SONG FOR A RIDE ....

Friday, October 31, 2008

Friday, October 24, 2008

GUANCHITA´S STORY (WITH ELIOREYES´PERMISSION....)

Guanchita´s story starts when Elio Reyes (a good friend & great VWs fanatic) was looking for a Doka. When he started it was only one, but soon he realized he had bought 3 dokas and a bus, too much. So he sold Guanchita to Jesus El_Gofio who got her. This was the Doka as a daily-driver vehicle:

Soon afterwards, Elio started dismantling everything to get to the bare body...

The engine was brought down for a serious re-building:

And later, she was taken to a lonely junkyard to be sandblasted...

The task was done by a kind of Darth Vader´s newphew (in Elio´s own words):


And after sandblasting her to the bone and do some minor welding repairings, she was primmed to be painted and re-assembled again (at this point Elio got a nice perfectly preserved doka and abandoned the project which gave Jesus the opportunity to buy her) :


Jesus (our Gofio Man) took things easy and a long process of body painting and engine re-building and painting started: (Here are the engine tin parts hanging from a rope ready to be painted)


The final results ( a bit scary for some of us but "cool" for him):

The cargo doors were carefully repaired ("with love"), primmed & painted too:

The back cargo door gave some problems rejecting one and again the paint, which made him repeat the process at least three times:

Then the colours were fixed to the body: first light silver in & out and later that strange "caramel surprise"...


Windows, lights and uphostery were patiently put back into her...(here we can see Kiko helping Jesus)....

Engine lid and tail lights in their place...


You can see this man is in love....he, he ...



And Guanchita as she is now, a joyful, gorgeus Doka looking forward to go for a ride!!!

You can compare...

Friday, October 10, 2008

LATEST SIGHTINGS

Here you can see the most recent sightings. Among them this nice T1 kombi daily driver in a wonderful & perfect condition...


This nice doka went up to the mainland, maybe we´ll see her appear in any of the many meetings there are in Peninsula.

Well, I know it´s not a VW, but Zeben (Fotingo800) loves this kind of tiny 3-cylinder japanese cars. It´s a Honda Z 600, here so called "TV Honda"...

This T2a kombi was recentry sold by 2000 Eus (looks nice but needs lots of work). A lucky guy has got a rare specimen.

The wonderful T2b we saw at Garachico when being re-built...

This is a T2a Doka, used by hunters to carry their dogs (many dokas survived that way....)

This one is a bit small, I saw it just a minute but something called my attention: that small orange turning light on top side after driver´s door. Is imported, maybe from a northern country like Sweden or so...




Sorry about the pictures quality, but they were taken with a mobile phone, not with my camera.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Sunday, October 5, 2008

VINTAGE PICTURES AND DIAGRAMS





This type (T1 double cabin) was the best sold VW van in the Canary Islands for decades: It was used for local farmers to harvest the bananas "piñas de plátanos" from the plantations, as for local business such as carpentry workshops or garages to transport all kinds of goods and stock. This one is like Elio Reyes´treasure.

The westy (below) was rarely seen in the islands except for the tourists that came by boat after passing across the Mainland on tour.

This is a shocking picture of the manufacturing process at Wolfburg. Could you imagine yourselves having a look at such a wonderful parking?

The samba was particulary seen in Puerto de la Cruz as it was used to carry the tourists in short tours around the island, or to see the Teide. Nine seats and an open-air ragtop made then perfect for those narrow and "snaking" roads we had...

Another picture of the factory. Funny to see that all kinds were assembled at the same time: kombis, dokas, panelvans...

I remeber the red cross ambulances in La Orotava, Puerto de la Cruz and La Laguna.


Strange kombi with 12 seats. I´ve never seen such seats combination in my life. Hard to believe that the engine to move all those people was a bare 1300cc!!!


An early bay-window cut to the bone shows her mechanical distribuition:


Kiko would like to have his Deluxe walkthrough in such a good shape! (In fact his bus is a late T2b).
And finally T2 Doka similar to ours at the Doka Club. This seems to be an early model T2a like Gofio´s Guanchita, my Gloria is a 1971 T2a-b.

I hope you´ve enjoyed the pictures as I did and do from time to time...

SIGNALS