bay customising

Well i recently flew interstate all cashed up to purchase a modified bay window kombi and it tunred out that the car was not in anywhere near the condition I was lead to believe.

i.e "perfect Paint" = very thin, flacking off, chrome parts all rusting through.
"fully enginered" = no it's ilegal, lowering and rims not engineerd.
"serious sound system" = far from it.
and a few things were not mentioned, like the fact that the gearbox is nearly had it (3rd gear barley exists), hole in engine bay that leaks fumes into the cabin, about 20 degrees free play in the steering column, engine has no power, overheats within minuets, cooling system has to be filed ever hour not every 3 hours or so... oh yes.... and you need two people to start the engine...

my fault for trusting people huh? yeah. I gotta stop doing that.

Anyway, I've found a nice local bay kombi thats very straight, very strong motor, nice clean transmision, good everything. The interior ir pretty bad but I thought it would be fun to customize that. Anyone had any experience custom ising a kombi interior? Its a 9 seater. I probably wanna make it a 5 seater with a fold down bed and big centre console. Perhaps with the option of bolting the middle seats in if i need it for a road trip with the boys. Any advice? What seats are good to replace the front ones? I want nice comfy ones with head rests so I dont snap my neck of in an accident. What could I make the centre consol out off? How do you rig up a back seat that folds into a bed?

Forgive me im new to kombis and ive never done any interior work myself. 🙂

after that all she needs is to be dumped a few inches, nice rims, and perhaps some dual kardons or webbers and a beffier exhaust and im set 😉.

You can get the whole interior retrimmed by a motor trimmer. You would expect to pay $3500 to get it all done.
We got new front SAAS seats "Billabong" model which are no longer available. They were ribbed black velour and have headrests. They bolt to the floor with no slide adjustment. You can fit any seats you want if you try. There are no seats that "just fit in"
The middle seat on a kombi or microbus should be removable anytime if it is original. Ours is and it is good to be able to take it in and out as required.
The rear seat in ours folds down to make a bed and I got it from a wrecker out of a smashed rusty old camper and got it trimmed along with all the other interior stuff.
I made all of the interior boards myself out of moisture resistant masonite and had them retrimmed also.
So ours is a 5 or 8 seater depending on whether we have the middle seat in and all retrimmed nice ribbed black velour. Cost a bit but well worth it.

.

go nuts! (i have ) old subaru seats (late 70's) are real comfy and look right in the car.

Thanks for the heads up on the subie seats, masonite and easy removal of the middle seats. Thats the kinda info im after cheers fellas 😉.
I want to do as much myself as possible really, having not got alot of cash to spend. I was hopeing to also spend two or so on lowering and rims 🙁. Might have to sacrifice the 72 super for extra cash for the new one.

What do you recon for making a centre console?

Dave_Bugz wrote:I want to do as much myself as possible really, having not got alot of cash to spend. I was hopeing to also spend two or so on lowering and rims.

you would expect to spend $900 on lowering the beast and anywhere from $300 upwards on wheels if you look around. lowering a bay is one of the best investments you will ever make, apart form the fact that body roll is no longer the biggest problem when going round corners, they look sweet.

here are a few pics of mine at standard height and then lowered. and a pic of my wheels.

when looking for rims you can go for Mercedes most classes e.g.: A classand Audi A4 there are some other types of veheciles that fit but can't go into that now as long as the offset is similar ET 34??and the PCD (Pitch Circle Diameter) is 5 by 112. i have american racing wheels on mine they are 16 inch in diameter and 7.5 inch wide on the rear i have 215, 16, 50 tiers which i think suit the car they don't rub either
OH and I'm running a V8 also.

were you looking at a water cooled kombi? what was in it? you mentioned the cooling system had to be filled every hour there is something wrong ther i checked mine once a month and only had to fill it every 6 months

cheers
wacked1

wasnt a water cooled kombi. It was blown T1 1600. Had a system where water is squirted onto the supercharger.

your bus is mean wacked1. How much lower have you got it there?

Also still, anyone built a centre console themselves?