Lily the 73′ Volkswagen Type 2

Part 1 of the restoration of our 1973 Volkswagen Type 2. Our bay window microbus is German made and has a lot of work needed to get her restored. The previous owner had the engine rebuilt and the drive train is in great condition. In this video we will install front 3 point retractable seat belts, new side mirrors, and make a new gear shift knob using surfboard sanding resin.

Part 2 of the restoration of our 1973 Volkswagen Type 2. Our Bus, Lily, came with home made drop spindles installed in the front suspension. After weeks of hunting down stock height spindles I finally found someone selling late bay window ones on thesamba. Unfortunately, we received early bay window spindles, so our break calipers did not fit on them. After waiting another month for an adapter bushing kit to arrive from Europe, we were finally able to lift our bus back to factory height. Lily still has undersized tires, so she sits about an inch lower than a factory bus would.

Part 3 of the restoration of our 1973 Volkswagen Type 2. In this video we swap out the factory style headlights for new LED headlights with an RGB app controlled accent ring around them. The final clip does not show the actual headlights on and is just a demonstration of the RGB ring. With my new circuitry I only have standard lights (high beam circuit and switch were fried), and there is no connection to the running lights, so they are only blinkers for now. These headlights fit all old Volkswagens (Thing, Bug, Gia, etc). This video also shows the widely available new headlight cans/mounts that you can buy off ebay for about $50 if your cans/mounts look as bad as the ones we inherited.

Part 4 of our 1973 VW Bus T2 restoration. In this video we add a sleeper conversion rear seat. This is the seat frame that is mostly found on CIP1.com and Ebay, both come from the same overseas factory. This bed/seat frame is much more difficult to assemble and get to work than you would expect. This will require some mechanical skills, and being able to weld will make it much easier. The instructions recommend using self drilling sheet metal screws (not included). This was also a great opportunity to try my new Titanium Easy-Flux 125 Welder from Harbor Freight. Unlike the seat frame, I am super impressed with this little welder. Setup is a bit of a pain and the feed ring needs to be slightly adjusted, but for the price and little jobs like this you cannot beat it. The upholstery on our seat is temporary and we will be doing properly made white and turquoise vinyl after other improvements.

Old VW buses can be prone to engine fires, and after having a small electrical fire I decided to step up our fire safety. In this video I go over the BlazeCut fire suppression system and how installed it in our air cooled vw bay window bus. This is a passive system that you simply setup and forget. We also install an automotive and marine approved full size fire extinguisher up in the cabin. This size is a little over kill, but we have the room and better to be safe than sorry. This video also points out 3 of the most common sources of engine fires on air cooled VWs. 1. Old/rotted fuel lines 2. broken or failed fuel filter 3. fuel line nipple popping out of the carburetor. Hopefully this video helps give you the info you need, or inspires you to take actions and save your vintage kombi.

Part 6 of our VW bus restoration. Lily is our 1973 walk through bay window vw bus. After not being able to find an over engine cushion to go with our rock n roll bed, we decided to just make our own. This process is super simple and will work for any VW bus. The upholstery process is also super simple, and can easily be done with hand stitching or even hot glue.

To add more temporary comfort to our bus while we continue the restoration, we also put in a fake wood floor using foam floor tiles we found on amazon. Once we finish the body work and paint, we will go back and put in a more permanent floor solution.

Part 7 of the restoration of our 1973 walk through bay window named Lily. This video is a quick but detailed step by step on replacing the front shift rod bushing. Late bay windows have a larger and arguably simpler front end to their shift rod and bushing. I had not seen a video showing how to change the bushing for an early bay window, or a video explaining the difference, so here we are. Note: Long side of the shift plate should be on the vehicle right side, not the left side as stated in the video!

Another quick quality of life improvement for Lily our 1973 Bay Window VW Bus. Since we take our bus to the beach so much we wanted to make the inside slightly more livable, we decided to instal new vinyl interior paneling (to cover up a bunch of the metal and body work that still needs to be done). New panels in white would cost $1500.00, but luckily the previous owner had a brand new set of black vinyl panels he gave to us. After some research we discovered Duplicolor Vinyl and Fabric spray paint. This stuff works great, but it took a lot of cans to fully cover all the black. $90 in spray paint is a lot better than $1500 in new panels though. When painting it is important to first prep the vinyl by cleaning off any dust, and wiping with rubbing alcohol to remove any grease. Do not handle the panels with bare hands between cleaning and painting. The metal clips are also a pain in the but to align and click into the body. We used the OEM style clips ordered through Jbugs. The holes on our bus are too small for the optional rubber grommets to fit with the clips, but the clips work fine by themselves. I have heard classic ford mustang panel clips can also work, and are a bit more user friendly.

Part 10 of our 1973 VW Bus restoration project and we are putting in Procar 90 white vinyl bucket seats by SCAT. Bay window buses have a very specific front seat mounting style, and we could not find any after market seats that easily fit. These white vinyl seats match perfectly with the final aesthetic we are going for. Mounting these seats involves having to fabricate an adapter. The method we decided on was just welding in some steal angles and chopping down the height of the procure sliding rails.

In this installment of our 1973 VW restoration, we replace the tie rods, steering dampener, and steering linkage. We also show how we did our front wheel alignment now that we have proper tires on our vehicle. This process is similar for all vintage air cooled Volkswagens. Doing the alignment yourself is fairly straight forward and only requires two specialty tools.

Affiliate links for the two tools needed:

Klein digital angle finder

36mm low profile crows foot