We towed it to his farm and it just stayed there. The only thing he did was smash the windscreen! He ground out the bell housing on my 1600 gearbox to fit the 2000 type 4 and re-welded proper mounts for the type 4 to fit, but not even he could fit the type 4 into a 1600 bus. It's not actually that hard just that they were all inept.
Another winter later the bus was towed home still without the windscreen and the rustiest bus ever seen.

Plan C - scrap it and buy another bus!

On the way we called in at some paint shops for costs of proper repairs, £4000 was the minimum quote! Surly the sensible thing to do would be to scrap it!!!!!!!!!????

I saved some money and my mum said she would lend me some more to get the van done properly, (now here comes the big bills).

I took it to PCC motor bodies to begin its journey back to life - The proper rebuild.

The deal was to have every piece of weld and work that had previously been done on the van had to be taken out as none was MOT worthy or strong enough to hold the weight of the van. And all the rust in the van had to go this is where the REAL money started to go but it was going in the right places so I didn't really mind. If I bought all the original panels they would paint and rebuild it for £3300.

I bought a set of Porsche Teledial wheels at £80 from a scrappy in Exeter, put them on the bus and then sold the Fuchs wheels at They look crap on bays and a genuine NOS front end was better value. The Fuchs wheels can still be seen on Ian McDowell's 2.3-litre beetle today - sweet as! (Sorry about the centre caps they were nicked by assholes.)

The paint job was going to cost £3300, not including any of the panels, which I bought extra, this was mostly labour cost, but James at PCC's did a fantastic job. James was into VW's himself and was a member of Exeter air-cooled. I couldn't have got a better job done! Approx 8 months my van sat in their workshop, with an extremely unhappy PCC manager! It had most of the chassis replaced, new Californian doors and original German VW panels throughout. New wheel arches, front panel, front floor pan, front inner panel, front chassis bars, complete front A pillars B pillar bottoms, sills both inner, middle and outer, rear wheel arches, rear corners (converting from square later model rear lights to early oval rear lights) new battery trays, jacking point all round, everything replaced to the point of having no rust in the vehicle at all, the only solid part of the van was the roof! The vehicle was bare metalled and replayed in Volvo yellow and VW grey. It looked fantastic and even better we knew it was good! PCC said they would never take one on ever again, which mean we knew we'd had a good job done. James had done such a good job that we asked him to stay on at the weekends to help us fit the windows and extra bits on the van, as we didn't want to scratch the paintwork.

From there it was towed down to Monnington motors that fitted the type 4 engine and give it an MOT. Another £1200 spent - stitched up like a good'n, and the engine never ran that well. I just needed it on the road. I drove it home at about 7 miles per hour but it just wouldn't go right. After a bit of fiddling with the carbs and setting the throttle cable it went like stink on the flat there was masses of torque.

This is when we realised that the bump stops on the front beam hadn't been cut off - it was the hardest ride ever. Out came the hacksaw, I lopped of the stop arms and released the jack - I was concerned when the tyres almost touched the arches, it was even lower! You just have to love that touring car look!

I wasn't happy with the running of the type 4 engine so I took it back to Monnington's to complain, they set up the carburettors better, found an air leak and made it run a little better but it still wasn't perfect. I decided to blast the cobwebs out of it to see what the top speed was. 98 mph jumping cats eye to cats eye - the scariest ride ever according to my little brother! I was getting used to the power so I booked it in for a service at Monnington's. The engine didn't make it back home again. A bolt was found inside the piston chamber when we broke the engine apart. I will never take my car there again.

By doing this we realised how easy it was to repair engines, after learning the very hard way!!! Type 4 engines are too expensive so I had to buy a 1600 type 1. After phoning around the country to find a 1600 engine I found a recon at the Exeter bug centre. They fitted the engine and it ran ok for a while, drove home 20 miles and it over heated, we took it straight back. They didn't like the fact that the engine didn't make it home. They reset the timing and we tried again.

Claire and I packed for RTTS, now with a running van we were raring to go. I had been busy building my interior for this weekend, maybe the seat were about 1-2 inches too tall but storage was ideal! Changing rooms have nothing on me, (Handy Mandy)

We made it as far as Bodmin moor, with a very hot engine that couldn't make it up the steep hills. After 2 or 3 stops adding oil - not realising it wasn't loosing, the engine finally decided to give up. A bent crankshaft was the reason for the smoke
As we didn't want to go home the nice AA man drove us down and the RAC took us home. Everyone cheered us in the campsite as we wheeled it off the AA van it looked ace and wasn't in the slightest bit dirty!!!

I drank like a mentalist to relieve the stress of Vw ownership. It was a top weekend.