My Early bay rear bumper and Script badge finally fitted.
Posted: Mon Feb 24, 2014 11:40 am
Its been a 5 month mission sourcing the correct 1972 model year only rear bumper brackets for my cross over early bay. But perserverance pays I guess.
I received the 2 used bumper brackets from the seller in California USA on 3 February, just before I left for the George car show.
Over the past weekend I managed to first fit the bumper brackets to the bus body and fine-tuned them with a hammer and block to ensure that they fitted as close to straight as possible, after lining up the bumper about 30 times on 2 jack stands, before I was happy to remark them.
I just could not get them to line up with the existing holes in the bumper, so I drilled 2 new holes to ensure that the towbar stiffner could be fitted inside again.
The bumper was a bit dinged and dented and scratched, but all good nic. So I got my hammer and dolley out and straigtened the bumper as best I could. After sanding it down with some P80 and P180, I bought some rattle can white auto primer, and rattle can auto white paint, and painted them. An hour later I fitted them and was quite chuffed with the way it turned out. My bus rear end is finally finished up and looks 10x better even if I say so myself.
Also expoxied the VOLKSWAGEN script badge to the tail gate and added some extra blobs of epoxy inside where the pins come through the tail gate. What a mission removing all the 20 odd screws that hold the tailgate panel and isulation in place. After that, just for peace of mind, I tried to pull it off again, and short of using a screw driver to pry it off, im quite confident its in place for a while... fingers crossed.
Sunday morning, the wife, daughter and I picked up granny and grandpa and went on a little around the peninsula road trip and picnic.... a fun weekend all in!
This weekend... (read Thursday afternoon already) family camping trip with the bus and Venter Slip stream caravan, up the West Coast to return on Sunday afternoon.
Happy times!
I received the 2 used bumper brackets from the seller in California USA on 3 February, just before I left for the George car show.
Over the past weekend I managed to first fit the bumper brackets to the bus body and fine-tuned them with a hammer and block to ensure that they fitted as close to straight as possible, after lining up the bumper about 30 times on 2 jack stands, before I was happy to remark them.
I just could not get them to line up with the existing holes in the bumper, so I drilled 2 new holes to ensure that the towbar stiffner could be fitted inside again.
The bumper was a bit dinged and dented and scratched, but all good nic. So I got my hammer and dolley out and straigtened the bumper as best I could. After sanding it down with some P80 and P180, I bought some rattle can white auto primer, and rattle can auto white paint, and painted them. An hour later I fitted them and was quite chuffed with the way it turned out. My bus rear end is finally finished up and looks 10x better even if I say so myself.
Also expoxied the VOLKSWAGEN script badge to the tail gate and added some extra blobs of epoxy inside where the pins come through the tail gate. What a mission removing all the 20 odd screws that hold the tailgate panel and isulation in place. After that, just for peace of mind, I tried to pull it off again, and short of using a screw driver to pry it off, im quite confident its in place for a while... fingers crossed.
Sunday morning, the wife, daughter and I picked up granny and grandpa and went on a little around the peninsula road trip and picnic.... a fun weekend all in!
This weekend... (read Thursday afternoon already) family camping trip with the bus and Venter Slip stream caravan, up the West Coast to return on Sunday afternoon.
Happy times!
happy times indeed china !!!! 
