2026

This year the bus started out just waiting as the gearbox wasn't ready for to be collected until April, 

Hans called me and said there was nothing wrong with the gearbox and that It was most probably the flanges and that he thought they were really tight and that this was the cause for a noisy 4th gear 

well i was a bit confued a that but what else could i do, so I went to his workshop and collected my gearbox and all the other parts that he had dismantled 

Soon after I did changed the flanges as instructed by Hans and was ready to put things back together.

May was a busy month with Travis taking Studenten but in June I had things back together and was itching to take it for a test drive, where I was hoping that the noise in 4th was gone

I pressed the bearing housing off, swapped flanges, pressed the bearing housing back on to the axle tubes, then attached those back on the gearbox and shimmed, repeatedly until the desired feeling was found. Then I touched up the paint on the axle tubes and re installed the gearbox in the bus, torqued up everything, had to get a new gasket and a rubber o ring for the rear hubs, but once they had arrived I cracked on and soon I was filling it with fresh gear box oil until it ran out of the fill plug hole. 

Next the engine was fitted, wired up, plumbed in the oil hoses and changed the oil filter, filled with fresh oil and started up. All good so far. 

Below video is when I am carefully driving out to test 4th - unfortunately the noise was still exactly the same in 4th !

The flanges did nothing - as I and many others had suspected. 

I sent a message to Hans in August once I had been to the "Besiktning" mot and given it a good drive. As of yet no reply. I think the 4th gears are either pitted and it was a miss matched set of gears that had not worn together, or it is not quite shimmed correctly - I don't think it is a bearing as the noise is more gear lash sound but we will find out later - maybe in the winter when I remove the gearbox and get it checked over by some one else. 

I parked the problem with 4th gear and instead focused on getting things good so that I could take the bus to the registration test"besiktning" .

Here I was busy tidying up some wires in the back area with the stereo system 

I booked the registration test about 20 km away and soon it was the day 

Quite a nervous drive - but also very exciting. 

It all went very well 

He checked engine size, the brakes, lights,  chassis number, weighed it, horn, wipers etc and then went and found me a reg number. 

Next stop "kontrol besiktning" 

Its an mot - if that goes well then its all done and ok to drive ! 

Booked on the 4th August 2026 

  

 

2025

2024

2023

 

(This is me out on a test drive, and of course having little issues with the carb, poor idling, disc brakes, scraping on something and even gear selection was problematic with it being difficult to find all the gears - oh the joys of being a vw enthusiasts !)

2022

 

2022 Hessisch Oldendorf

2021

2020

2019

2018

 

2018 

Before long, Sanna and I had blended our two families together. Her two boys became my bonus sons, and my boys became part of her family too. Overnight, life became busier and fuller. One week we'd have four boys filling the house with noise and chaos, and the next week it would be just the two of us.

On one of those quieter weeks, we decided to see if we could uncover a little more about the history of the Samba.

A Piece of History

I love this old black and white photo below.

We started digging a little deeper into the history of my Samba. Like many old vehicles, the paperwork only tells part of the story, and I wanted to know more about the people who had owned it before me.

After some detective work, we eventually managed to decipher the old handwriting on the original sales bill, this i obtained with the help of the Swedish vw historical club, and once we had this document, we eventually identified the correct name. This opened a door to the past and, incredibly, I was able to contact the daughter of the very first owner of my bus.

She was kind enough to share some photographs of her parents and their buses, giving me a glimpse into the life of my Samba when it was still a family vehicle rather than a restoration project.

When I first saw this photo, I thought:

"Surely this is my bus?"

Everything seemed to fit.

But as I continued researching, I discovered something unexpected...

It wasn't my bus.

It turned out that, after buying my Deluxe Samba, the owner went on to purchase another one a year later. This photograph is actually of that second Samba—a 1956 model.

So although this beautiful bus isn't mine, it is still part of the same family's story and connected to the history I was uncovering.

One day I would love to track this Samba down and find out what happened to it. Hopefully it survived and is still out there somewhere, continuing its journey just like mine.