My bus was picked up and brought to my house without me even being in the same province. Thanks Darrin! Since he couldn't angle the trailer into the driveway, he had to leave it on the street. Grant was good enough to scoot home to put it in the driveway. The guy across the street saw him fussing with it and offered to help push, so that was also our first time meeting the neighbors! Nothing like a VW bus to get people talking :) All of this while I was off at a conference in Edmonton.
So my bus had already been home a few days before I even got to see it. I played around for a bit, but it was stinky inside so I didn't do a whole lot of exploring. But I did want to get a picture of the M-plate so I could take it to this website that decodes them, tells you all the features your VW came with, which landing point it was imported to, stock colour, etc.
I did successfully manage that. I also successfully managed to lock my keys in. I guess I was so proud of myself for remembering the hold-down-the-button trick to lock older cars, I forgot the reason they make it a trick in the first place. So that was kind of a bummer.
Went online to find out how to break in. Found a few typical methods like the shoelace trick, which I thought might work since it has the right kind of locks. Tried that for a bit but couldn't get the shoestring in between the doors and didn't have anything to jamb it with.
Eventually I found the correct trick for breaking into pretty much any classic VW. Of course, in the interest of security, I'm not going to broadcast it. It's a trick I'm sure every VW owner quickly becomes aware of, and the rest of you don't need to know. So the crisis was averted, I got in without damaging anything. I knew breaking glass was not an option, this baby has all original glass knock-on-wood.
On the topic of original, I'm not going to be overly concerned with that. I'm not doing a classic restoration to like-factory condition. That just doesn't speak to me. It's not hot off the assembly line, why should it look it? I don't want it to look brand new, I want it to look good for its age. I've got the inside cleaned up nice and it looks great. I'm going to get the rust taken care of, and obviously get it running and everything. But that's basically it. No big restoration, no hunting for NOS (new old stock) parts, no crying because it's not perfect. I have my 2012 Yaris if I want to make something stay in new condition, and even that's already too late. I should probably do something about THAT rust, or at least get it undercoated. But I probably won't. I know from experience that you can drive a Toyota for about 20 years (not from my experience of driving a Toyota for 20 years obviously, since I haven't even had my license that long, but rather from having driven plenty of 20 year old Toyotas because I was too cheap to buy a new car, until I wasn't), and that the rust can be largely kept at bay with regular washings, which I have been doing. I took it for a good rinse every time the weather warmed up this winter, and always try to get the bottom as good as possible. Which isn't very good since you have to be at ground level. But better than nothing, which is the other option I would choose.
