She is looking pretty good. Too bad you don’t have the real deal here, they are going for big bucks nowadays. Looking forward to seeing more.
BK
Thanks Brandon. Yep, it’s a $100k Samba Bus! My best friend used to get the basic VW bugs and buses for almost free. I’m giving him this for his birthday so he’ll finaly have a 6 figure bus lol
Heres today’s progress. Mostly little stuff tho. My big claim to fame on this is cutting off the plastic card seat supports and making real ones from brass tubing just like the real bus.
that piping sure looks better in person. Much more like a line to the naked eye. Although i do see a few touch ups to do before putting the body on.
The glass is in [t$t] Finally, after months on shelf of doom, here’s my solution to the stock glass panels. I made a headliner from 0.040" spaced evergreen siding.
And in a moment of brilliance I got excited and put the glass in before finishing the chrome and body colored molding decals on the exterior…now I can’t spray a gloss coat over the decals [sn0ps] Guess it brush on some future as an alternative. Anyone do anything different to clear over decals?
Using the evergreen as a headliner is a wonderful solution. As for clear coating, the only two options I would recommend is a light brush coat of future as you mentioned or mask each wondow carefully, clear coat, and then remove the masks. I would also masks prior to the BMF and do the foil last (IMHO)…
Ben
Bad….ASS!!!
Drums01 thanks for the props!
mustang1989 love your work, honored that I got a bad-asss from you!
She’s finally finished! Of all things the license plates took 3 rounds of paint. Dang lettering is sooo small. Tried masks, tried by hand, and finally got a new blade for my silhouette so i could cut them out. it’s not a show winner but im proud of the custom work i did and the overall look now that it’s finished. My buddy’s gonna love it.
Here I made the tubing for seat supports and cut the seat so it would fold.
In this one I made the floor mat, custom made chrome door handles and interior panels, plus hand painted the vinyl piping that goes around the seats.
Shaved the rear and made up tail lights to match the style Samba bus I’m building.
Kinda simple underneath. The big reveal here is the heat pipe from the exhaust to the cabin. No VW would be complete without it lol
Edit-almost forgot, custom dash. The kit one wasn’t even close. Found some decals for a mini and used the vw logo from the kit decal sheet to get it right.
Let’s close with a headxshot and a quiz…
My buddy got this license plate by chance, it’s an actual set of numbers from one of his buses. Who knows what a 714 is?
Thanks for hanging out and following the $100k Samba Bus build 
That turned out great! Nice build of a very cool subject.
Reminds me of my '73 Alpine Microbus. Only mine was a junkyard find, and only had two seats [:)] It had the gasoline heater instead of the duct, luckiliy, it was Texas, so the aftemarket a/c got a lot more use.
Yeah that sounds alot like my buddy’s buses! either he got them for free, for some reason people just gave him things, or he paid no more than a few hundred bucks for them. You reminded me of my favorite one, no seats in the back. We would put plastic down, cover it with ice and beer and go to the drive-in [:#]