“The Old VW Bus”

By Ron Stultz 

30 July 2006

Although looked upon now as one of several icons of the hippie generation of the late 1960’s, to me, at the time, the VW bus appeared to be the vehicle I needed for a growing family. Minivans? They did not exist at the time and a station wagon did not seem right either. 

So, after my world went to hell with my wife having a miscarriage, I totally loosing it after completing college and the Army and nothing but 10,000 years of cubical work facing me, my wife and I gave it all up and moved to the country where we lived with some friends for a summer. Not sure, what the idea or plan was or if there really was any at all but after several months, it was clear that could not live with our friends and thus moved in with my wife’s parents for a short while. While there, with what little money I had left from before I quiet work and moving in with our friends, I began the search for a family car. I had bought a new Pontiac straight out of college but the car was getting a lot of miles on it and the backseat hardly accommodated one child seat, much less 2 or more. 

Certainly, I did not go looking for a VW bus (often referred to as VW microbus) but once I saw one on a dealer lot, I could afford it, and he would inspect it for me, I became the owner of a VW 1967 camper mobile or what VW called a Kombi.  

While my wife has nothing but bad memories of the VW bus, I do not. I learned a lot about auto mechanics and other lessons owning the bus and yes, actually enjoyed riding around in it with my long shaggy beard and hair, clearly a hippie and proud of it. 

The VW bus I bought was a model year 1967, which I only learned later was the first year VW switched over to a 12-volt electrical system with prior years being the more troublesome 6-volt system. I also only learned after I had bought my VW bus, that the same bus came with 2 different size engines and I bought the bus with the smallest, a 1200CC, 4 cylinder, air cooled, horizontally opposed, rear mounted dud. 1200 cc to push around this big, flat nosed bus? From the get-go, it was terrible. Every hill was a mountain to be climbed and the state safety inspection given to me by the dealer was a real joke as I had not gotten more than 5 miles down the road from the dealer when the muffler simply went to pieces and I had to ride home with this incredibly loud engine hammering away in the rear. When I did get home, my wife and her father surely must have thought I had lost my mind as neither had ever seen a VW bus and a once over by my father-in-law revealed many mechanical problems, the worst of which and the most immediate was the muffler. What to do? I could not return the bus to the dealer and my money was gone. Nothing left to do but try to deal with it and so I did. 

A lot of the details are fuzzy now as to when and where or the order of things but know I started working on the bus from the inside. First, I took out and dumped the “refrigerator,” icebox, which sat right inside the passenger side double doors. It was just in the way and if we needed a cooler for camping, we could just a haul along a cooler but no need to crowd the back all the time with the “refrigerator.” Then I discovered that the wooden floor mounted over the sheet metal in the back passenger compartment was rotten and had to be removed and replaced. Easy enough. All seat cushions were recovered by my wife and while replacing a cover on one of the front seats, a screwdriver I was using slipped and I gashed the index finger of my left hand. Should have had it stitched, but didn’t and to this day, have a nice long scar as a memento of the VW bus. 

Front inside door panels were replaced as original were nothing more than paperboard and warped. Used very thin plywood and sheet metal screws. Worked fine although should have installed some insulation in doors as there was none and every time a door was shut, sounded like a tin can being banged instead of the sound a real car door makes, which is solid.  

Inspection overall, revealed that cheap, thin, metal tubes coming from engine fan housing to front of bus for compartment heat were rusted through and through and thus removed and never replaced. Turned out that I actually had a gasoline heater underneath the further most back seat and once my father-in-law and I got it working, it heated the inside great or at least the passenger compartment, although it did consume more than its share of gasoline. 

Then in no particular order, came new: tires, front and rear shocks and then one day on the way home from work, no brakes. Using emergency brake and downshifting, managed to get bus home because I could not afford a tow job at the time. Turned out bum master cylinder, this then led to complete brake job to include new cylinders all around as well as drums and shoes.  

Idiot’s Guide to VW Repair. (I wonder if this was the first idiot’s guide to anything ever published? Now there is an idiot’s guide for everything you can think of and more.) Not sure who alerted me to this fine book but once I had it, I began doing all mechanic work myself, being given a nice set of wrenches and sockets by my wife one Christmas. Of course no place to store them and kept them in the bus until they stolen one night.