Innholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2021 i VWT Lifestyle

WHALE HEAT AIR 3 GT Where from: www.whalevanlife.com How much: £750 Looking for the ultimate gas heater for your van conversion? Then look no further than the Heat Air 3 GT, the latest gas heater in the Whale range, specifically designed for T5 and T6 campervans. Lightweight, compact, and it’s super quiet too. Plus, it fits underneath your van to free up valuable space inside. Kit includes comms cable, flue kit and easy to use heat control panel. Ooh, we feel warmer already! T4 LOCKS Where from: www.heritagepartscentre.com How much: £19.95 Whether you have a mismatch of locks, suffered a break in, or misplaced your key in a moment of madness, Heritage can help get your T4 secure again, and functioning from a single opener once more. Produced with the…

Andy and Annelise Martin, ’71 Deluxe Bay Window My wife and I have been into Volkswagens for many years and have been lucky enough to have owned a couple of Splits, various Beetles and an Early Bay over the years. We have owned our current Bus, Bluebell, for over eight years and she was always destined to be used for what she was built for…. ferrying our five horrible children about! The tin top Transporter can seat seven comfortably and her 1641cc engine has propelled us to Cornwall and back for the last seven years as well as driving round and round Paris looking for Disneyland. She is a left-hand drive and had sat in the US sun for many years before being imported by House of Dub so all…

“Strangely enough, I have a picture from a 1966 Surfer magazine. There was a competition to win a VW surf van, and I always kept that magazine. It was my inspiration to buy one,” says retired civil servant Paul Knowles. Though Paul was a founding member of the East Kent Surf Club at Joss Bay back in 1966 it would be more than 40 years later that he and his 1965 13-Window Deluxe came together. There was only so much he could fit into a busy life. “I’ve always been involved with classic cars since I was a teenager,” Paul explains. “I started off with a Morris 8 back in the sixties, but for nearly 40 years I had a collection of old pre-war MGs, right up to the early…

www.quickfitsbs.comIf you own a Bus and want to keep the family belted-up, in the kindest possible way of course, worry not because we visited Middlesex-based seat belt experts Quickfit (0208 2060101, www.quickfitsbs.com) to find out how it’s done. Said boss Stuart Quick: “We’ve been fitting belts to 2-3 VW Buses a week on average – Splits, Bays, T25s – you name it. There’s very little we can’t do, and can even retro fit belts using period webbing and chrome fittings – although we wouldn’t recommend chrome for children’s’ seats.” As Stuart explains, making rear passengers secure in a Bus is even more important than in a saloon because they’ve got further to travel forward if you brake suddenly. It’s the law It became compulsory to wear seat belts in the…

It’s nice if you can make a few pennies out of a passion, and that’s precisely how Cool Campers’ proprietor Gary Tarrant got started. He’s been restoring Volkswagen Buses for over 20 years at his Bournemouth premises, working alongside his wife, Katie, who has her own trimming business next door, Totally Trimmed. It’s a seriously close knit affair (sorry!), and one that’s driven by enthusiasm, a real desire to do things properly and a belief that if you start off with a solid rust-free ’shell in the first place you can’t go far wrong… C&B: So how did the whole VW thing begin? GT: “It’s kind of a long story. I trained as a graphic designer but soon realised I didn’t want to spend my whole life indoors, so packed…

Essex-based Alun Williams has long been a VW fan, but this particular project was a little different to most – it was actually a wedding present from his in-laws. This was back in 2005 and, of course, Alun and his wife Rachel were over the moon with their new acquisition. However, this was a project, not a finished vehicle, so Alun had his work cut out to get the thing up to scratch and ready for some weekend adventures. At first, Alun decided to give the Van what he describes as “a quick spruce up,” to get it roadworthy. The theory being it might be possible to subject it to a rolling restoration, thereby spreading the cost and work load, whilst also keeping it on the road and having some…

PHANTOM CURTAIN Whilst midway through restoring my ’72 crossover Bay Westy, the issue of curtains arose. Armed with a scrap of the old material Trim Shack was able to provide a set approaching the original design and fabric which appealed because I wanted to keep things looking close to factory. When it came to fitting them though, a bit of trial and error ensued. When ruched back (particularly with regards the rear window) the retaining strap proved too short* so longer ones were made. However, the biggest obstacle was the large cupboard alongside the bed as I could see no way of getting the curtain behind it without dismantling the cupboard. I am wondering if indeed this Westy did have a curtain, and if so whether it was fitted before…

