A VW 21 window "Samba" bus,

For today's post I thought I'd share some of my work on this beautiful 1965 VW 21 window bus.
This bus just had all of it's metal and paint work done by Coachwerks here in Victoria and they've done another outstanding job!

The owner spared no expense in this meticulous nut bolt restoration and chose this beautiful factory original colour combination of blues with grey mesh interior.

I've been charged with doing all the interior trim work. I started with the seats, stripping them down and re-trimming them in the correct original grey mesh vinyl.
Starting with the front drivers seat,

Then the front passenger seat,

And the rear bench seats,

Next was the big job of installing all the perforated vinyl headliner and trimming it around all the windows...

Next I installed all the interior panels and hardware...

Here are the rear bench seats and partition wall details. I had to do some fabrication work to create the top railing on the partition wall as well as the lip around the drink shelf as many of these parts are now scarce and unavailable...

Here's the rear compartment with the spare wheel and it's cover I made in matching vinyl..

The trickiest part was installing the huge sliding sunroof assembly. We sourced a new frame assembly as well as the headliner and outer canvass sections. The canvass was custom dyed by Yellow Jacket to match the paint as original...

The Samba bus made it's public debut at the 2016 Vancouver Island motor gathering held at the new Motorsports Circuit in the Cowichan valley in September...

Until next time -