Ruby Red

Since the tender age of just 3, Joanne Dix has been into splitscreen Volkswagens.

DAVE RICHARDS

It was all down to her family taking her from their hometown of Scarborough to visit lots of VW shows from a very young and impressionable age. For the past twenty odd years, her birthday and Christmas presents have always been splitscreen memorabilia. She dreamed of the day when she might have one of her own and her infectious enthusiasm has rubbed off on her husband Oliver. The day finally arrived where they both agreed that, ‘life is too short’ and they began searching for a bus of their own. And when Joanne stumbled across this camper in August 2017, it was ‘love at first sight’. Having spent her whole life studying VW split-screens, she could barely hide her smile as soon as she saw Ruby. The owner still had to interview the couple, as he wanted to make sure that the new ‘adopted parents’ were fit to look after his treasured bus, but the colour and the chrome tipped Joanne into saying simply, ‘she’s the one’. A lot of work had been carried out on the split, including changing the colour from white/grey to the stunning off white over Nissan red that you see here. The original 1500cc engine had also been replaced with a larger capacity 1776cc unit running twin Weber 36IDF carburettors, 041 cylinder heads and an Engle W110 ‘hot street’ cam. Dual oil coolers are also fitted, the first is stock, but full flowed and the second is cooled with an auxiliary fan. The original transmission and reduction boxes were replaced properly using an IRS from a bay and a higher ratio gearbox taken from a 1303S Super Beetle. The front suspension was lowered using both dropped spindles & an adjustable beam, and the front brakes were uprated, both to cope with the additional power and to match the new smaller wheel PCD to the new rear end. Discs from Custom & Speed Parts were installed along with a dual circuit master cylinder and a vacuum servo. Other nice touches are polished GT 5 spoke alloy wheels from SSP, a roof rack, pop outs from Creative Engineering and a Dormobile roof...