Wanted: V W Bus

Try

- seen several pretty and not so pretty ones. (all I am allowed to do is _look_ until I get both my bugs on the road)

Remco

AND **

Maybe, money talks and BS walks, so to speak.

I have a 1971 adventurewagen (also know as a "double bubble").

Fresh 1600 DP (less than 5k miles) / dual carbs, new front steering components, gas stove and sink work...

Minimal rust, fair tires, reliable. Located in SLC UT.

It's my wife's, good luck getting her to sell it. Even though it just sits in the carport.

Bryan

Whereabouts are you and what specifically do you have in mind? (If you don't know, then you don't really want a VW Bus!)

I am in Dallas, TX. My son is interested in one for a couple of reasons. He wants inexpensive transportation and wants something for fishing weekends.

Yep, seems that everything is tied to the dollar. My son is interested in one for fishing weekends and cost effective transportation, plus, a price he can afford for purchase. Sounds like this one would be way out of his price range right know.

get a '71, the best year. last yr. for the simpler motor, first yr. for the front disc brakes. avoid '72 or newer. lots of problems.

Consider a few things: They have been obsolete for quite a few years. There are many people who claim they are VW bus mechanics - there are very few in the U.S. who actually know what they need to know. My bus is a 1979 model - the last year for the "bus" - next series was Vanagon and in '83 they went water cooled and had engine problems ever since. All the components on a

1980 vehicle are 25 years old. My bus' odometer has turned over probably 5 or more times. When I had the stock fuel injection and stock bus engine, there was nothing I couldn't fix by feel in total darkness - I exercised that feature more than a few times over the years.

If you (he) aren't a mechanic, I highly recommend something more mainstream and newer. I love my bus but if I wasn't a mechanic I could not afford to own it. As for inexpensive - 19-21mpg is about the best you can expect.

Another problem is that almost any used VW you get your hands on by now has been owned by somebody else and worked on by them or some mechanic who didn't know his anatomy from the landscape! You inherit all the screw-ups and modifications that they did to it and if you don't know the vehicle yourself, you're bound to get stuck somewhere with not a clue as to what happened or why.

I recommend the last couple years of buses - '78 & '79, but the '78 has to be the best of all for parts availability, ease of repair / maintenance, least likely to have something major go haywire. That said, every bus of that vintage has decaying fuel lines in the high-pressure fuel rail and those can burst or at least leak at any time. If a return line decays from inside and creates a 'flap' that blocks the return flow, pressure of over

100psi will develop in the fuel rail. These old rigs seldom have perfect ignition systems and there are sparks all over the place (watch your engine in total darkness!) Ka-BOOM! Lotsa bus fries! In addition, all the vacuum hoses connected with the very basic "anyone-can-understand" fuel injection system are cooked to where they are crumbling or at least falling off when you drive over RR tracks! (Then the engine dies and won't restart.) Rodents build nests and/or just plain normal use collects dirt and pine needles, leaves and other debris on the face of the oil cooler (like a miniature radiator tucked inside the cooling ducts on the left side of the motor) so #3 cylinder doesn't get adequate cooling and results in a dropped valve seat in the head or cracks (VERY common!)

Todays gasoline is not the same as it was back in the '70's - be prepared to run only premium 92 octane or higher in order to keep your bus motor from detonating itself apart. When tuned as they are supposed to be legally, they will self destruct if driven hard in hot weather. There are ways to adjust fuel mixture to make it rich enough to be able to drive freeway speeds without destroying the engine, but it is not legal to do that! You can add monitoring devices to keep track of oil pressure, fuel mixture, cylinder head temperature (all 4 required - not just one!) exhaust gas temp, oil temp (this one tells you that you had a major failure a few miles back!) OR you can putz along at 40-45mph and probably never have a problem.

After my 5th engine I decided to convert to a Subaru engine with 5 main bearings, fully balanced, computerized engine control systems (all) and a liklihood of going 300,000 miles before a major failure. I love my bus, but I bought it for camping on the coast 200+ miles away with three+ hours of boring freeway driving. With my aircooled engines I saw cylinder head temps rise and fall over 200 degrees F. on just normal freeway hills - often going up 200 and back down again within a half mile! There's no way that engine is gonna take that for very long!

I know a lot of people dislike Aerostars, but there are a lot of them out there and they are main-stream technology. They have a couple major electrical plugs that corrode and need to be cleaned, but that's about it for what will strand you! Dodge vans - go into ANY auto parts store in North America and they have just about any part that might leave you stranded - IN STOCK! (and cheap!) Anybody who took auto shop in high school can make 'em work, too! The latest Dodge vans still share components with Dodge trucks from the '50's. A friend had a Dodge van that had over a half million miles of airport bus service before he got it. We went on a trip together and he got consistently 4-5 miles per gallon better than my stock (at that time) bus! He used more oil :o) He had a problem with the charging circuit. We stopped at a NAPA auto parts store in The Middle of Nowhere and we figured they could get a voltage regulator for us in a few days. They did not need to know the year or model - they simply asked if he wanted the chrome one or the black one. He bought the chrome one for $11.00! Charging problem solved!

See what I'm suggesting? I'd love to see another happy VW bus owner, but I'd hate to see another disappointed one and possibly one who loses his entire investment due to not knowing what he's getting himself into. I meet them all the time - A lady working the gas pumps at a Costco on the coast had a Vanagon for camping. The engine needed rebuilding and they invested the necessary funds only to have it burn on their very nest drive! This was a mechanic's error but is so very common! A few years back I saw 5 different VW buses that were either sitting alongside the road after a fire or actually burning just during my normal summer of driving around!

If you do decide to go ahead with an old VW, there are wonderful knowledgeable people here at RAMVA (the name of this newgroup) who will happily guide you along if you seriously want to learn and want to do it correctly. There are also a few who are happy to give you suggestions but maybe don't know that much themselves, so ya gotta be a bit careful, too. When you get to a point where you know enough to ask specific questions, we're all willing to help. -BaH