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Although it is the same steps we all have taken in the journey of bringing these old girls back to life, as i have all the photos i thought i may as well start to put them all up on here from start to finish of the 8 year project of my first split bus

This is the day i picked it up. This bus lived in Andamooka in the old Roadhouse for some 25 years, so a very dry climate and undercover.
The overall condition of the bus was pretty bloody good and it was all there.
It is believed the previous owner died and they didnt know what to do with it, so it just sat there, he lived in the Kombi pretty much full time.
Siiiic homemade camper setup inside

Few pics of the pre clean on the day of pick up

Clean, clean, Clean

Found some pretty cool stuff inside it, including a nice pair of dress shoes
also had the original rego papers from back in the day, and so that is the number plate the bus wears today.
More pics of the nice camper fittout..woohoo
Nice number of holes cut into the LHS and a foam filter for an air vent..(not sure what this achieved, except being a pain in the arse to fill all the holes in late in the resto)

Time to start the tear down and get this thing back to its bare self to start some metal work.
Even got the boss lady on the job, this was the only day in the next 8 years that she rendered any assistance.

Nice !

OK so one of my regrets was not keeping the original paint, I was a novice, this was my first real build, and after talking to Andrew Champress about how much of a pain it was at the time to blend it all in..I just couldn't be bothered so off with the nice 1956 paint.
You can see in one of these photos how willing it was to once again shine with just a little bit of pollish.. oh well.

Nice to pop the windows out and see nothing but clean metal.
Someone thought it be a good ideal to stick the engine airtake through the engine bay and into the rear of the cab, not sure the thought process here, but anyway another hole to weld up later.

Final stages of the body tear down, took shit loads of photos so sorry if put too many up.

There was hundreds of holes from the camper fitout, and i was going with a shiny painted, not trimmed interior, so shit had to be right.

all in all it was in pretty good nic!

I was almost desperate to get some welding done on this bus, so here it began, little did i know how much welding was really ahead.

Got the whole family involved on this particular day

Off to Volkfest for some insperation, and Champs's 56 was certainly that. He started not long before me and he was already finished FFS

Colin's weapon, probs one of the best i have ever seen to this day.

Time to start cutting some of this shit out and making up some new metal to weld in