WTB: Aircooled T1 Bus motor & VW/Audi rims

My wife convinced me to buy a VW Bus. It's a 1971 Campmobile. It currently has a blown motor and bad tires. Longterm I'm going to rebuild the motor or buy a longblock but if anyone in the Midwest has leads on a running T1 1500cc (Or larger) motor that would simplify my life greatly.

Also as usual for cars that have sat for 26 years the tires are shot. It needs new tires and I'm exploring different rim options. VW/Audi/Mercedes 5x112 ideally 66.5 mm centerbore with ET50 offset range. Would love to find a set of either New New Beetle Heritage or Turbine 17's but I'm not horribly picky if it has a "vintage" look or can be made to with paint masking.

Ideal locations would be reasonable driving distance of Central Il however I would explore shipping options for awesome looking rims or a great motor.

nocones said: My wife convinced me to buy a VW Bus.

I'm not kidding its her project. I like it to but she really pushed for it

I can offer no help with your parts quest, but I will congratulate you and say that '71 is widely considered to be the best year for the bay window bus.

I will add that I once (out of desperation) put a 1500 into a non-westy bay window and it was not adequate, even by my then very low expectations. A 1600 dual-port would be my minimum standard, and you will really be happier if you can find at least 65-70 hp to go back there.

Subie swap! 'tis the only way. With the 'burg headed down the road it can't be long until I pull the aircooled lump out of my wife's VW Thing and go subie. I'd sell you her motor but I don't think I'm going to be getting to it quite that fast.

Thesamba.com is your friend for hunting down a motor.

I've thought about a subi swap.. More thinking to do.

Yes sorry I need a T1 bus motor. The smaller bug motors would do me no good at all.

nocones wrote: Yes sorry I need a T1 bus motor. The smaller bug motors would do me no good at all.

No difference, T1 is T1 bus, bug, Thing, Ghia as long as you go with a 1600. The "bigger" motor was in the T4 powered busses.

Subaru 3.3L.

PLEEEEASE!!!

like as in you have one you want to give me? I'm not sure we need a 200hp RWD camper.. but It's a maybe. Wife has approved purchase of the heritage wheels however I'd like to find something for less than $250/rim. She doesn't want this getting out of hand but I've already got her on board a "tasteful" drop and now you've all got me shoping car-part for subi motors. Your evil people..
But seriously would like to drop in a motor and put some cheap rims/tires on to see how the overall things works before getting out of hand. I don't want this to become a 8 month conversion project.

nocones wrote: I don't want this to become a 8 month conversion project.

Took us 2 weekends to convert the Wartburg (essentially a VW at that point. If you have all the parts on hand you can easily do it in a weekend, big thing is figuring out where you are going to mount a radiator, the rest is easy.

I know a guy in Monticello(Indiana, unfortunately) with a bay window bus & a beetle in his barn. Both "ran when parked". I'll ask if either are available. I know he was interested in selling me the beetle several years ago.

nocones wrote: like as in you have one you want to give me?

Sadly, no.

Sorry. I'll shut up now.

petegossett wrote: I know a guy in Monticello(Indiana, unfortunately) with a bay window bus & a beetle in his barn. Both "ran when parked". I'll ask if either are available. I know he was interested in selling me the beetle several years ago.

Please do.. you can never have to many parts and I've now been eying beetles to go along with.

In reply to nocones:

I sent him a message, and put a feeler out for another guy I know.

Also, don't forget Mid-America is right down in Effingham. You could always drive the WRX down and have them toss a brand-new one in the back.

Omg didn't realize mid am had VW stuff. I have like $2500 in stuff I want now.

before you buy wheels or tires i suggest you spend some time on the samba, baywindow forum for the tire thread and read the vanagon forum for wheel fitment details, in the vanagon forum you'll see posts by Chris he is the wheel fitment expert. briefly you need c rated tires for a bus particularily a camper, regular passenger tires are frightening on a tall vw bus. on my 78 bus i used mercedes clk wheels 16" they required redrilling the lug holes and custom center caps with nokian tires, but no spacers or extended studs. hope this helps

Try contacting http://kustomcoachwerks.com/. They've got a lot of aircooled stuff. And a Subaru conversion on an aircooled is not a trivial job. A coworker did one, took him FOREVER and cost something like $5k to do it right. Seriously. That's using a normal 2.2, nothing special. Just the water lines for the rad running to the front of the bus and back cost something like $300. I'm not sure where you'd put a rad in a bay window, in my buddie's Vanagon at least there was some room for one.

