She's a '66 21 Window Samba. Paul, the most excellent dude we bought her from down in the Keys tells us that the body was restored by a Navy welder up in New Hampshire. Evidently he lost her in a custody battle with his wife. The shell ended up on Ebay where Paul picked it up. He towed it down and performed the restoration work. It's the cleanest bus I've seen. No significant body rust.
We bought her on March 1st and drove her down to Key West where we spent the night celebrating. The next morning we headed back to the main land and made it the 150'ish miles on US 1 back to Miami without incident.
When we stopped for gas I checked for drips and noticed a few small puddles. Since a new dual port 1600cc engine has just been installed before we picked her up I didn't get too excited. About 30 miles down the road I noticed the engine sound changed and pulled her off in Doral.
A quick look under revealed a significant amount fluid around the transmission. We made some calls... "puedo pedir prestado por favor el amarillo pages" and fortunately found a VW specialist, Ken's VW repair, not too far away.
We headed back South 15 miles or so taking it really easy and located Ken's place without any trouble. They took great care of us locating a tear in one of the axle boots and also figured out that the transmission plugs hadn't been replaced when it was rebuilt. By some crazy luck they happened upon an old tranny they had laying around and hooked us up.
Ken also noticed some issues with the shifting and clutch cable. The cable is frayed and a bit rusty and it's a bit dicey getting her into first.
Well off we went on our way. She made it back all the way to our house in Florida without a bit of trouble. 275 miles 4-5 hours on the road. Thought we might have trouble getting over the Skyway bridge but it was smooth sailing.
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