Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2020 i VWT Lifestyle

Phill King has been an avid VW enthusiast for many years, previously owning a Karmann Ghia and still runs a Single Cab Pick-Up. Naturally his wife Lorraine and daughter Hannah couldn’t help but get involved in Phill’s passion for air-cooled VWs but the thing that cemented everything was the purchase of a Type 2 that all the family could enjoy together. As Hannah explains: “It all really began in Cornwall, with happy memories of childhood holidays every summer. There always seemed to be so many Campervans around, especially in Perranporth and I guess that’s where our love of them first came from. I remember one particular Bus which was painted purple and the owners clambered out wearing flip flops and I thought, that’s the kind of life I want to…

’90 Type 25 Syncro, Dai Williams Dai Williams has owned his 1990 Syncro for around 14 years and it’s powered by a 2.5 litre Subaru engine conversion, which was he did himself, along with installing an LPG conversion too. Quite a bit of bodywork modification, in the form of wheel arch stretching, lifting and widening, plus extending the rear swinging arms, was required in order to shoehorn in the large wheels. These are Mach 5 wheels 15 X 10, which are made primarily for Land Rovers, but Dai contacted the manufacturer and he made 10 wheels especially to fit his Volkswagen, the only 10 ever made for the Type 25! They are shod with 31 x 10.50 -15 tyres, which are far bigger than you can normally fit on a…

Craig Gonzalez got into VWs four years ago and the one you’re looking at here is his third. He got into them indirectly through his father, who had friends that were into them. It also helped when Craig’s dad said they were easy to work on and relatively cheap, and this, along with how cool they look is what really attracted Craig. He found this ’68 online but it was nestled in the mountains near Crestline CA and the owner wasn’t giving it up without a fight. According to Craig, he’d become really attached to the old Bus, saying: “It was a real hassle to buy it as the seller didn’t seem like he was in the right frame of mind to let it go. When we did eventually do…

I do like a good 007 movie - and not just because there’s quite often an eccentric scientist who looks a lot like me beavering away in the background, while Bond blows things up in the foreground. In another life, I might have been one of the boffins in Q Branch or alternatively dreaming up nefarious schemes in a hollowed out volcano just north of Wolfsburg. Instead, I went to work for VW - the benefits and staff canteen are better, and there’s considerably less likelihood of getting garotted by a Rolex. So, this issue, we’re taking a small break from The VW Year Book, because it probably hasn’t escaped your attention that a new Bond flick is soon to hit cinemas. No Time to Die is the 25th instalment…

With the rolling 40-year MoT and tax exemption, how many times have you seen or heard of Buses that have been imported, registered and are now being driven without ever having a safety check? If you’re anything like us, you’ll have spotted this quite a lot and it’s not especially smart, is it? Even if you’re good with the spanners / welder / paint gun yourself and feel you know your way around a VW blindfolded, if you don’t know the MoT manual inside and out and have access to a brake roller, the correct apparatus to check headlamp beam patterns or windscreen damage, etc. then you really aren’t fully qualified to be able to say if your Bus is genuinely roadworthy. Although MoT exemption is relatively new, there are…

14 March 2020 UK Cruise to Ninove Folkestone (UK) to Ninove (Belgium) facebook.com/ukcruisetoninove 15 March 2020 Freddy Files Ninove (Belgium) facebook.com/ukcruisetoninove 21 – 22 March 2020 VolksWorld Show Sandown Park, Esher www.volksworldshow.com 5 April Rad Sunday Swapmeet Runnymede Hall, Benfleet, Essex www.radsunday.com/ radsunday-swapmeet 9 -13 April Camperfest Roodee Racecourse, Chester www.camperfest.co.uk 10 – 13 April Wonderland 2 – The Dubbers of Oz Chillington Hall, Wolverhampton www.dubscollective.com/ dubs-in-wonderland 7 – 19 May Vee Dub Family 5th Birthday Campout Unity Farm, Brean, Somerset www.veedubfamily.org 19 April Elsecar at the Races Doncaster Racecourse, Doncaster www.elsecarattheraces.com 24 – 26 April Techenders Victoria Farm, Lutterworth www.techenders.co.uk…

