The Kombi Restoration pages.

The story of the Kombi starts in about 1988, my father bought it from the original owner after it had suffered a moderately severe front end collision. Although the suspension and chassis rails were substantially undamaged the actual front of the car was stove in considerably, the roof had major creases in it and the driver side door was bent like a banana. The reason for my father's interest in this vehicle was that it was just a bit special, automatic, 8 seater, luxury interior and with the US sourced semi-factory air-conditioning kit fitted, aside from the accident damage it was in exceptional condition.

Some time after my father purchased it, a campervan that had damaged its rear section became available, this vehicle was purchased from the wrecker (after they had removed everything they wanted from it) and became the donor for all metal north of the front door locks and a large section of roof. By the wonders of a cut-off wheel grinder and a mig welder my father found himself the owner of a half yellow, half olive colour Kombi.

At this stage there was a temporary hiccup in the project as he belatedly discovered that there is considerable difference in the door hinge and lock mounts between apparently identical Kombi vans. The disaster he had created for himself was threefold:-

The front hinge mounts did not allow the fitting of a door that had the lock in a position to match the existing door frame.

The cutting of the two vehicles had been mildly inaccurate leaving a huge gap at the bottom of the door and very large gap between the rear of the door and the body frame.

The Solution was to buy a pair of doors from "down south" that fitted the hinge mounts, then using the angle grinder with the cut-off wheel again, slice off the rear lock end of the doors and replace it with the same section from the original doors. During this process the lengths of the doors was fiddled with so that they actually matched the body openings . Nothing was or could be done about the gaps at the bottom of the doors, that remains there to this day as a "tribute" to a "cut-and-shut" job that should have had a bit more thought put into it prior to metal being cut.

Finally the bits that had been worked on were repainted and the van was driven under its own power into a shed at my parent's house to await final putting back together (all trim, the side door and sundry 1000 other things having been removed prior to going to the body shop). There it sat until 1994 when Sylvia and I decided to buy it and put it back on the road. At the time we already owned an ex-army 2lt 9 seater bus and over the years I had become moderately proficient at keeping VWs on the road.

I wish I had kept photos of the weekend we drove 400kms south to Townsville to pick it up, my father and I spent several hours swearing at the Kombi, the world in general and each other persuading the poor thing to fire up for the first time in around 7 years to drive it onto a car trailer he owned at the time. Several more hours were spent bolting doors and such on well enough for the journey and loading around 3/4 of a ton (yes ton not tonne) of spares (engines, gearboxes, electrical etc) into the green bus. We then set sail in convoy for Cairns probably causing more than a few laughs along the way.

The first things I discovered were that trim panels do not survive being left in a sealed shed in tropical north Queensland 200 metres from the sea. The next discovery was that neither does metal. Whilst the external condition didn't look too bad, salt had penetrated every crevice, crack, nook and cranny, particularly around window and door seals. My first task was to get the engine running well enough so that the vehicle could be driven on permit to a body shop for the rust to be removed.

A couple of thousand dollars later, rust removed, hood lining replaced, window frames rebuilt and new rubbers (where available) fitted I was ready to resume the jigsaw puzzle of Kombi electrics. Once the electrics all worked I re-made all of the interior trim and kick panels, covering them in a tasteful black material.

For a bit of a diversion after that I replaced all ball joints at the front, reset the rear suspension (removing and replacing broken torsion bars is almost worthy of a story in itself), rebuilt the front disk callipers and replaced the rear slave cylinders.

Finally it went for a roadworthy inspection which it passed due to the great Queensland tradition of "you are doing this up for yourself aren't you mate, not to sell?" which meant that it didn't quite have to comply exactly in a couple of areas.

At last on the road, but not for long.... The engine had showed every sign of constantly running on the ragged edge temperature wise, in spite of me carefully sealing up every hole around the engine bay and carefully setting tappets and timing. Finally after breaking two valve springs in two weeks (replaced without removing the heads using a marvellous tool from Gene Berg) it got so bad that I had to stop on my way to town (28kms) and let it cool down, low compression having much to do with the problem.

