Hi Guy's, just brought back my latest project and in my eyes is great although alot of work, i'm looking forward to the fun ahead.
My Question is does anyone know anything of it's history?? would love to know where it came from. The Guy i bought it off only bought it for the engine for his buggy and know's nothing about it! (This was in Gympie)
At some point someone has loved the little darling and changed the colour from it's original Light Blue (possibly Space Blue??) to some sort of metalic blue with a mix of orange and purple here and there!
Cheers Mike
Should end up something like my last one!
love those early lowlights,,the last bus looks to be a beauty,good luck with the new project
Cheers, it was. However started out very similar to the new one! but with a lete front clip installed. Love the Early Bay look and drawn to the ones needing the most Love!!
Without any previous owner papers, it's impossible to say much about the car's history! Looks like it was one of the earliest Aussie-built campers - the roof looks like a Sopru shape to me.
Notice on the compliance plate that it was built by 'Motor Producers Limited'. This was the VW Germany-owned company that ran the Clayton assembly plant in Melbourne after Volkswagen Australasia Ltd was dissolved in 1968. Motor Producers contracted work out, so Datsun cars and Volvo trucks got built in the former VWA plant alongside VWs. The whole shebang was sold to Nissan in 1976.
RAT RAT RAT😀😀😀
Good Luck Champ should be good.
"A car for the people, an affordable Volkswagen, would bring great joy to the masses and the problems of building such a car must be faced with courage."
Adolf Hitler At opening of 1934 Berlin Auto Show
Just thought I'd bring this back to life: started my Resto 3 months ago now, did find more info about Earl as he is now named
Since I've had him he has sat in my mates garden till now, I have just spoken to John the dad and blue Kombi owner to try and get a history, interesting, he had it for 1 year and got it from a wreckers which he knows someone there (littles in Gympie) before that it sat in a guys front garden for over ten years south side of Gympie somewhere. John took the twin port 1600 out for his beetle or Manx
Any help finding info would be great, I know there's not much to go on..
I'll post up some pics later.
Mike
How it looks today, also did some practice welding whilst I was in there:
Jobs done:
Rear corners
Dodgy vent cut outs
Battery tray
Removed inner, middle and outer drivers side sill and floor section
New jacking point rear drivers side
Nearly finished cutting and welding external power point
Some other little bits
Today
Looks great Mike.
Keep pluggin away - coming together nicely.
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nice project have to love early bays
Thanks she's a big project but I do love the look of the early bay's
A little snap shot of the work I've done so far:
going to jump through my millions of pictures but this is what ive done so far...
first time welding on the van at this point, i have welded some parts of front door all with gassless wire which was ok at this point, i changed to gass halfway through and you can probably tell at which point that was but i can't believe how much better it is welding with gass!!
found some surface rust behind which i have cut out completely and re welded in a new piece then covered
removed inner, middle and outer sill drivers side.
new battery tray in
had to square up the added vent holes and weld in new metal
small section behind drivers wheel arch
Stripped the paint from the outside and painted with rust convertor, really suprised on how good the panles are above the bottom 8"
remove power socket hole
cut out some rusty bits
this was this weekends work
Sorry for the dumping of images but belive me i have missed out on 10X as many..
Cheers
MIke
Cut out rear drivers jacking point and part of the top hat:
Welded the new jack point in, didn't look right and after test fitting the inner sill I was amazed on how much of an angle the sill support piece is on, what's the go with crap reproduction parts! Looks like I'll drill out the spot welds and weld back on once sill is in.. Is the normal for these parts? Got the other 3 to do.
Cut some more rust out, cut more than just the bubbles to make sure sound in behind.
after wirebrushing and sanding I painted rust bullet, then made a repair section to cover up, blew a couple of holes but otherwise very very happy.
Really dissapointed with the lack of time spent this week, maybe better next week
Mike
^^^ solid effort mate, I hear ya with the time factor, you look at a small bit of work and think ....yeah an hr and it will be all sorted...3 hrs later its finished....😂
keep on trucking!!
Ye spent an hour yesterday and only I know where that time went to look at it nobody else will.
Been watching your thread binner and it helps motivation. Where are you located? Look forward to seeing it at some point.
Mike
Looking good mate. Keep up the good work.
Cheers, you wouldn't happen to have the dimensions of the beam you made for yours, spoke to you on the phone a while back.
Going to give it a go I think but not sure of the pipe size etc to get.
Anyway small update:
Ground up ready to repair the bubble section now and tidy light cutout.
Also started on the silly number of drilled holes on the side, also a number of them on the drivers side, might count them tomorrow
Also fixed this piece up, shaped by hand both a piece to repair the inner structure as its also curved,
very happy with it so far,
What rust???
Done a bit of work since i posted on here last:
Made a c pillar to replace rottin one and couldn't find one anywhere, very complicated piece to make!!
Extended inner sill to match original
Cut out front outrigger and jacking point, welded in replacment
Replaced front top hat section
Welded in short sill
Plug welded long sill and started welding between the tacks at the top of the long outer sill
c pillar bottom:
End of middle sill:
Starting to put outer sill in place:
Here you can see an old repair which went the length of the panel
I also seam sealed the back of the corners I welded, sorry for picture quality flash on the phone!!
Not to mention sanded and painted rust bullet on sills before putting the outer on and chassis on drivers side:
Nice work there. Save the Lowies.
Love the bus in your avatar. I'm interested about the missing bits.
Is it a LHD?
How do you get by with no front indicators?
Love the colours. Mine is going to look very similar.
great work
you are killing it
before you know it you'll be driving it about 😉
love the updates
thanks
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Bigbertha wrote:Nice work there. Save the Lowies.
Love the bus in your avatar. I'm interested about the missing bits.
Is it a LHD?
How do you get by with no front indicators?
Love the colours. Mine is going to look very similar.
Cheers, the bus in the avatar was left hand drive and I put small indicators into the front bumper.
I painted it lotus white.
What missing bits do you want to know about?
Mike
h wrote:great work
you are killing it
before you know it you'll be driving it about 😉
love the updates
thanks
Thanks, be a few years I think before driving around!!
Anyway little updated I started welding the outer sill back in:
Firstly cut out the rusty section, tacked in the outer sill, painted the reinforcement as this won't be accessible again, cut a repair section for it plug welded the bottom in and started fully welding them in, this is a couple of days work may I add:
mikew wrote:Bigbertha wrote:Nice work there. Save the Lowies.
Love the bus in your avatar. I'm interested about the missing bits.
Is it a LHD?
How do you get by with no front indicators?
Love the colours. Mine is going to look very similar.
Cheers, the bus in the avatar was left hand drive and I put small indicators into the front bumper.
I painted it lotus white.
What missing bits do you want to know about?
Mike
The front indicators. Cool,
