Earlier this morning (7am), we picked up the VW bus that we will use for the Austin market. It is a 1972 VW Bus, camper style — like the 1976 VW Bus we have for the Kalamazoo market.
Our goal is to build out vintage trucks that we offer our gelato from. Our primary vehicle still is a VW Bus that is a 1979 or older vintage. Since we are working with vintage vehicles, we never will get a “perfect” machine. We found that out when picking up the bus for the Austin market.
In picking up the bus, it had difficulty starting. It required a trick to start the engine; the trick entailed by-passing the solenoid. Fun. 🙂
This trick was shown to us by the seller, who was embarrassed that the bus didn’t start (he had taken the bus on a test drive earlier in the morning). This will definitely need to be something that needs to be fixed, as we don’t want a bus that isn’t going to be able to start easily.
In addition, the bus has a cracked windshield. This also was the case with the Kalamazoo RG VW Bus. Another thing we will want to get fixed along the way.
After getting the bus started, we drove the bus back to our Austin-house, where we took pictures of it on the Scenic drive ridge. While taking pictures, the homeowners lauded the vintage bus, and actually enjoyed hearing the bus’ solid engine (saying, it sounds like it runs great, and that there must be a lot of memories in that bus).
Now it is parked in the garage, and we get to work on cleaning it out and building it up to offer our gelato in Austin. It will need a nice paint job, a thorough cleaning, and a modified designed compared to the Kalamazoo RG VW bus (as we have a sink and shore-power hookup already installed).