At the time Sylvia was working away about 250km out of town and was not enjoying riding her motorcycle there and back once a week, I decided to pull the good 2lt engine from our old Kombi and put it in the new one. This fun little job was done over a weekend on my own using only a floor jack, a bottle jack and sundry lumps of wood, what fun we have when we are young....The new engine smartened things right up, although it also mysteriously ran hotter than I would have liked (I always mount oil temperature sensors as close as possible to the outlet of the oil cooler on the premise that knowing what temperature the oil goes into the engine at is more useful than measuring it on the way out) oil temps greater than 110 Celsius always worry me in VW engines as it is close to the "magic" 125 degrees at which most modern "consumer" oils start shearing and breaking down. However I eventually decided to ignore it. About a month later I found out why the engines in this car had always run hot, the gearbox was frying them. I fitted a temperature sensor to the pan of the automatic gearbox and immediately wished that I hadn't, temps around 80 to 90 after only 20kms running, climbing rapidly to 120 to 130 whilst climbing the hills, something was seriously wrong. Shortly after the gearbox stopped changing gear, out with jacks and lumps of timber, removed the gearbox and took it to the local automatic gearbox experts.

$750 later the gearbox was rebuilt and the correct torque converter was obtained. Part of the mystery of the high temps was explained by the fitting of an Audi converter, dimensionally the same, but with no "fan" on the back of it to pump air over the converter to cool the fluid. Fitting the correct converter lowered the temperature of the gearbox a staggering amount and the engine by about 10 degrees, still hotter than I would like.

Here is a shot of the Kombi and family, prior to Sylvia's restoration. I would have preferred a different shot, but for some reason we cannot find any "before" photos. When we eventually do, I'll put them here,
This was taken the morning after the new Kombi's arrival. For a brief period of time we were a two Kombi family. Along with our two large BMW motorcycles and our trail bikes this caused our neighbours to look at as askance and hide their children from us.
And this is why it was never supposed to happen. surely most females given this vehicle to drive around in would have forsaken an old Kombi?
The following shots were taken at the body shop and show the degree of "deep" restoration required. This photo reveals the mysterious blue paint found under several layers of yellow. As the compliance plates for the car indicate that it left the factory painted yellow and as there is no evidence of accident repairs I can only assume that it was painted blue at the factory and then painted again, this time yellow....


This looks a bit more "spiffy" doesn't it.
View from the front, along with a big giveaway that something fishy is happening here. A radiator on a Kombi?
View from behind the bullbar. The thematic fan was probably a needless expense, it didn't turn on in 7km of an average 1 in 6 grade. around town the engine appears to be over cooled in spite of a fully functional original thermostat. I am thinking of putting race tape over the bottom third of the radiator to see if that brings it up to temp.
One Subaru EA82 engine, pretty much as it arrived from East Keilor Wreckers, I've removed the air cleaner, Alternator and Compressor to repair damage inflicted on it by NQX a firm that will never carry my freight again as long as I live. Fortunately when I sent photos of the damage to East Keilor they replaced the damaged items for the cost of postage. NQX didn't want to know me. By the way, it left East Keilor strapped to a pallet and wrapped securely in plastic, clearly labelled "top load only", NQX put a lathe on top of it. In addition to the damage already mentioned, the sump was flattened down to the crank (beaten back out with a hammer and reused), the cam belt covers were smashed (repaired with epoxy), one belt cut part way through (were to be replaced anyway) and a hole punched in one rocker cover (repaired with Devcom epoxy). Do not send freight with NQX
A general shot of the EA82 in the Kombi engine bay, fits very neatly although a little metal bashing was done on the gearbox rear cross member to give "comfort" clearance to the distributor. The fitting was done by Vance Cooper of German Auto Parts in Cairns. Vance also built a number of aluminium part-bulkheads around the engine to deflect water from the engine bay. We did not attempt to replicate the degree of sealing of the engine bay with the original type IV engine.
A left/right shot of the engine mount fabricated by Vance. I tried to talk him into taking a jig pattern of the finished product to ease the manufacture of the next one but he maintains that after two Subaru conversions he is doing no more..
We decided to build another partial bulkhead around the muffler so that heat did not radiate back at the cam belt covers. In retrospect it was probably not needed, but it looks neat.
The "Maniacal Painter" herself. For a few weeks it seemed that anything left sitting for more than a few minutes got painted. Sylvia put enormous effort into touching up lots of little things, although we did fall out a little over my wrecking the paint freshly applied to the tow ball when I used the Kombi to tow a trailer into town (actually to deliver the old Type IV engine to its new home).

When I get more time I'll be putting the story of Sylvia's restoration of our old Kombi van here.