Meet Clara
She is a fairly standard 1966 VW Westphalia SO-42 camper, with broken manual Whale water pump. The bus itself has been battered to within an inch of its life - before I got it, she was rusted and hole-y. I don't know the story from before too much, but well-known VW chick named Clara Williams played a big part of either pulling this bus out of a junkyard (or saving it from being dumped in the first place). She did some rocker panel repairs, some other body repairs, slapped a coat of root-beer colored paint on, and sold it. That bus made its way through a few hands, and finally, I discovered it for sale in a VW Classified listing www.thesamba.com. The previous owner had painted it pretty nicely in a two-tone motif with house paint (green and white), which was beginning to peel off. We decided to strip off the house paint and do a quick spray job, but this project turned into a pretty major effort that took over nine months. In the trash and odds and ends that I found in the bus during the first major clean-out, I found a notebook with maintenance notes in it, and information that led me to Clara Williams, who was happy to hear of the continued existence of it, and provided some "before" pictures.
That's when we decided to name this bus "Clara". A year after the resto/paint job, a strung-out lady made a turn into driveway, but as I passed, apparently was just swinging wide for a U-turn, smashed into the passenger side front and caused me to go over a 10-foot embankment and come to rest on the driver's side. Another year passed, and finally I got angry enough to fix it myself, since no body shop would touch it, and that's the way she still is today....a little off-kilter, but functional. Then there's the continued use as a hauler of heavy things, and as a backroads exploration vehicle. Sure, the passenger door pops open at weird random moments, but whatever, she's still a good bus! The only modification to the camper kit was the integration of a camp stove in a hinged box with lid that I attached to the rear camper door. This arrangement is functional with the door fully open, half-open, or closed, as long as the Z-bed is in seat position. The propane bottle is stored in a slot inside the cabinet, and then removed from its slot and threaded onto the regulator prior to each use. It's a handy and useful thing, saving lots of space.
- Gene Cornelius
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