The Samba guys do get all wound up in knots on the wheel fitment - and even after reading it, I found there were some errors. So be prepared to buy new studs regardless of what they say. For wheels, I think you need fake Fuchs.
https://www2.cip1.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=1931

Any muffler shop can bend you up water lines, and an XJ Cherokee radiator is a good fit for a bus.

I have a set of 14 rims from my old 72 somewhere and you can have them if we can figure out how to get them to you.

He did the lines in rubber. If it was easy, he'd have done easy. This guy's not stupid.

Where do you put the rad in a bay window? I thought they were pretty much a single skin of steel on the nose.

In reply to Keith Tanner: from what i understand i agree with Keith its not an easy job, but the radiators people are using are either horizontally underneath or getting the mounting shrouds etc from a Mexican bus which was watercooled in its last years.

Keith, aside from having it slightly easier by having a spot for a radiator we did the subie conversion on the Wartburg (VW chassis remember) for a whoooole hell of alot less and in less time.

Seriously, aside from figuring out the radiator mounting I could do the conversion in a weekend. With the KEP adapter kit it bolts right up, took about an hour to actually mount the motor. KEP includes a life sized wiring diagram to get the wiring right, just lay the subie harness on the diagram and cut where indicated.

Our plumbing front to rear cost $10, galvanized electrical conduit, if you are worried about corrosion replace them every 5 years or something, for $10 its worth it. $100 honda aluminum radiator and some flex hose at either end.

As grouperalley mentioned you can get (or make a similar) late model shroud which basically puts the radiator in front of the front skin and just covers it. If you can deal with the look it makes for an easy job.

The hardest part of the conversion is the wiring and getting the fuel plumbing right (which isn't that hard but we screwed it up at first by accidentally looping the vent line into the return.

I don't mean to sound contrary but honestly its not rocket science at all, pretty simple job. Sure you can overcomplicate it and make it expensive if you buy everything from the conversion company instead of applying a little ingenuity, but at the end of the day its bolt up, wire, plumb.

Next time we need to do one, I'll suggest he just fly you in We were all surprised at the amount of time and money it took too. Granted, he is an engineer so he does tend to overcomplicate things, and he was building it to be bombproof instead of needing new lines in 10 years. Wiring is not a challenge for this guy, I think most of it was dealing with the water conversion. Rad was a giant AFCO one for $200, this bus will never overheat.

So, there's one experience. Or you can go with the "it's so easy i can do it in a weekend for $15" version. I suspect the reality for most people may fall in the middle.

Agreed first time out it will not be a weekend for most folks, but the 2nd one will be.

If he has all the parts in place and wants to do wiring I'll gladly fly out :)

Oversized rads aren't really needed, like I said we used a aluminum honda civic unit and ran the crap out of the car on the track and out on the highway, never a heating issue (till someone forgot to tighten a cooling hose and dumped all the coolant but that's a different story)

Yes we didnt go for bulletproof on everything but that's a lot of the myth that scares people away from it, you don't need to overly re-engineer the rest of the vehicle, its pretty stout to begin with and will easily handle a 2.2.

And I will say that's assembly time I'm talking about, certainly we spent a lot more time planning, sourcing parts etc. But once everything was in place it goes quick.

Maybe when I get around to the conversion of my wife's VW I'll set up a time lapse camera :)

The AFCO rad was simply because it was available. Although climbing Colorado mountain passes for long periods in the thin, dry air does work a cooling system pretty hard. This was in a Westy, so it's no lightweight.

All of the conversion effort had to do with the drivetrain alone, he didn't address brakes or anything else.

The xj rad I mentioned is @9" tall and 40" long, and should fit under the floor between the suspension and bumper.

Or, it could be mounted in a tubing frame instead of the bumper.

On the one swap I helped with we started out with the bottom 8" or so of a 55 gal drum mounted on the front with the rad and fan inside and covered with a vinyl spare tire cover. Later the drum got replaced by a fiberglass fake tire but you had to be close to spot the change.