He had purchased it in Feb. of 1998 from a used car lot in Chicago with 117k miles (He only drove it 7k miles in 16 years). It has a lot of surface rust spots, but the frame looks very solid. He claimed to have kept it garages since he purchased it. I mainly jumped on it due to the originality. It looks to be completely stock, even down to the factory radio. It is very hard to find an unmolested bus of any vintage these days.
The tires were awful, but I couldn't get a set of 14" truck tires on the weekend in Springfield, MO. The only warehouse that carried them was already closed. So we headed back to OKC hoping for the best. Just passed Tulsa the steering wheel begin shaking a lot. Had to stop and swap out the left front tire, it was about to blow. Made it the rest of the way without incident. The next morning there was a nice puddle of coolant underneath, right side head gasket was blown. Just another thing added to the list.
First thing I tackled was the radio. It was simply in safe mode, so I figured it would work if I could find the code. I removed it and called Fowler VW with the VIN and Serial stamped into the radio. They called me back in about 15min with the code. I wrote it on the radio itself so it never gets lost again. Not really worried about the tape deck getting stolen.
Next thing to tackle was the latch on the table was stuck shut. I had to remove the entire side panel to get access to the back side. While I was in there I cut-off the bottom couple inches of fiberglass insulation that was a little moldy and was retaining water. You could see the dreaded seem rust has already set in. But I got the table free and everything went back together rather quickly.
My first free afternoon I took it down to Swanson's Tire Co. downtown and had them install 5 new 185R14 Hankook RA08s, $605 out the door. It still had the original Michelin spare in size 205/70R14, but sadly they no longer make a weight rated tire in that size.
The last day it hit 60 degrees I was able to replace the rear shocks. The ones that were on there were not OEM, but I couldn't find any markings to see which brand they were.
I replaced them with Bilstein HDs, which I have had good luck with in the past. It took about 20 minutes per side including jacking up and placing on stands.
I currently have it down at Fleet transmission getting the fluids changed, all the filters and gaskets replaced since I do not know when it was last serviced. I have never owned an automatic VW before, so I want to be sure it is going to go the distance. I also went ahead and ordered the new transmission cooler which replaces the factory heat exchanger that is known to fail dumping ATF into the coolant and vice versa. They are also going to put on the front shocks for me.
It has pretty much been snowing or below 40 degrees since then so I haven't made much other progress. Next up is replacing the springs on the sliding door latch and the big one is pulling the dash to replace the front blower fan and heater core.
