and our hands are dirty

We started out by sanding like madmen and painted the inside of the front cab. We decided to go with dove blue on this bus—as it was the original color. Dove blue also happens to be my husband’s favorite bus color and I, frankly, don’t like it. It isn’t that I DIS-like it; it just doesn’t do anything for me. Anyway, Craig didn’t have to put up much of a fight on this one because I like to keep history intact when it is feasible.

There was quite a lot of useable paint remaining in the cab so we chose to leave everything we could original VW paint. It looks pretty darn good and I don’t think the transitions are too horribly obvious. It’s a nice mix of clean and patina.

The second project was installation of the new wiring harness. The project took a ridiculous amount of time—three evenings and a Saturday morning. Here’s why: Since the bus is a double door bus, it has a belly pan welded on the bottom, which means that rather than being able to work with the new harness in an open frame channel, we had to string the harness through a big long inaccessible tube that ran the length of the belly pan, accessible only through the frame. That wouldn’t be so hard except for the fact that someone had pulled the old harness without leaving a guide line behind.

First, we had to run a fish puller through this tube. At both ends of the belly pan, there is a plate with a hole in the center through which the fish puller had to go. The problem was, there was no way to see this hole or to know where it was in relation to the fish puller. I say with near certainty that we couldn’t have been successful without my mom’s “SeeSnake” (inspection camera) which allowed us to see the hole and after much labor and frustration, we finally were successful. (I guess we could have cut into the belly pan and frame but I don’t like that idea.) Following this, I started wiring gauges, fuse box, and switches (which was way too much fun by the way). The harness we purchased had matching wire colors to the original harness which was incredibly helpful.

(That's a blurry pic of my mom under the bus. Thanks Mom.)

Now, we’ve begun assembly of the front beam…pictures and info to come!