The Volkswagen Type 2 Transporter - When the master mechanic you apprenticed under says he is thinking about selling a restoration that you've witnessed each step of the build and lusted after, you shouldn't think twice! Say, "I'll buy it from you!" and get out your checkbook! My good buddy Jack Morris, the owner of Wolfsburg Motorwerks in Ballard has so many nice cars he couldn't keep this one inside and didn't want the relentless Seattle rain and moisture to destroy all his hard work so he was motivated to find it a good home. Well, how about a 60' x 36' climate-controlled showroom to keep it pristine? It now lives in my new barn and soon it will be raised back to stock ride height with new tires, and with a full-ton cargo capacity transmission, reduction gears and front spindles out of a 1967. Jack and his crew did such a nice job on the restoration, all that's left for me is a couple missing pieces and tweaks. I am always amazed that the wheelbase of the Transporter is exactly the same as the Beetle! It sure is nice to have such a pristine example of one in my collection now.

Thanks to the wonders of eBay, I found the correct owners manual for my Transporter, still in very good shape, the contents of which is available for all to see on TheSamba.com. I love finding all the little missing bits to complete a collection (yes, it's OCD) and completing the "package" that would have been part of the original purchasing experience in the interest of preserving history.

Here's a fun little cut-away drawing that's actually a "fold-out" in the above owners manual and it shows how simple and unusual these little vehicles were. Who sits on top of the front wheels in a modern car? Crash protection? That's for sissys! Hell there aren't even seatbelts in this thing!

Entry: 11/16/11 - The first step of the return to stock riding height arrived today, a set of 5 stock size 6.40 x 15 Firestone 4-ply polyester tires arrived from cokertire.com. These are reproductions of tires from the period and will recreate all the driving sensations, instability and loss of traction that was part of the VW Transporter driving experience... am I crazy? Heck yes, this is about creating a time capsule that takes people back to the technology of the day!

Here's a factory press photo I found on TheSamba.com showing how high the Transporter was designed to ride. The factory tires have the same sidewall pattern as the new Firestone tires. These tires will definitely restore that "baby buggy" look the original VW Transporter had back in the day, looking like it would tip in a good crosswind!

It's the time-consuming little factory-correct details like painting the white inserts on the VW hubcap logo that give a restoration a certain "pop" factor. We live in a wonderful age with the Internet, rather than painstakingly cut a stencil to paint this area, some ingenious person on TheSamba.com came up with pressure-sensitive decals to accomplish the same thing. The important detail is purchasing a professional quality application fluid like RapidTac to allow positioning the decal before it starts to stick. Fun stuff!

Entry: 11/17/11 - Tooling up for some tire changing made forward progress today, an adapter that allows me to use my old tire machine on "wide-5" Volkswagen wheels safely. The tool is actually marketed as a "wheel balancer adapter" by Mainely Custom by Design, Inc. It is very stout plate aluminum, threaded for stock lug nuts and I don't see any reason it won't work perfectly for my application.

Entry: 12/22/11 - Yesterday my old buddy Ken, the painter at Aldercrest Auto Rebuild in Lynnwood surprised me with a cell phone photo of the radio block-off plate I dropped by with an unmarked can of leftover paint a few weeks back.

Today I picked it up, wished everybody Merry Christmas and rushed home to install it in the "Hippie Bus" to see if it matched... Perfect! Ken took the unmarked can of leftover paint and figured out what reducer would work to thin and spray it. I love working with a pro and when warm weather comes, I'll have him work his magic on the remaining defects in the paint.