VW Type 2 Camper
Now we’re out of lockdown we can start motoring again
As you’ll have seen in the technical section of the past couple of issues, Ed Hughes is now well on with the VW’S engine rebuild – and what he found when he stripped it down was far worse than we had expected. Although many of the internals were new, they appeared to have been assembled in haste by a ham-fisted engine builder and, as a result, the need has arisen to replace or refurbish almost every part of the air-cooled flat four.
Ed’s taking a month off reporting on the engine while the crankcase is away, along with a brand new crankshaft and the original flywheel and (unworn) clutch for line boring and dynamic balancing. With luck, we’ll be able to bring you an update on the engine work this time next month.
Progress has been slow but steady on the van itself as we await a date for the engine’s return, but our epic Camper Round the Coast run in aid of Prostate Cancer UK now has a provisional plan in place so we are starting to ramp up the effort again. There’s nothing like a deadline to give us the impetus to crack on. There has been some progress this month too, however…
James Walshe made the mistake of confessing a love for ‘fiddly jobs like dashboards.’ That landed him with the task
of cleaning contacts, replacing bulbs and reassembling the dashboard of the VW, as well as re-fitting the padded bar which serves to hold the upper and lower dash panels together. Now that the panels are resplendent in fresh Ocean Blue paint, James had to take great care to avoid chipping them as he lined the 6mm holes up and pushed the bar into position before winding on a fresh set of Nyloc nuts.
Grot discovery
While James rummaged behind the dash on the nearside of the van, Matt Tomkins broke out the screwdriver and started poking at the floor on the offside – specifically the driver’s floor. We’d spotted a couple of pin holes while cleaning back old underseal and applying a fresh coating of Rustbuster’s excellent Techshield black underbody wax a few months ago, but Matt’s screwdriver revealed that the corrosion went further than we first hoped.
An expertly applied skim of filler had concealed the grot that was now revealed in all its glory. Luckily this is a known weak spot. A phone call to Andy Gregory at Heritage Parts Centre was all that was required, and we had a replacement high quality repair panel on its way, along with a new throttle pedal and
‘An expertly applied skim of filler hid a load of holes…’
bracket, which were also past their best. A few days later and welding ‘Stig’ Clive Jefferson laid the replacement panel on top of the camper’s floor pan, drew around it, then chopped out the old floor to ensure all traces of corrosion were removed. With the old metal out of the way, Clive took the opportunity to clean up and paint the tops of the chassis rails and declared them fit to fight another day before welding the new floor panel in place. With a full set of new window seals keeping the van watertight, we’re confident that the new panel should last a good many more years, so long as whoever buys the van at auction when it’s sold to raise funds for Prostate Cancer UK doesn’t empty their welly boots into the footwell too often! Round the coast
So what next? Well, we are now working to an August deadline for completion, and provisional Camper Round the Coast dates of September 6-10… Covid being the big governing factor here.
You can come and meet the finished product at the Beaulieu Autojumble on September 4-5 and, of course, it will be the star of the show at the NEC Classic Motor Show on November 12-14.
Before then we want to hear from you. In the next issue we will be launching Camper Round the Coast that, we hope, will raise a substantial sum for Prostate Cancer UK, Lancaster Insurance’s chosen charity. Start thinking now about which beaches you love, where on the coast you want to take your classic and where you think we should turn up with the van, plus the PC team and their classics.
When we are out on the road, visiting your favourite beaches, we will be shaking the collection tins, so please drop your shrapnel in. This sum will be added to the amount the van eventually raises at auction. It has been a horrific year for everyone and sadly a lot of charitable organisations have suffered a loss of income. Hopefully this will redress some of that.