Stickers to raise awareness for Myesthenia Gravis

You may remember my visit from Carole & Dexter, who are traveling across the US to bring awareness to an Auto-Immune disease called Myesthenia Gravis. I am doing what I can to help Carole raise gas money to fund her trip back to the East Coast, and to plan for some events she can attend in the fall.  Carole has supplied me with some stickers to sell to help raise funds.  If you are interested in purchasing stickers, please contact me and we can arrange payment via PayPal.  Please add an additional 50 Cents to price for shipping.  Thank you!

Black with White Print 1.5x1.5

2 for $1.00

White with Black Print 3x3 

2 for $3

Color (Oval cut) 4x3

1 for $3 OR 2 for $5 

Links: The Yes We Can journey
VWs working for causes

on a side note, Blogger has come out with a new platform for posting, which I really dislike at the moment.  I hope they can work out the bugs or else I may just need to get on with another blog site...  

Engine Update & more screens!

The wonderful Moonie who is re-doing my engine has been updating a post on the Full Moon Bus Club's website along the way. Click here if you'd like to check it out, this is the tech section of the site with my engine rebuild in its own topic; which he keeps updating with photos of new work he has done.
The engine had not been rebuilt 30K miles before my purchase as stated by the guy who sold it to me. I had assumed it hadn't been rebuilt anyways, so turns out I was right. From what 'bear'( the moonie who is working on Lenny's engine) has told me I am surprised we made it to California and back~ and we "were very brave" says Bear.  All sorts of pins and even nails had been jerry-rigged in there, and the cylinder heads ended up being so bad we had to buy new ones.  Now Lenny is going to ride like a champ!  Now its time to get the rest of him in shape along with the engine.
 The engine is starting to come back together~ just waiting for the cylinder heads to come in.
I made screens for the sliding door that open in the middle and magnet shut from the same materials I made the front screens from.  The white is old bedsheets I had, one of them became the outside facing side of the interior curtains.

 I suppose this week I should get a start on sanding the paint back down, working on some of the areas starting to rust again and get that badboy all primed.  Once he is totally primed I plan to draw out the plan for the paint job directly on the primer. 
For now I am doing what I can and keeping my fingers crossed we can have him on the road soon~ it would be a nice birthday present for me. :)

Window screens & engine delivery

I made some screens for the driver's side windows from mesh "curtains" I had in an old house, old sheets, and super magnets. They are a bit smaller than I would have liked, but they do fit very snug.
We delivered the engine today, we are so happy to know its in very good hands. This man has worked on Vws for 45 years and in that time has only had 10 engines come back to him. Our friend who is storing Lenny for us and who took the engine out has also been doing some body work and can also help us with everything else we are doing. Lenny is finally going to be in the tip top shape he deserves!

Engine out~ Tranny lookin' gooood

In other news~
Our GMC Sonoma hit 200,000 miles today! Still runnin' strong and delivered Lenny's engine. We couldn't have done it without "the blue room!"

Back to the grind

The engine is out. Wednesday we are shooting to drop that bad boy off at the mechanics shop. It will take about 3-4 weeks for the rebuild. In the meantime we are going to get Lenny into top shape while we are at it. His transmission is good, his gas tank is clean, and breaks worked on last summer/ except the E-break.
Luckily this time the Bus is stored with a mechanic who has done plenty of work on VWs and loves to tinker around, and especially loves Lenny. Yesterday he said "I want to straighten up those crooked headlights so bad I can taste it." I said, "Go for it!!" Since Trey and I only have 2 days off a week it will be a lot of help for someone else to do some of the work.
I am kicking around the idea of a new paint job. I don't like how I painted him in matte colors last time, I would prefer a nice shine. Also since it was just a spray paint job there are spots flaking off, runs, and now areas with black from the countless dirty mechanics hands that have touched him recently.

I have seen painted buses done by Kenneth Mitchell while researching Buses two years back during the first "restoration." Then last year he came down to Charleston and painted my friend Snoopy's Bus "Wanderlust"(RIGHT). Ken had described his process under one of his photos, which I have saved. Seeing how beautifully his painted buses turn out, it really makes me want to paint Lenny in a similar fashion. So I've been playing around with different themes, but haven't come up with anything yet. I am leaning towards doing a variation of the paint job he has now though..
Ken has also done a paint job on the canvas of the pop top for a Vanagon I have seen. He isn't sure how long it will last though. That's given me the idea of doing a faded henna style design on the inside of my canvas, so that when our inside light shines through at night, you can see the design on the outside. I am going to look more into henna paints, but that is probably the very last item on the list.

Engine Rebuild

Lenny is going to have his engine rebuilt, hopefully beginning next week. We are going to try and find a place to store him during the time being so we can work on him while his engine is in another part of SC... A mechanic's shop quoted me at least $3k to rebuild the engine and a man I met through the Full Moon Bus Club will do it for at the most $1200. During that time we are going to put in a new fuel tank, work on the clutch and shifter, and get him ready for the road even better than last time. The man who is doing the work for me- nicknamed "Bear"- even has a loaner engine I could put in Lenny while he works on my engine, but another Moonie has it up in Asheville; a bit far for me to go get it. We have some friends and my dad who are going to help us pull the engine out and later put it back in. But we'll have to store Lenny while he's out of commission. We may be looking at another storage unit situation.
In a perfect world we would know someone with extra space on their property for us to rent and commute to work from the Bus, as our lease is ending in a few months. Without an engine we can live in the Bus and work on some of the little things that need love (bench seat, sink, windshield & seal, hole where antenna became loose and came off, sound system, etc) while saving the $750 we've been paying in rent, plus $100-200 in utilities.
We have some prospects in mind, but most of the people we know here don't have the room and are not hippies who don't mind being crowded in a living space. Considering Trey works 50 hours a week and I work 40, a lot of our leisure time would be spent aside the fire & Lenny, watching the summer sun set.

Spring time

"the magic float!"
Been looking through some favorite pictures and really missing Lenny. He is at a VW mechanic's shop waiting to be worked on as there was already a few ahead of him. The mechanic did say that when he drove it up to the bay it sounded like it was a lifter and a misfire. So I am hoping his right! We are not in any way mechanics and we can fix a few things here and there. But for now I'd like to get have everything looked over and fixed up since its looking like we may be on the road again soon and don't want to have silly little problems here and there along the way. An experienced eye would do Lenny real good right about now. So soon we will be back on the road again with many more adventures as we have a LOT of catching up to do!
Its great to hear that new people are finding my blog useful and inspiring! I hope that you start going to Bus campouts and maybe I'll see you at one someday.

Disappearing Act

"Beam me up, Scottie!"
I've disappeared from here, and I am sorry readers. I hope you haven't forgotten about Lenny and my adventures. However, I do have some bad news. Last I posted we had broken down en route to Charleston and thought it to be a clogged fuel pump or filter. Well it just a clogged fuel line so we were close enough. Once we got him started up the engine was knocking pretty bad. Trey did a test to see if the lifters were stuck, but it does not appear so.
Does Lenny need a new engine? We don't know. We are going to tow him to a mechanic we do not know, but does VW work and has for 40+ years. Hopefully he can give a diagnosis and some options on repair. Or maybe we'll just throw a Porshe 914 engine in there, for some real oomph! ;)
We are going to a Bus campout this weekend because we planned to have Lenny. Alas, we will be camping in the camper shell of a truck, with the cushions from Lenny at least.