Hi Doug,

I built my baywindow westfakia along the same lines as what you're
planning. From what I've seen chopping up two buses, I may be able to
lend some insight, though it won't be Vanagon specific. OTOH, I'm sure
VW used similar principals putting the vanagon together, esp. when you
consider how similar the sunroof and westy roofs of bays and vanagons
are.

There are pics of my conversion online here:
http://www.pottsfamily.ca/westfakia/Gallery

and here:
http://www.pottsfamily.ca/westfakia/creation/index.html

The way I did mine was to peel the skin away from the donor roof, and
overlap it with the original bus roof. The edges were spot-welded and
the seams smoothed with filler. It sounds ugly but it wasn't so bad...
and besides, the roof is closed 99% of the time so most people never
notice the seam anyway. It did take quite a while to liberate the skin
from the box-section upper framing, but the end result was much easier
to work with. It took me about 100 hours labour to do this conversion,
but an autobody professional could probably do it in less than half
that amount of time.

Happy trails,

Greg Potts
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

1973/74/79 Westfakia Conversion **Bob the Tomato**
1977 Sunroof Automatic
http://www.pottsfamily.ca/westfakia
http://www.geocities.com/busesofthecorn

On 1-Mar-04, at 5:06 PM, vanagon wrote:

> The primarily reason for my asking is I am in the midst of installing
> a pop top roof on my 87 (non pop top) GL Syncro.  I would like to
> better understand what order certain metal pieces were joined
> together, this will greatly help. I have heard stories of folks who
> went to Germany to see their Vanagon's being built, and were able to
> witness the entire process!  Wow.
>