1979 Bay window kombi project
Posted: Tue Oct 27, 2009 9:43 am
Hi Everybody
I'm new to this forum and so glad I was told about it. My wife and I started a project and I thought I'll share some info. A while back we decided to go on a road trip through South Africa and the best way to do that would be in a VW kombi. We searched Junkmail and newspapers and ended up realizing that a 'Splitty' would unfortunately be too expensive for us, so we ended up on the next best thing, a 1979 Bay Window Type 2. After looking at a number of bodies, we found one we could repair within our time limit (leaving end of March 2010). The interior was close to spotless, which is a great plus since it even still had it's original radio. But the guy we bought it from tried to install a 3L Ford engine in it. He ended up drilling holes in the front to allow for a radiator to be installed inside the kombi! Well, needless to say, the engine was the first thing we sold as scrap metal. The kombi is now still a work in progress, but I'll keep you updated and post photos as we progress.
The kombi is currently in the workshop to repair the holes that in the front and a respray. We got the colour codes from VW for our model and decided on red instead of the green. Apparently red paint is more expensive than the other colours, don't know why, but we're going red anyway. You'll see from the photo's below she still has her original rims and hubcaps. We're sending the bumpers and rims in to be powder coated white again. We're struggling to find a new windscreen and the original aerial, so if someone has any tips, please contact me. For the interior we decided on a two-tone colour scheme - white and red. I'm receiving all the interior panels today, so then the search for an upholstery shop to do the job for us on our limited budget.
My wife's a photographer, so we played around and took some 'before' photos. I'll post more as we go along!
I'm new to this forum and so glad I was told about it. My wife and I started a project and I thought I'll share some info. A while back we decided to go on a road trip through South Africa and the best way to do that would be in a VW kombi. We searched Junkmail and newspapers and ended up realizing that a 'Splitty' would unfortunately be too expensive for us, so we ended up on the next best thing, a 1979 Bay Window Type 2. After looking at a number of bodies, we found one we could repair within our time limit (leaving end of March 2010). The interior was close to spotless, which is a great plus since it even still had it's original radio. But the guy we bought it from tried to install a 3L Ford engine in it. He ended up drilling holes in the front to allow for a radiator to be installed inside the kombi! Well, needless to say, the engine was the first thing we sold as scrap metal. The kombi is now still a work in progress, but I'll keep you updated and post photos as we progress.
The kombi is currently in the workshop to repair the holes that in the front and a respray. We got the colour codes from VW for our model and decided on red instead of the green. Apparently red paint is more expensive than the other colours, don't know why, but we're going red anyway. You'll see from the photo's below she still has her original rims and hubcaps. We're sending the bumpers and rims in to be powder coated white again. We're struggling to find a new windscreen and the original aerial, so if someone has any tips, please contact me. For the interior we decided on a two-tone colour scheme - white and red. I'm receiving all the interior panels today, so then the search for an upholstery shop to do the job for us on our limited budget.
My wife's a photographer, so we played around and took some 'before' photos. I'll post more as we go along!
