This will probably be the slowest moving resto project of all time - mostly because the bus lives 200 miles away from us and because we have 7 other Dubs all wanting our attention too!
Anyway - this is 'Ted' - he's a 61 (can't remember if he's a 62 model year, I'm sure someone here will know) Microbus, who I imported myself from Australia in 2005. He's called Ted after the chap I bought him off - an eccentric old fella who sang country style songs in Australia and (according to him) had a number one hit with a song which goes on about putting chicken poo on your head to make your hair grow (I kid you not!).
So Ted and owned this Split for between 9 and 12 years (depending on what day you spoke to him). We recon he knew of it for 12yrs and had owned it for 9. It had always been his dream to restore this bus, but he never got round to it. We actually went to his house to look at a Bay he had for sale. But whilst looking at the Bay, I spied the Split in a car port type thing. We had a look over the Split - found out it was a few years earlier than our 66 that we were restoring at the time, unfortunatly someone had bolted on what appear to be trailer lights onto the front and back, which is a shame, but other than that it was very straight and was pretty much unmessed with. We found 2 small holes which would need welding, but this didn't bother us.
I'm not sure what's going on with the engine lid. Was it an Aussie option? It looks well done, unlike the other 'mods' they did to him.
We asked if we would sell the 2 busses together. He wasn't sure, so we left him for 3 days to think about it.
In those 3 days we found a 58 Beetle - we now had 3 cars to take back to the UK if Ted agreed to sell the busses. The seller of the Beetle was patient enough to wait for us to decide if we could take all 3 home. We didn't see the point in just buying 2 of them. We needed 3 to fill up the container.
3 days later and the news was good - he decided he would sell them both. So up we went to collect the Split on a trailer and drive the Bay back to where we were staying at a friend's house.
We dragged the Split out so we could get him onto the trailer.
The Aussie bodger had been in the cab too - fitting a Beetle fuel gauge!
Very solid underneath - a bit of surfact rust and mud:
The 'worst' of the 'rust':
Going up!
Here's me and my Dad with Ted in the middle. He has his guitar in his hand because he'd just sang us a live version of his chicken poo song... :lol:
I drove the Bay back to our friend's house:
And we set about stripping the busses down. We'd measured all 3 and worked out that if they were all stripped down, we'd have 4cm of 'spare' room in the 40ft container. This meant that if one broke loose, it wouldn't have sufficient room for a 'run up' at the others, so wouldn't get damaged. We'd arranged with the owner of the Beetle to have it dropped straight off at the docks when they needed shipping, so we marked out a 40ft container in the field and left a gap for the Beetle. We put the Split in first, the Bug would then have her nose up his bum then the Bay would be high enough to half go over the back end of the Beetle.
Back we came to the UK and waited a few months for them to arrive. After what seemed like forever, we got a call saying they were here. So I drove from Bristol to Tilbury Docks to have a looksie. I picked my Dad up from the airport on the way and my Mum met us there complete with Landrover and trailer. They were sat in a huge shed, and had come through the shipping process without as much as a scratch - phew!
the only issues was that Ted had a flat tyre, but that was soon pumped up.
We'd sprayed the number plates on them and suck stickers all over them to make sure that they didn't get 'lost'. As you can see from this pic, I'd taken off those horrible trailer rear lights off before shipping!
Engine of unknown size or if it works:
Would he have been a 1200 originally?
He was then loaded onto the trailer (wrong way, I know) and taken up to my parent's house:
The other 2 were taken on a massive lorry to my house in Bristol.
Anyways - that's pretty much what's happened until now. Ted got unloaded at my parents house and put into a barn. He lived there for a couple years and then moved to another barn - a very exciting life!
He's currently living at the back of this barn - with this lot for company. You can see my Mum's Beetle cab in the pic:
And now one my my New Beetles is living there too:
The front seats are a different colour to the back ones - is this normal?
All nice and dry in the corner:
Nice and solid:
I haven't found any welding on him yet, but I haven't really had a good enough look round him to be honest.
So as you can see, in almost 4yrs.... not much has happened! Last time I was at my parents I started pulling off the fibreglass over the rear lights - it appears that the holes for the lights are still pretty much perfect, which is good! I forgot to take pics though, so it'll have to wait until I next see him.
Basically, that's Ted! It's all we know about him. I'm still trying to work out what colour he was - at the moment the 'favourite' is Beryl green.
We'll work on him as and when - so it will probably be about 2 days a year!
The plan is to return him back to stock - and keep him as a microbus. We already have another Split which is lowered, IRSd etc and fitted out for camping (he an ex Devon, unfortunatly a previous owner ripped out the original interior) - we don't need 2 of the same. Plus we have a Bay to camp in too (once we've restored him), and a T5 which doubles up as a camper. We don't have another microbus, and with the amount of microbusses which must get turned into campers, there can't be that many left.