Home from Holmes - 13-window Split


 


Having previously owned a Cal Look Beetle and a VWDRC racecar, in this Split Screen Camper it seems Paul Holmes has finally found his perfect Volkswagen


 


Paul Holmes is a lifelong VW guy who has owned Volkswagens for the last 20 years having gone to his first Bug Jam at the age of 17, and he’s never been without an air-cooled car since. He’s done the UK Cal Look thing, even raced in the VWDRC for three years but now, aged 38, he’s swapped the Beetle experience for a Bus. “I dreamt of owning a Splitty for around 10 years... I’m self-employed now, my wife has a good job and we both love the outdoors. We regularly go mountain biking with friends (three of whom have Splitties), we enjoy surfing and snowboarding holidays as a family and the Bus fits our lifestyle.” 


“Once we’d decided to buy a Bus, I searched for over a year and looked at some truly awful ones. Then I found this one in Poole. It looked fairly solid and seemed to only need a couple of wheel arches sorting...” he said. “I went to pick it up a month later and was driving to a friend’s in Birmingham for a barbeque on the way home, with a big grin on my face, when the engine blew up,”. It was an unfortunate blow-up – turned out a stray nut had found its way in through a hole that had been cut in the top of one of the air filters, gone straight into the combustion chamber and made a home for itself between a piston and the head, locking the engine solid at 60mph, throwing a piston out the top of the case and bringing the maiden voyage to a rather abrupt halt.


A second-hand 1600 twin port was sourced and, with that, Paul, his wife Deb and daughter Ciara were back on the road, but he still felt niggled about those wheel arches he knew needed repairing. Guess what comes next.


Door bottoms, arches, a new front clip, valance, cab floor, rear floor, sills, rear quarters and cab doors all turned out to need attention, and that was when it went from a “nice tidy Bus that I can use” to a full restoration. After trying a few garages out he was eventually referred to a guy in the nearby village, Lee Paterson. He was very up front about the costs and his work on various other vehicles was second to none. Plus he was cool about letting Paul hang out and chip in.


Although the Bus was destined for a life of holidays and road trips, Paul wanted it to look the part, as well as to work for its living, so retained the slammed and narrowed front beam that had already been fitted in America before the Bus came to these shores, and the IRS conversion at the rear. He also rebuilt the brakes (now dual circuit) as a matter of course, replaced all the copper hard lines and went through all the Bus’ mechanicals to make sure everything was up to scratch and wouldn’t let him down in the future.


When it came to the interior, the couple thought long and hard about what they wanted and what they were actually going to use the Bus for. After all, there’s no point having a cabinetmaker’s dream if you’re going to use it to haul rubbish to the local tip, and there’s no point having Wilton carpets if you’re going to be jumping in and out of it in a sandy wetsuit, for example. To that end, Paul and Deb decided on a neat and useable interior that would echo the mild custom theme of the Bus, but be practical, useful and useable on holidays, as well as easy to keep clean. “We wanted everything to be low level so you can see out of the rear quarters to overtake, and we wanted a decent fridge as we knew we’d be taking the Bus on long journeys,” Paul explains. There’s also now a removable sliding dining table, 12-volt lighting, a Propex heater and a decent sound system to relax and enjoy it all with. When the day’s work is at an end, the table can be slid out, the rock ’n’ roll bed folded into a double bed and a child’s hammock strung out above the cab so all three of them have somewhere comfortable to sleep. Finally, there’s plenty of well thought out storage space to keep all the necessary equipment tucked away out of sight, while a full-length roofrack gives them the space for the bikes, surfboard, skim boards and whatever other sporting equipment they want to take with them.


Last on the list for rejuvenation was the engine. Although the second-hand engine Paul had fitted when the first one went pop was fine, again for peace of mind he opted to have a brand new one built. Having had a 1776 in his old Cal Looker and in his racecar, he felt this was a sensible choice, so had Jay’s Bug Shop in Newcastle put one together for him, based around a new AS41 case, with a balanced but essentially stock bottom end, uprated valvetrain and ignition, full flow oiling and dual 44 Weber carbs. Even when fully loaded it cruises happily with the help of a 1500cc Karmann Ghia gearbox and, with the added extra torque available, doesn’t slow up on inclines, which is exactly what Paul wanted. 


Based on his experiences, we asked Paul if he had any advice for anyone looking to buy their first Bus. “Take your time. Be choosy. If I’d waited a bit longer I probably could have got a better Bus than I did for less money. I’ve made some mistakes with this one, but I’ve learnt from them and would definitely advise people only to have work done by people who come recommended.”


 

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