Aircooled VW South Africa

Just found this bus the other day, went up to a farm outside Springbok on the 23rd December to go fetch it. This came from telling a work colleague of mine about my interest in vw kombi's and about two months later he told he about this kombi. It was laying on their neighbours farm and they came accross it while searching for some missing goats. They took pictures and emailed it back to me, and two days later myself and my girlfriend went to fetch it.

From the farm house it was a 2 hour 4x4 trail to get to it, about 1.5 hour was on a track, the rest there was no road. It really was in the middle of nowhere.

According to the farmer it belonged to his father and he guesses it has been laying there for about 20 years. Apparently it broke down there and was just left, but they must have come and stripped parts off it at a later stage.

Here is the first sight I got of it.

Here are some closer pictures, there are some really good rust free parts on this bus, but unfortunately because it had no suspension on it, it was laying on the ground so the side sills are rotten. It still had doors handles and the mechanisms on the cargo doors which still worked 100%.





Check the two scoops this farmer made, it has two thick pipes running down from the roof to the engine bay. This is the most extreme I have ever seen.

Wow, congrats on a very special find

Glad it could be saved!

Loading it onto the trailer. Luckily the Jeep had a winch on the front so it made it a lot easier. Also drove the Jeep up ramps on the front wheels to tilt the trailer, levered wood underneath the bus and it slid on beautifully.







Preparing for the 2 hour trip back to the farm house, we really had to tie it down everywhere so that it wouldn't move on the 4x4 track.

Small clip of a part of the trip back to the farm house.

The boot lid was missing from the bus, so the next day I phoned the farmer, who was down in Cape Town and asked if he knew what happened to it, he said it was used as a roof on a tractor years ago and he thinks it has been thrown away but he gave us permission to go have a look in the sheds on his farm, that was another long drive to get to it. After bout 30 minutes of searching we found it, with some other parts from the tractor attached.

Pics of the trip back home, took 7 hours to drive from the farm outside Springbok back to Somerset West. Fuel added up quite substantially as my old Mercedes does 4.5 km/l while towing, but it does have 412 000km on it and I am sure it is not running as efficient as when it was brand new. And I really need to have the rear springs re-sprung as my grandfather used to use this car for towing almost every weekend back in the 80's and my use has dropped it even more.

awesome!!! Good find.
no roads or trails leading to it... makes me wonder how it got there in the first place.

what are your plans for it?

If it took you guys 2hours in a 4WD, how did that bus get there?

Greta find! Looking at those scoops on the back suggest to me somehow that it should have a rat look as it already has rodent ears.
Exciting project so early in 2011.
Good luck!

Awsome find

All I can say is wow, what a trip! Shows you the places these busses can reach!

Good luck with the resto, if that's the plan. Great dedication to fetch it

Tony Z wrote:awesome!!! Good find.
no roads or trails leading to it... makes me wonder how it got there in the first place.

what are your plans for it?

...Times twice

Nice find what are the plans for this one