The VW in Me * The VW in Others
1956 Type 2 Single Cab. Sounds grand doesn't it? Better than VW truck anyway. Sometime in between moving and parts hauling I came to the realization that, fun to drive as they are, a beetle just can't be a work vehicle. Not like a truck. I needed a truck. So I started looking. I looked at an amazing bunch of VW trucks all of which had seen better - far better - days. I wish I had some photos of the really pathetic ones.
Then one day, whilst checking out a '55 sunroof that was for sale (just for fun), I saw it! It was a photo ad of a '57 single cab. I'd already come to the conclusion that I preferred a single cab over a crew cab. I liked the extra bed space, under bed cargo area and the fact that there isn't a near inaccessible area between the bed and the chassis for rust to start. This particular truck I'd even seen tooling around town a few times and always experienced that quickening of pulse. I deduced that the owner of the truck was also the owner of the sunroof. As the sunroof was intended to the a third party sale and I wasn't interested in getting involved in with the third party, I memorized the vehicle registration I discovered tucked up behind the visor of the sunroof. Armed with my ill-gained information almost a year old, I hunted him and the truck down. I tracked him through a move and phone change, discovered that his mother and I used to work together but that the truck wasn't for sale.
Perhaps I made an impression on him. Perhaps he felt sorry for me. Perhaps he wanted to send a little business past another friend of his. He hooked me up with his VW entrepreneur friend Richard. Richard had a truck. We talked about it on the phone and I worried that it was too old and needed too much work. I thought I really wanted something from the mid-60s. I looked in a couple of parts catalogs and was happy to discover that, unlike beetles, type 2 parts fit a much broader range of years. The truck was suddenly more appealing. The truck was in San Jose, 70 or so miles away, but Richard would have it where I could look at it in a matter of days. Days stretched into weeks. Then one day, I got the call; it was here! My mechanic friend, Juan, and I headed over one Saturday in mid-May and looked at it together. I thought it was freakin' fabulous! I'd looked at trucks more than 10 years younger that were in a lot worse condition! In fact, it was in better condition than any of them!
Rust is something that one just expects and accepts as being a part, usually only a temporary part, of VWs. Oh, sure this truck had its share of rust. Yeah, half the bed was completely gone and the half remaining was a rusty mess but it was still far better than anything I'd looked at. I was sold. Juan advised me to wait until Tuesday or Wednesday before calling Richard and telling him that I wanted it. I dutifully waited and then called. Richard told me he needed a definite yes or no right then and there as he had a buyer who was willing to drive 6 hours to look at it that night. He was probably feeding me a line and punishing me for not being more prompt, but it sure worked! One or two days later I was writing him a check and he was drafting a sales slip.
The only thing that remained was Richard getting the pink slip from the previous owner. That took some time. Months in fact. I saw Richard at a show three weeks after writing the check and asked him about it. He reassured me that he wasn't going to renig on our deal and that the other guy was also trustworthy. I told him that if he was comfortable, I was comfortable. The beginning of August I figured that maybe I should call Richard up and see what the haps was - touch base and all that. Still no pink slip but he'd get it soon. Then about a week or two later, I got the call! Richard had the pink for me! But Richard wanted it out of there and quick. He was running out of room for all his VW treasures. He wanted me to get it sometime that week. That week became the third week later but in the beginning of September I got the truck taken by flatbed to Castroville where it sat in the backyard of one of the shop regulars being protected by a pack of killer attack guard dogs.
So far I'm feeling more and more undeserving of the truck, especially when I talk to other type 2 owners. Richard talked up the fact that it had a brake-light deck lid. "Big deal," I thought, "so long as it has a decklid." Richard talked up the fact that it has European tail lights. "Big deal," I thought, "so long as it has a tail lights." Richard talked up the fact that its cab is in near perfect unrestored condition. "Big deal," I thought, "so long as it's not all rusted out." Undeserving or not, I'll do good by it. The plans are to get it running, to replace the bed and to paint it the original dove blue after getting rid the later model tail lights.
While I might have only three things to do on my task list there are of course multitudes of problems that just seem to come up. One was a problem with the registration. The paperwork I have is for a March 1956 single cab and the VIN number stamped in the rear firewall is for a May or June 1956 single cab. The Highway Patrol assured me that both VIN numbers are clear. One of the times I was able to get it started and running half-decent (with a shot starter bushing and coil wired up backward!), I drove it out to the CHP office and got it registered. The officer used the VIN he found on the panel behind where the passenger would sit as it matched the paperwork. Of course this now means I have a truck that's registered to the body number and not to the true VIN as it appears on the firewall. But at least it's registered and I know that it's a May/June truck and not a transitional (the month Volkswagen moved the Type 2 factory from Wolfsburg to Hanover) March truck.
