The Windows are In

Saturday, we had some guys come over who are part of the Bus Pilots Association. Chad was our expert--and he taught us all how to install windows. We are so grateful for his help. The installation ended up being much easier than I had anticipated…as long as you have thin nylon rope and four people working on the window.

I’ve heard it said that people have done this job alone. I think that’s a VW urban legend.

We are still missing one window and the windshield. I went to pick up the pizza and when I got back, the guys were working on installation of the windshield. Just as I walked back into the garage, the windshield cracked all the way down the middle. I think I was the least disappointed of anyone there seeing as how I hadn’t put any energy into the installation of said windshield.

As you may recall, we pulled all of the windows out of Doris before having her hauled away, therefore, we had two windshields. We decided that we’d rather not risk breaking a second windshield and left the task for a professional. In light of this, the only advice we have to offer on installation of a bay window windshield is—don’t push hard on the center of the glass.

The other window is missing because someone (not protecting anyone here, I just can’t remember who it was) cut the vent window seal when we removed the windows. Wolfsburg West’s seal kit doesn’t come with replacement vent window seals, so we had planned to just re-use what we had. This worked great for the two seals that we hadn’t cut. The bad news—that one freaking vent window seal is going to set us back $50. Lame.

All setbacks aside, BB looks fantastic with her new windows. The window tinting compliments the yellow paint very nicely—she’s one hot mama!

Oh, and not to overshadow BB's windows or anything, but here's Chad's horribly fantastic '66 21 window.

Interior and Emblems

We’ve been working on BB’s interior. Craig came home from camping and helped me come up with a solution for the panels and here they are! They aren’t original or anything, but I think they look pretty decent. Same with the carpet. I spent all morning on Saturday scrubbing these carpets on our front lawn and they turned out to be in good shape. I don't want to glue the carpet down, so it is just sitting there right now. I'm not sure what negative impacts this might have, but until I think of any, this situation seems good to me.

I didn’t want to put the panels on the back of the drivers and passenger seats as I thought it looked better without and that area is one of my favorite parts of the paint job. I thought it would be a shame to cover them up. Craig conceded. He must love me. :-)
Also, we purchased both emblems from a guy in Oregon (Oh Oregon, we love you) as BB came with neither and received them last week. Craig was napping when they arrived, so he woke up with a shiny VW on his chest.
We put the rear emblem on last night. When we removed Bluebell's emblem to paint, we had rather flipantly dropped the rubber pieces that hold the emblem on, on the ground as we had broken the little pegs in the process and thought them to be disposable. Last night when we went to put on the new emblem we realized that we had no rubber pieces...but I knew they were on the ground somewhere. After a bit of searching, we were miraculously able to find three black rubber pieces (the fourth peg was broken so three were all that we needed). Yea!We are still trying to figure out how to mount the front emblem. Our best guess is that this bus had a wheel on the front—as it was a camper and then someone put bondo over the holes. In light of this I’m pretty apprehensive about drilling into bondo, and potentially maiming the nose of the bus. I’m half tempted to leave the emblem off, but the nose looks so sad without it. Suggestions anyone?

Introducing Jasmine.

On Tuesday one of my co-workers sent me a link to an 11 window '65 splitty. It looked to be in solid shape and was decently priced and I sent the link to Craig.

We went to look at the bus--just for fun. We told the seller that we are bus people and he asked whether we had anything for a partial trade. Without having really discussed this previously, I said "well, that one I guess" pointing to Bluebell. You can use your powers of deduction on the rest of the story. It is a bit foggy, but somehow this beauty ended up in our garage. (I'm still kind of laughing about this as it was so unanticipated.)




I'm still not totally clear on the history--I've got the M-code partially decoded, but I've never done a splitty M-code before so I'm having some trouble. As she sits, she has a Z-bed in the back with no middle seat, and a jump seat--very beautifully constructed by the previous owner. Personally, my favorite features are: first--she is charming to drive, second--the headliner--it is original and only has a few holes, and third--the floor. I have a freakish obsession with linoleum. When we went to look at Jasmine, there was a rubber mat on the floor, but I could see linoleum peeking through which I found to be terribly exciting. B-e-a-utiful.

The bad news--I think Craig and I may have to do rock-paper-scissors every morning to see who gets to drive Jasmine.

Craig went camping tonight and his request was that I relax while he was gone. Naturally, when he said "relax" I heard "work on BB". I thought I would take on the tedious task of installing the interior panels. There are a LOT of screws. This was my reaction when I found the bag of screws tonight.
As it turned out the screws are not the right size, which is royally frustrating. I ended up cleaning the garage instead in preparation for "garage night" this coming Saturday. Some folks from the local VW club are going to help us install BB's windows. I'm hoping the result will be that the seals will look more like seals and less like snakes on our living room floor.

"If you're in such a hurry you could lower a rope or a tree branch or find something useful to do."

Progess has been slow but sure lately on BB. Slow progress tends to be easier on the pocketbook, so I’m not complaining.
We had worked so hard and fast to get BB and Bluebell ready to paint that we were completely burnt out by the time the paint was on the buses and Craig’s brother had left. We took a couple of days off and, as I mentioned earlier, we started putting things back together last week.

Even though we had carefully labeled everything that came off of Doris, I seem to be repeatedly meeting the challenge of screws not quite fitting in holes on BB. I’ve almost got all of the lights in and Craig has been working on removing the wheels so that we can paint the rims. You’d think this would be about a 15 minute project. The problem is that the lug nuts are STUCK. Craig, his dad and his brother combined forces and attempted to remove one of them two weeks ago. They gave up.

My big tough husband is making progress, but it is taking about 16 times longer than anticipated.

I keep getting heat for “forgetting” to put pictures on the blog of myself and only including pics of Craig, so here you go. A picture of me. How lovely. PS. I did a write up last night of our camping/caving weekend at Shoshone, but Blogger was being a *%&$# and I lost the post. If Blogger was an actual physical object, I would have kicked it. Anyway, more to come on that once I’ve regained the energy that I require to tell stories; which, for me is not a small amount.