Following a couple of days hard work fitting the interior, I think I deserve a cigarette. I'm no professional chippie, but I'm pretty pleased with the results of my handywork, it was a long job, but very rewarding.

Interior made using Westfalia plans found on the web, I think on "vintagebus". They have many of the measurements, well enough to get a set of benches in to the right proportions. The only difficulty I've found is that there isn't much headroom for sleeping, that's why the Devon interiors have this backrest as removable.

Check the shine on that veneer. The seat bases are MDF, which Gill found in the "Bargain Bin" at homebase, a few feet of piano hinge allows the top to open, handy storage space underneath, just like a Devon. At the moment its full of Sub and Amps, but you can fit a sleeping bag in there too.

You can see that the back bench doesnt have a backrest, with one in place there isn't enough room to lie down comfortably, the solution has been to make a removable backrest section, that you can store under the bed when you're sleeping. I'll get some pics to explain it better some day...

Gill's just cut the fibreboard and underlay for the flooring, the door panels are on, as is the Devon cupboard I found at Stonor Park this year. They repro them now, at about 70 quid, details from the SSVC.

Made it! With little time to spare we made the 5 hour journey to Santa Pod, for BugJam'99. The vans first trip in many years, made without a hitch. Two of the Twickenham Aircoolers members were getting married that day, then arriving at the show that evening, Dean set up a "wedding party" display, and decked the Twickenham cars out in ribbons etc. Looked very nice, that and the Space Hopper Drag Race win were enough to get us the "Best Club" trophy. Dean was understandably chuffed.

Mav's best snarl... You can see those Post bus skylights close up in this pic.

Many hours were spent under Tom's dash this weekend. The dipper/indicator stalk shorted and fried a few wires under there. All these modern conviniences like headlight flashers and indicators, who needs 'em huh? Only got 6 wires on my van....

Me, Dave and Cat, as you can see, we've ingested an ammount of barbequed mear products and lager based beverages. The sun setting over ten thousand Volkswagen fans.... The organisers estimated 30,000, but I think thats a bit of a lie. I'f it isn't, they made themselves three quarters of a million pounds. You'd hink they could afford to sort the toilets out wouldn't you?

Erm, best cheesy grin. That's George sat next to me, Works with me, lives in the same house as Gill, a new VW convert :-) The bus is just the right height for sitting in.

A little Samba trim, a chrome badge, I spent a lot of time at BugJam working on the bus. The Bed still wasn't complete when we arrived, I had to finish it off before we got to sleep... Behind you can see Mav's South African PO van, which arrived via australia. It transpires that these two vans spent some time next to each other in the same Australian scrap yard, small world huh? Also Tom's Samba, we spent plenty of time working on that bus too, following an electrical fire under the dash.

But it's worth all the work in the end isn't it ? When you're all sat around full of Beer and burgers, in the sun, fantastic.

Nice shot of my and Mav's busses through Toms windscreens. Feel free to use it as your windows desktop :-)

A happy looking Gill, we've just had lunch, and I've stopped mucking around with the bus for a while. That's Julie (Mavs S.O.) and his daughter, stuffing her face with some of the fine fayre available from the on-site vendors. Or not.

A nice little line up, my Aus combi, Mavs SA Panel, Toms UK 21 window. Gill's looking at the camera, she helped with the interior, and will stop me making any horrible mistakes when it comes time to upholster it.

It's all over and we're heading home. Queued for just over half an hour, which isn't bad, and had a leisurely journey home, only stopping to Gaffer tape my screwdriver to Toms floor, when his accelerator pedal fell to bits. He's still got the screwdriver.

Everyone filling up at the first available garage, they must do a roaring trade.

Home safely, the only real problems we had were losing all the gears leaving the campsite, fixed in five minutes by re-attatching the gearshift coupling that Alex had fitted, but neglected to wire up.