1975 VW Bus Westfalia, built for an Alaska to Argentina Journey

[TheBusAndUs]

Note:

You can follow us on Instagram www.instagram.com/thebusandus or www.thebusandus.com

My girlfriend and I bought a 75 bus in Hope, Alaska and tore it apart in hopes of driving from Alaska to Argentina

It needed more work than we wanted to do. We figured out how to paint, weld and do body work through mostly forum research.

It was a long process, mostly done in our gravel driveway.

Post Paint, new pop up, yakima rack system. We just used a $25 paint gun from Napa

 

[TheBusAndUs]

Trying to figure out how to put a Subaru in there.

1997 2.2 Subaru motor.

Piecing together an interior

Crappy picture, but BEFORE

AFTER (during the build)

I used a new radiator made for a Dodge Ram. It's dual core and fits between the frame rails well. Here it is with its scoop.

 

[TheBusAndUs]

We were 4 months into the build and losing steam. We felt in way over our heads with the body work alone. Now I was trying to figure out how to get the Subaru running correctly, had to find a bigger transmission and a bunch of other stuff. We wanted to leave on the trip, but hadn't really had time to research as we had been consistently working on the bus trying to get it going.


It's coming together at this point, at least it looked pretty good. Seeing visual progress really helped us continue.

I modified a jetta starter that worked with my transmission, it was much stronger so it would turn the subaru.

Small stuff kept coming up. Constantly having to tap new threads and deal with general rust issues had me cursing the fact that we bought this $500 a bus. We would have saved thousands and months of time by buying one in California and shipping it up to work on it.

We would order parts, pay insane shipping prices to Alaska, and then deal with the companies having shipped the wrong parts.

We had hoped to leave mid summer, suddenly it was snowing.

We moved it into a garage in hopes of finishing it quickly. We found some Eurovan seats for sale, a giant upgrade that recline all the way and have arm rests. We modified the bulkhead and added a swivel.

 

[TheBusAndUs]

We ordered some conversion parts from the UK like the throttle body reverser and a modified throttle cable system.

We drove the bus. It didn't like to stop. So we tore apart the brakes.

Learning to rebuild every system became sort of fun, the deeper we got the more comfortable we felt doing mechanical work. We also were feeling that we could deal with on the road issues better.

We drove it a bit more after the brakes and new shocks. It was doing better but we still needed to do more interior work and find the 091 larger transmission. But it was nice to drive it outside during the warmer than normal winter.

 

[TheBusAndUs]

We decided to use a Summit Racing generic heater, mounted it between the front seats. It's only 8" high so we could still walk through once we mounted a wood plate on top of it. We routed it through the stock piping in the dash so we have defrost. We also have one tube running forward toward our feet and one heading back into the "living room"

We ran into engine issues, it turned out to be a mad MAF. The MAF was reading full load even at 0 throttle. So when we turned the engine over fuel would pour out of the exhaust. It was a bit hard to track down but eventually we got a hold of one of these computers that reads all of your OBD2 sensors and we saw what the MAF was doing.

You might be seeing a lot of silver lining around, that is the EZ Cool / Dynamat mix we did for sound / insulation.

We found a donor bus in Alaska and took their dash panel. Our speedometer wasn't working correctly, and fuel gauge was totally inoperable. We modified it to fit this 4 " 4 in 1 gauge so we can monitor the engine without using our OBDII Bluetooth app.

The two red LED's indicate when the radiator fans turn on (they turn on staggered from the factory 200F and 210F).

Finally took it on it's first real road trip. We encountered a ton of wind, rain, and snow. The mudflaps helped a lot. The wind tossed it around like crazy and we knew we had to get a heavy duty sway bar. Also, at 55MPH we were at 3000 RPM. We would blow the engine up running 65 MPH all the time. We needed to find the transmission.

We installed an electric pump for the windshield sprayer, stock it is sort of like a bicycle pump you pump with your hand. It was inoperable (of course).

We also decided to replace all steering components, ball joints etc. Every rubber joint, seal etc has been just destroyed because this thing sat around in salty environments for years.

Finally found the transmission I needed, had it regeared for a taller 4th gear, and had it at my house in january! It was time to start planning the trip.

 

[TheBusAndUs]

We decided, lets hit the road. We put a few hundred miles on her a packed up. We had already quit our jobs, we had to store all our stuff in Alaska.

Interior came out pretty much how we wanted.

You can see the Engel fridge in there.

We added a rocket box in Seattle. This made the world of difference, being able to store everything.

We had a roll cage shop in Sacramento build us a custom swing out bumper for our Tire (AT2 General Grabber) and two jerry cans. We decided to just use lighter plastic cans, and we glad we did. 4 Gallons was plenty.

200 Watts of Solar

Finally got a HD sway bar. It made the world of difference.

Now we're making dust clouds in Baja

 

[Abitibi]

Wow, and I thought I had it rough working in my asphalted driveway! Impressive considering how far gone your poor van was in your 2nd picture. That's quite the transformation, well done and have a great time on your venture!

Cheers
Mr. D

 

[TheBusAndUs]

Thanks Abitidbi, it was quite the struggle coming from someone who hasn't done much beside the average tune up. It was a 8 month total life takeover build taken down to a few posts here. I appreciate when others appreciate it

 

[mtnbike28]

That was great work saving that bus! Looks wonderful and since you did all teh work, WHEN it breaks down, you can fix it. If you bought someone's project, you would always be guessing what they did. Have a great trip!

 

[BajaSportsmobile]

What a hell of a lot of work!!!

Turned out nice - nice enough that I took some pictures of it at Baja Beans in El Pescadero a few Sundays ago.
Just a couple of kilometers from our house:

VIVA BAJA!

 

[BajaSportsmobile]

Was this rig with you?

 

[TheBusAndUs]

He was for a few days, that's benjy. He has a few articles on expedition portal I believe.

 

[TheBusAndUs]

My girlfriend and I have put over 10000 miles on it so far.. Most of Baja we were caravaning with another Vanagon.

We ran a propane bottle fed stove through the US and Canada but the struggles of finding propane coleman canisters($$$) and filling the below the bus tank led us to moving to a white gas / gasoline fed stove.

We have had a lot of requests to see our cabinet set up. It's messy but I thought putting a real picture up would be more fitting. It's hard to organize in a big cabinet.

How do we arrange things? Here's a bottom bed down pic. Uke Velcrowed to the side. Custom top cabinet showing and custom top side cabinet showing.

Bottom Up

This pic, it shows our Suburban propane heater, it wasn't a clean install but we were rushed to get it in before driving through Canada in February.

I was struggling hard against the wind so I installed a HD front sway bar while at a friends place in Newport. He has a nice old bus that matched quite nicely.

200 Watts of Solar, inside of the luggage rack, yes please. Build thread on that coming soon.

I had a swing out bumper made in Sacramento at a roll cage shop.

 

[Burlydirtyhippy]

Super nice rig! We have been following on the Instagram, inspiration for sure!

 

[ljense8]

Very cool build. I would love to do something like this.