Seriously, what's our problem?

I'll start this one by borrowing a quote from Ludwig's Drivers. "Sometimes I forget that these cars aren't really supposed to be around anymore." Suffering from this same forgetfulness, we purchased a '68 bus this week. It is a '68 bus...with '71 axles (disc brakes)...and '74 seats...a roll of carpet...an engine...a transmission...a disconnected front bumper, and that's pretty much it. Literally. (Oh, and thanks again to everyone who sent us links and gave us advice on what to buy.)

We had been going back and forth about whether to buy a project bus or one that was in comfortable and driveable condition. We found this bus (who we've yet to name), and its absence of cancerous rust and an incredibly straight body charmed us into buying ourselves one big ol' heck of a project. We are very excited (ignorant I'm sure, but excited). Hailey--did I ever even mention that we have a Subaru?--got kicked out of the garage, and we are once again a two VW family--hooray!

The new bus has been parked since 1995--our best estimate--and was insured at that time, so we are guessing that A) it ran then and B) the guy who had it parked had good intentions of restoring it. He obviously did some really well done body work, which we are totally excited to not have to do, so thank you anonymous owner!

Here's what the bus looked like when we got her/him (it is currently experiencing gender identity confusion).

...and here are the post junk toss photos

I'm frankly feeling a bit overwhelmed...mostly due to the fact that I replaced the engine compartment seal on Penny this week. Everything went great until I went to start her the next morning and as I did so, a strong smell of gasoline combined with a poorly running engine took the wind out of my sails. I was so careful not to knock anything out of place! I am mad about it and have not yet figured out exactly what the problem is. As I stared at the engine and flipped back and forth between help manuals, I had to ask myself why I love these blasted cars so much and the answer is that we have no idea...we just do.

Out of balance with a project for Penny

Following our failed Grand Canyon road trip of 2008, we started asking around about what might be causing our engine to heat up so darned quickly. The one thing we heard repeatedly was to check the engine compartment seal to ensure that it did not having any holes/missing areas—in other words, make sure it truly was acting as a seal. Rather than doing this immediately, we came up with a quick, albeit horribly tacky remedy, which was to bolt a 20 inch fan to the bottom of our Vanagon. It does the trick, but it really is a temporary solution.

Finally, we got around to figuring out what the engine compartment seal was and when we looked at ours, discovered that about half of the seal was missing. The problem with this is that (being an air cooled vehicle) air is pulled into the engine to cool it, but because the seal is broken, hot air is being pulled into the engine, rather than cooler air. Does that make it an “air heated” engine? (Oh, how witty.)

The images below show the gaps in our engine compartment seal…and also the brand spanking new seal we purchased (and quite obviously have yet to install).

One final thought for today…if you happen across a ’71 bus (transporter, not camper) with minimal rust, that runs and has a decent body, we “have a friend” who is in the market for said vehicle... Oh come on, don't act surprised, you knew it was coming. We tried having only one VW, but our garage feels like a yin with no yang.