear seats are still original in fair condition but one day I will get them re-covered to match the new interior panels. In the meantime I have thrown mexican blankets over them to protect them from wear from the kids safety seats and also the kids themselves! The floor still has rubber mats which I will not replace as they are a godsend with kids. Dirt, dust, mud, wet, drink, food etc all easily cleaned off at the end of the day. Ah to be stress free 🙂
JVC CD/MP3 head unit installed with an auxilary 3.5 jack to accept other devices such as MiniDisc, iPods etc. There are Response 6 1/2" 2 ways in the front doors and Kenwood 6 x 9s in the rear. Under the middle seat I built two slide out trays housing Cadence and Clarion amps. A sub is also in the boot area.
I keep replacing little bits and pieces as the budget allows, rubbers, switches, fittings etc.
Mechanically there are disc brakes up front and rear drums. The front and rear of the Bus has been lowered to improve handling and look (the front use to be waaaay higher than the rear which had sagged). Don't want it so low that it's a pain to drive around in, especially being used daily and often fully loaded. I'm quite content to admire the really low look on other people's rides! It has an 1800 gearbox and at the heart of the beast is a 2165cc engine which powers this brick up hills quite sweetly. Not interested in high speed but there's plenty of torque to be able to safely overtake etc on our travels.
At the moment there are 15" Performance Superlight rims which I am considering replacing down the track with 17" rims to change the look and drop the revs a little bit more. I had 12" Superlights on my old Mini so I'm ready for a change 🙂
Well that's enough dribble from me for now, some pics are below, hope you like them.
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The pride and joy...
KOM123 Smiling Assassin
1,164 posts · joined Aug 2002 ·
