The Birth of a Bus

TJ and I first began looking into getting a VW bus when we fell in love with my friend John’s 1976 Bay Window. We had been dabbling with the idea of living out of an RV for quite some time, but the terrible gas mileage and sheer size of modern RVs were disconcerting. We wanted something that got reasonable gas mileage and had a smaller living space. John sold us on living out of a VW bus, they get decent gas mileage (18-25mpg, far better than the 3-7mpg of today’s RVs) and the living space was enough for us (everyone thinks this is crazy).

The search began. For a few weeks I scoured TheSamba for our dream home. Anything I found in decent running condition was gone before I could make the phone call. This was cut throat. I finally hit the jackpot and had a list of five buses within our budget that fit our conditional requirements. I made contact with a vintage VW mechanic in Jasper, GA who agreed to hold his 1980 VW Vanagon for three days until we could get down there to take a look at it. SCORE! We got a one-way rental car (a tiny Chevrolet Aveo) and made the 11 hour trip to Jasper, GA.

The Vanagon needed some work, but ran like a champ (except for the one time it broke down during the test drive haha). We learned a few tricks to get her going and to troubleshoot in case we had any issues on our drive back to Michigan. We hit the road.

Our first bus

The trip back was the best road trip I’ve been on to date, despite the 40+ times we broke down on the side of the road. Sometimes she’d just lose power while driving 55 mph on the highway, other times she’d start “burping” as TJ called it, sputtering herself to a very slow creep. Driving on the interstate was quite the treat, there’s nothing like having the gas pedal floored and not being able to go faster than 55. People honked their horns, shook their fists and were flat out enraged by the speed with which we traveled north. All we could do was giggle and smile, we’d finally found the adventure we were looking for.

It was an intimate road trip. All the problems we were having we were able to fix ourselves. Most of which were “fixed” with a butter knife (or as I call it, the bus “multi-tool”). Our 11 hour trip back (according to mapquest) was actually closer to 23 hours.

Despite our mechanical problems (which are to be expected when a vehicle is 32 years old) the bus isn’t in too bad of shape. Since getting it home we’ve cleaned it up quite a bit and have ordered a ton of parts for it. We have three weeks left before we head west and are scrambling to get it all done.

Stay tuned for before and after shots of our bus.

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