(and Why Neanderthals Shouldn’t Own Cars)
When we first looked at Roxanne, we were impressed by the lack of rust she had. Old VWs are known to get cancerous swiss-cheesesque rust. Now, things are a great deal better here on the West Coast, with the absence of salt on the roads in the winter, but It’s still present and a huge concern for these 35+ year old gems. We found out the PO (Previous Owner) welded in new floor pans and there was an engine rebuild 3 years ago, which took a load off my mind. I would enjoy doing both projects, but at this point I need a project scaled down to the space and time I have.
The only glaring issues were the absence of an installed passenger seat, seat-belts and a slow oil leak. (What can you expect from a 35-year-old car?)
We bought her anyway.
I knew there was something up when I noticed the driver’s seat was NOT stock. It had been jerry-rigged, with two hardware-store bolts through the wheel well and a slot cut to accommodate the seat being an inch narrower than the stock seats. Luckily, 1976 1/2 Buses share the same seat bracket as the early (or maybe all?) Vanagons. $80 and an hour drive got us a near-mint set of seats.
It needed some grease and coaxing but the passenger seat installed flawlessly.
Then I took off the Redneckified seat. Oh, the humanity.
My theory is that somewhere along the line a neanderthal owned the bus and could’t get his protruding forehead/brain around the fact the seats SLID. Yes, pull lever. Slide seat out. Depress tab du-dad keeping seat from sliding completely out. Seat removed . I can just imagine the hours hours of sweating, swearing and finger-jamming this person did with a crow bar and hammer trying to pry the seat out. Well, I suppose they should get credit for sticking with it and accomplishing the task. One participatory bronze star for you.
After a day or two contemplating the issue and some help from the peanut gallery at TheSamba, this was the fix I conjured.
Broken center-punch, peen hammer and a jig to make sure the bracket didnt get over bent
Testing to see if the tracks were bent down enough
Tada.
I would have preferred low-backed seats of a different color but for the price, I’m ok just using seat covers.
After owning two air-cooled VWs, I’ve realized that much of the work involves correcting previous owner’s “fixes” or “features.”
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