Monday, April 21, 2008

Magic Bus

Everyone, this is Magic Bus. Magic Bus meet everyone. Ok so this has to be the UGLIEST thing ever created, but its in my driveway. My husband has always wanted to restore a VW anything since he had multiple VW cars when he was younger. So he decided on a VW Bus because it would hold not only the 3 of us, but our 3 dogs as well.

After many many months of searching thru CL for a bus he finally found someone willing to get rid of it for free. Free really isn't true though as you all know!!! There are a few things in life that just can't be free. Hence, this bus, it was not free.

So it started with James contacting this guy, kid really, about his "free" bus. Kid says please take it off my hands before my dad kills me. Ok no problem. James was more then willing to go get it.

Did I mention it has nothing in it? Like no engine, tranny, any parts, no windows, no dash (seriously), and no interior. This is about all thats left of the bus; a steering wheel and 2 seats were pretty sure didn't originally come with the bus. OH and it has 2 side mirrors.
So since it had no parts to make it run we had to tow it. In the snow. This was when it first snowed and it snowed pretty hard when James & Noah went to get it. When I got home James was trying to back the thing into our driveway on the tow dolly. After a few unsuccessful attempts he gave up. The thing can't turn because the Axel is all messed up. I'm surprised it didn't snap in half!!!
So we ended up pushing it into our driveway. Its surprisingly light considering its stripped bare.
I'm sure if our neighbors were looking out their windows watching us push the bus in the snow our neighbors were probably thinking "there goes the neighborhood."


Why do we call it the magic bus you ask?
Oh well, thats because thats what was spray painted on the roof of the bus.

Its paint job is very custom and I don't think there is another one quite like it. Thankfully the previous owner left 2 cans of red spray paint in the bus so we could spray over the ummm...language that was all over it. Its pretty embarrassing to have your 10 yr old saying, "Hey Dad, here's another bad word here!!" Yeah....I'm not even going to go there.





This is what the paint job looked like before we spray painted over some of the "art." Seriously when I first really looked at what was spray painted all over the thing it was pretty funny really.

I have a pretty good hunch that the neighbor lady down the street was just shocked and appalled by our new vehicle. She was probably gathering as many church flyer's as she could to send home with Noah. After all, the bus did have things like Metal Church, Megadeath and that fancy skull painted on the side of it.

Seriously though since the thing is stripped to the BARE bones it leaves us with a lot of options on restoring it to a more "green" vehicle. James is already super excited to turn the thing into a Veggie-mobile. One that runs on Veggie oil instead of Gas. Which would be pretty awesome frankly. We're still deciding on what color to make it, since it has so many colors already on it we should be able to find one we like. According to an old registration the original color was red. Of course this is going to take us awhile to restore. I'm sure our neighbors can't wait to see it gone, but for now it sits waiting for its future restoration.

Frankly folks, I call it the magic bus because hubby thinks its going to be so awesome, but reality would have it that its going to have to take "magic" to get the money to fix and get it running. Its totally a man thing to want to restore a car that I'm pretty sure had drugs in it at one time.

I'll keep you posted!

2 comments:

Brianna said...

Love it! My parents had a 69 VW Camper Van when I was in middle school. I think this is going to be a fun project for your men..and you too :)

Rachel Ann said...

Oh Lord...I'm still laughing over this whole thing! Goodness it really is ugly... :)

What a fun project for James and Noah to do together...notice, I did not add your name to that work list!