Thirty-three year-old construction site manager Craig Kincaid and his wife, Carla, aren’t new to VW Transporters. They had a T5 Kombi previously, and Carla’s dad’s always been around Volkwagens, and even had his Beetle in sister title VolksWorld a few decades back. But this time they wanted a blank canvas, so bought this 2017 LWB T6 4Motion Panel Van in 2018, deeming it to be the perfect starting point for a home-grown conversion. They’ve named it ‘Dory’ after Carla’s late nan Doreen who loved adventures and helped make the whole thing possible. Said Craig: “It was a works van and we fell in love with the Oryx white paintwork. We were lucky because the Zito wheels and sidebars were on there, and it had already been lowered by 70mm on…

Hailing from Thorpe Bay in Essex, just a short stone’s throw from the VW Mecca that is Southend-on-Sea, Nick and Ali picked up this 1971 US-spec Westfalia Campermobile from Karmann Konnection in 2012. Originally from Schuppan’s VW dealership in Grand Island, Nebraska, the Pastel White Bus that is now affectionately known as Betty was a great starting place for the couple to make her their own. Being a relative newcomer to the world of air-cooled VWs, Nick wanted to ensure he was going to get the right people for the job, so with some thorough internet research, he paid a visit to VW restoration and maintenance specialists, VW Down Under in Essex. After meeting VWDU’s main man, Paul Mullinger, Nick was confident that Betty would be in safe hands and…

Boss Stuart Quick has a wealth of knowledge garnered through years of fitting belts to cars – including classics and camper vans! He says the only real headaches come when anchor points are too rusty to provide a secure anchor point – and here welding in new plates is the only option. Buses where the upright of the rear seat is located over the front of the engine inspection cover also present headaches, but Stuart says a rod can be welded in across the width of the Van to which belts can be fitted. On conversions where the seat cushions are fixed with Velcro, Stuart recommends making a more secure fitting to prevent submarining. Meanwhile, on Early Bays where the rear seat is made of thin ply, he often beefs…

POST-BREXIT PARTS What’s been the effect, and what are some companies doing about it? We’ve heard reports of increased costs, more red tape and horrendous delays sourcing parts from overseas with some retailers suspending UK deliveries and others unable to get items sent. While a last-minute trade agreement suggests that depending on origin, tariffs won’t be charged on imports, it’s not ‘business as usual’ as firms and carriers now face more admin and revised VAT rules. As a guide, for goods sold into the UK valued above £135, the importer is still responsible for paying the UK VAT, usually charged to the recipient prior to the delivery. But since January 1, business to consumer sales under £135 have changed. VAT is now collected at the point of sale rather than…

COACHBUILT HEAVEN Hi C&B, it was great to see the write up on Karmann coachbuilts in the mag (Rear View Mirror, February 2021), and I was chuffed to see a pic of my Gipsy. We’ve had it since 2009 and it took me over a year to find. I’d seen one at a show at Oswestry and my search was prolonged because I wanted RHD. My first car when I passed my test in the early ’70s was a 1200 Beetle and I progressed to a Devon pop-top Bay a few years later, then a T4 high top. What started getting on our nerves was you get up in the morning having to put away the bed before you can have a cup of tea. Enter the Gipsy! Although we…

“It was at Santa Pod one rainy weekend when it dawned on me that sitting in a van beat camping in a Bug any day. I was chatting to Ritchie King and he showed me his latest Californian import, a ’67 SO42 in faded Pearl White, with all the wood inside, and those really un-cool louvre windows, which he said he was going to keep and use.” Richard and Sylvie East’s epiphany at a damp drag strip led them to look more closely into buying a Camper of their own. It was at the Karmann Konnection swap meet in the autumn of 1997 that they spied Ritchie’s Westy again. This time it was for sale and so began the first steps on the road to Camperdom. A bit of all…

Lowered, slammed, stanced or whatever you want to call it, VWs and any kind of lump or bump in the road don’t get on well, be it pothole, raised iron works, sunken manhole or unlucky pheasant. This always leads to vital parts on the underside taking a battering. Deformed front valances, heat exchangers, exhausts and engine support bars are commonplace on your average slammed Bus but because they are underneath they can’t be seen and so therefore usually go un-repaired and continue to take a hammering. The latter was sadly the case on this lowered 1970 Early Bay. It’s by no means ‘Slammed’ but it does tend to make contact with tarmac fairly often. We initially thought it was the exhaust or perhaps the rear over riders, before realising it…

One of the reasons for the phenomenal success of Volkswagens – other than the obvious factors of them being well-built, reliable, competitively-priced and charismatic – was how effectively they were advertised. In the early postwar years, the company had quite a tricky task. During the 1950s, there was still considerable anti-German sentiment around because of WW2. And, given that VW had a, shall we say, somewhat uncomfortably close connection with the deposed Nazi regime, the company had to do more than just try and sell its vehicles. It had to attempt to create a whole new persona for itself. One that didn’t have anything to do with bad-tempered, moustachioed Austrians with a tendency to invade Poland. However, it took a little while for Volkswagen to find its groove. Initially, it…