During the months of October, November and December 1999 I replaced the unmatched distributor cap and rotor with a matched pair, got the coil wired correctly and the starter bushing replaced. I learned that my truck, while 6 volt, has a 12 volt ('67 or later year) transmission. I also learned that my truck was used as something to shoot at and that it was painted dove blue, red and school bus orange before the two-tone blue that it now sports. I also learned that it runs great! Also sometime in there, the homemade canvas and tilt setup I'd been given for storing a vehicle in my backyard was installed. I also hung the rear bumper and splash pans and bought new, monster (6.70x15), all size-matching truck tires.
In January of 2000, my truck lost its bungie cords! Mid-month, it lost the bungie cord holding the front bumper up and later it lost the bungie cord holding the engine lid closed. First I'd gotten my hands on a pair of bumper brackets and later I got my hands on a rear apron with the appropriate cut-out for the 1600 muffler. It really is amazing how much better it looks without bungie cords! I thought (and still do) that the tires improved its looks 100% and now that it's without bungie cords I might well have a show car! Well, maybe not exactly a show car....
While I was making things work better I thought that I'd fit up the brake light and license light so that the truck would be a little more legal. The brake light bulb holder is trashed but since some previous owner fitted later model taillights and wired them for the brake lights, I figured I could at least use the license light bulb holder while also covering the hole for the brake light in the engine lid. My truck looks so great from the rear now that the engine lid has no holes, it closes properly on an apron that is tucked up behind a bumper!
During the spring and summer months of 2000, I worked at getting the truck ready for a donor bed. Juan did tell me that it'd be a lot of work. In fact he told me that I should just clean it up and sell it. When it's at the shop I can hear them talking about it in Spanish. I hear "mucho travail" a lot; it has been a lot of work. My hope is that it is only when I'm finished that I realize that perhaps I should have sold it as Juan recommended. My feeling was that the truck was all about the bedreplacement journey I'd embarked upon.
That was until I drove it to Arizona and from there to New Mexico late September 2000. In Albuquerque I reckoned that I'd driven my truck 1284 miles... and I still planned on driving it back. Several things came up that made the trip interesting and probably should have prevented my progress. I think that in about five years I'll look back on what I did and think that youth is crazy and fearless! I drove the distance with starter that'd pretty much crapped out (well actually it was dragging real badly) somewhere between home and my first gas stop. I considered getting it fixed but didn't want to delay myself and pressed on. Nine push starts later, a disabled break light, no e-brake, no signals, a mysterious wheel lockup that fixed itself and a 50-mph trek across the desert in the middle of the day I made it to Phoenix. From there a small group of us made it to Jerome, Arizona with only four push starts. After a weekend of camping, my truck and I traveled to Albuquerque.
A couple of weeks later I drove the repaired truck back to California where its starter again crapped out as did the headlights. On the way back my truck and I endured bitter cold, pouring rain (my truck leaks a lot in diagonal rain!) and winds that reduced our travel from 55/60mph to 45. There was also headlight switch weirdness that brought on the generator light and acted as a 35mph speed governor any time I tried to flash the big rigs it was okay to get over. The only real casualty though was the tailgate bow. It appears as if it's not strong enough to withstand the force of the wake a big rig makes when traveling the opposite way down a one-lane highway. Fortunately it appears as if it can be bent back into shape and in future I'll only put up the canvas if I know it will be raining. At least I did get some great pictures!
What I think I've discovered from this adventure, aside from the fact that my truck has the one-year (1963) option heavy-duty brakes, is a self-confidence I didn't realize that I had. I traveled some 4000 miles by myself in a truck more than 40 years old and just a year on the road with me. I traveled highways I've never been on. I experienced difficulties but never once worried that I might be stranded or would have to abandon my truck. I also discovered that I have a great deal of blind faith that things will work out. Because of my experiences over the last few years I believe that my Volkswagens will either breakdown at home or at the shop. I agree that it's pretty silly but I have yet to be shown otherwise. What made this trip so fabulous was that my truck and I did it with only minor difficulties. At least equal if not a greater contributor to the success of the trip was all the great folks I met both Volkswagen enthusiast and otherwise.
So to celebrate I thought maybe it'd be nice to get my truck's shredded seat fixed, the bed welded in place and the "accessory" holes repaired, the ragged bumpers straightened and finally paint the truck its original dove blue. From early 2001 to now, I've had a checklist of things to do, each one building on the next, all culminating in an exterior of dove blue.
Spring 2000 the seat was reupholstered. December 2001 the bed was welded and the "accessory" holes fixed. Summer 2002 the gates, latches and both aprons (original and later) were blasted and primed. As with all sand blasting, problems with the gates were made obvious but fortunately it was much better than I feared. Also in the summer of 2002 the bumpers were straightened and repaired. I almost could not believe that they were the same as the nasty ones I'd dropped off. If it wasn't for traces of the red paint, I'd have thought he'd swapped them out for better.
March 2002 I wrote to the Museum for information on my truck. I found out that my truck was built June 21, 1956 and left the factory June 26 with a 1.2 liter engine numbered 462111. It was dove blue and had the following M-codes: M020 (MPH speedometer), M070 (tilt and bows), M090 (laminated windscreens) and options M018 and M086 both of which cannot be identified. My truck's destination was San Francisco.