Before we all got into proper Buses – VWs – the only buses we knew as kids were the ones that took us to school or into town at the weekend. Of course, there was also the excitement of the school trip – usually on an old coach where the seats – and driver - smelt of stale fags. Happy days. So, why not draw inspiration from those halcyon days of yore and build a bus-themed Bus? You could add all manner of interesting signage; bells and even that weirdly scratchy seat upholstery if you wanted to sleep on something guaranteed to leave you looking like you’d kipped on a porcupine. For a full effect you could listen to Cliff Richards whilst heading off on your summer holiday, but then…

Eddie Pearce is a man with an eye for a cool VW. His car history consists a number of show-winning and magazine featured rides, including his prized Type 25 which is still stashed away. Maybe one day it will venture out again? So, when he decided to look for a new shop truck - something that would also serve as a rolling advert for his paint and bodywork business - The Paintshop Radstock in Bath, Somerset (Tel: 07806 719011) - a VW was the only vehicle on the cards. A while searching the world wide web resulted in a blind bid being thrown down on a T4 with hydraulic tipper bed that was listed on a salvage auction site. With scary words like “mechanical failure” in the listing this particular…

The idea started like our last big road trip and holiday in our Late Bay, to the South of France. Kate was musing over how beautiful Provence is, but that you don’t get the beach experience and how it could be uncomfortably hot in a Camper with no air-con. There seemed to be only one place we could camp by the coast in virtual solitude during the summer. Sweden! With one of the longest coastlines in Europe, thousands of lakes and low population it shouldn’t be too difficult to find that perfect camping spot. My youngest son Will and I had cycled and kayaked around the Stockholm archipelago ten years ago. It left happy memories of just how beautiful and clean the country was. Just one big issue - would…

THROTTLE KIT This awesome little bit of kit replaces the standard and normally very worn out throttle linkage that connects the accelerator pedal to the cable. With swivel joints on the pushrod from the pedal, a sealed roller bearing in the main mount and an additional return spring all-in-all designed to give a smoother pedal action and stopping the need of adding an extra spring on your carb(s). Available for most models and years online from £51.60. buttysbits.com Sliding door track runners Sliding doors are fab – when they work as VW intended – but over the years, the track runner units wear out, making them a swine to close quietly on sleepy campsites. Decent replacements have been difficult to come by but these remanufactured items are direct copies of…

ULTRA MAGNUS(SON) Hi Camper&Bus, my name is Rickard and I’m from Sweden. Here are some pictures of my home-built pop-top Camper kit. As you can see, it loads on the back of my stock Bay Window Crew Cab. I did all of the work myself out on my driveway in the Spring / Summer of 2017. I cut the main shapes out of an old fibreglass caravan. In 2018 I won a small prize at the Bugrun, it was great fun. It has space to sleep four people and you can see some more build pictures in the beginning of my Instagram page at rm_engrg Kind Regards, Rickard Magnusson, Sweden Hi Rickard, thanks so much for sharing. Your conversion/addition/special load/whatever you want to call it, is quite frankly a work…

Don’t poke the bear, let sleeping dog’s lie, never rub another man’s rhubarb… Each one a powerful mantra all of us would do well to adopt for a long and happy life; especially if we plan on allowing an air-cooled Volkswagen into it. The message behind each of those well-known sayings means pretty much the same thing - leave well enough alone. And that’s sound advice for anyone thinking of poking around the underside of a Bay Window Camper - especially a right hooker that has spent it’s entire life right here in Blighty. And so it was for Neil and Tanya Russ, the couple who own this admittedly now rather lovely Bay Window. But that wasn’t always the case, as Neil reveals: “We’d owned a caravan for a number…