Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 06:46:36 -0700
Reply-To: '80 Westy Pokey <pokey@VANAGON.ORG>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: '80 Westy Pokey <pokey@VANAGON.ORG>
Subject: Re: Building a westy
Content-Type: text/plain
Karl Bloss had a great page on retrofitting a pop top, but I am not sure what happened to it (another listee may chime in here). Google has it cached at:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:wXY3HseRSLM:www.enter.net/~bloss/vw/poptop
Eurocampers has Build it yourself camper books at:
http://eurocampers.com/page14f.html
And the Robert Bentley manual has good illustrations of how to remove most of the cabinets, etc. Plus it is a blessing to have for any Vanagon.
Thanks,
Chris
On Tue, 10 July 2001, Ri wrote:
>
> Hi Everyone!
>
> Thanks so much for the great info you have helped us with so far!
>
> We wanted to share our project, so everyone could hear what we have gotten
> ourselves into!
>
> We used to have a '65 walkthru westy that we had restored, and just loved
> it.. except for a few things. It was old, hard to drive, and since we live
> on the Oregon Coast, it wandered around on 101 like a tissue box in a
> hurricane. It just so happened some good friends of ours lost their bus due
> to a very bad engine problem (and their bus was trashed) so we gave them
> our Isabell. She is happy now, staying at Breitenbush Hot Springs and we
> get to see her when go visit (instead of renting a cabin!)
>
> Anyhow, after 7 months of trying to find a water cooled westy to replace
> her with, we finally gave up. There was no way we were going to finance
> another car after buying our Volvo a few years ago, and we weren't able to
> find a good westy (even with bad engines) for less than 7k!
>
> Soooo... our friend at 101 Imports in Lincoln City sold us his 87 GL and
> the interior and top from an 83 westy, with a big box of bolts and hardware
> for $2500 He also gave us the top roof section of the donor westy. It was
> such a cute picture hauling two pop-tops and this roof section on a trailer
> behind our 67 singlecab! (I should have taken a picture!) The GL runs
> really well, and is a very clean bus to start with.
>
> Our GL has a big factory sunroof, and it appears to be 3" smaller on each
> side than the westy opening. We plan on slicing the rear roof section off
> the westy carcass, and welding it into the rear roof section of the GL. The
> neat part is we think we can do this without wasting the headliner of the
> GL, cuz it has this metal roof under where the sunroof slid! We are very
> excited about being able to possibly save the headliner....
>
> I found that simple green is removing the mold and nasties from the
> fiberglass top. We plan on painting it to match the Dove Blue paint on the
> GL. We will be ordering all the new canvas, rubber etc from Bus Depot per
> everyones recommendations.
>
> Luckily my partner Glen knows how to do serious welding/fabrication to
> tackle this project. I seem to just come up with the desire, and hold
> things and clean the rest of them. = ) He says he's going to use either a
> sawzall or rent a plasma cutter for the operation. I think the sawzall will
> be too noisy!
>
> We plan on using a waste water tank from EuroCampers, and will do the
> auxillary battery mods with that optima battery. We also have the seat
> brackets to weld in to do the swivel seats in the front. Is this as easy as
> they said it is?
>
> Is there any wonderful words of wisdom from other westy owners that have
> built their own?
>
> Thanks so much for the support and crossed fingers!
>
> Namaste,
>
> Ri
>
>
>
> The River Clan
>
> '87 Wannabee Westy
> '67 Singlecab
> '96 850 Turbo
Thanks,
Chris Gronski
'80 Westy "Pokey" - SLOPOKEY
'87 Chevrolet Sprint - Ice Racer
'91 Pontiac Firefly - Convertable
www.vanagon.org & .ca
www.gronski.com, .org, & .ca
www.nineeleven.org & .ca
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