Saturday night after a healthy filled day of VW activities (see Blog posts from last week and yesterday) we’ve been invited by the vice president of the WOB Käferclub. Driving over through Wolfsburg area we came across this building….

Our general WOB host Bjorn and Pascal clearly had a great time!

I think Bjorn was pretty hungry!

and Pascal too!

Perfect food, perfect atmosphere, thanks so much for this beautiful dinner!

The day after (last Sunday) it was time for Automeile… Bjorn arranged a small ad in the local newspaper….

It was unbelievable how many people came by that still knew the bus, used to drive along in the glider club, even had old pictures from it etc etc…

Automeile is a general car event, the Beetle club Wolfsburg was strongly present and had the team “wedding”!

or the garage find Scirocco 1… also from one of the club members…

and a “raised from the body” Brasilia, a lot of people tried to figure out what this was all about…:)

A small tour in the area led us to the “Porsche hutte”, this house was from Dr F Porsche when he lived in Wolfsburg to oversee the construction of the factory!

from the garden man had unbelievable beautiful views from the factory!

BBT does recommend Castrol too, ask for BBT’s  Castrol Classic at your parts shop!

We also drove by the VW bad, the swimming pool granted by Volkswagen to the city of Wolfsburg in 1951!

pretty authentic …

This picture from 1961 show how much activity there used to be!  In summer time it’s still in use!

Herr Rolf Riesen, brought a bunch of pictures to my Samba from my Samba, as he saw my ad in the Newspaper, he made dia’s back then so we get all pictures in color too!  Thank You so much Herr Riesen!
Woeps, a motorcycle with VW engine…

Mandatory group picture, BBT with the Käferclub Wolfsburg! This team made us stay in Wolfsburg really unbelievable! Thanks guys!

Some more pictures from this trip that I could not resist to share with all of you!

Yours truly had the time of its life!

Double door “see” through to the old power plant!

Nice overview over the factory!

My samba behaved like a star!

Sandkamp gate of the factory, this used to be the main entrance of the factory… all workers of the plant came through this gate to produce your car back in the day, now its only the entrée for research dept (FE)

with Mike’s 60 ragtop we’re almost back in the sixties….:)

Time to hit the road back home… what a weekend… and to finnish with one of most beautiful sunsets I ever experienced…

Yours truly driving home, thinking about what a ball he had all weekend long…

some pictures I came across this weekend, all the pictures carry my samba bus!

What a trip, what a trip, can’t thank all members of the Käferclub Wolfsburg enough for what they did for us, for the dinner saturday night (man that was good food!) for the drive around in the 60 rag, for the “kaffee und kuchen” on Sunday, for all the help with translating and talking to people, etc etc.

But a very very special Thank You for my friend Bjorn Schewe, who really did crazy things to make sure we had the time of lives, well Bjorn you’re succeeded big time… we will never ever forget your hospitality anymore…. and the experience of this awesome “Wolfsburger wochenende”…

Now this blew me of my socks!

When visiting the Glider club with my samba that always served there one of the pilots took me in a motorglider to make some tours above the factory…

A real dazzling 24 minutes in front of me!

Take off is just a little different as the regular taken larger aircrafts like 747 en 737 etc…

First shot from the air was BBT’s own Iveco delivery truck!

ah, we’re coming close! What a sight….

This is FE or what used to be TE, simply said the Research center… do You recognise the private test track in front of it?

I think this is one of my best overview pics, You can see very clearly the “Autostadt” bottom left, and almost the entire production plant!

or this gives whats’ last picture didn’t show…. do You recognise the Old power plant or “Altes Kraftwerk” ?

Here You do… for me my master picture….:)

Looks like they have solar panels on the power plant, now what about that?????

Time to fly back, I was very quiet, not my normal thing to do, but too many emotions, too overwhelming. what a crazy afternoon!

Back to the ground! Pascal awaited me, for a mandatory pick in the cockpit, yes it was me who took the pictures, nobody else….

Now don’t get whining that its always others who can do things like this, this is easy…. and for real BBT Bloggers here is The Golden Tip!

If You like to see the factory from the air, (like me) go to the Stude Flugplatz (this is a very small Glider airport from the Wolfsburg glider plane club) about 20km from Wolfsburg. ask them to have a flight as a passenger with their motorsiegelflugzeug… price is so moderate at 1.90Euro pro minute, what makes I paid the whole whopping 50 euro for being 24 min in the air… timeless memories…

Most pilots are ex VW workers who do know details from the factory that only insiders do know… the pilot I had worked in the railway dept (loading and unloading trains) and told me they do have 14 locomotives only at the factory!!!! Woehaa! That’s even more than my scale trains back in the day!

All information on this link, You even can book a ticket or somebody else, but think about it for a proper tour over the factory You might need 25 to 30 min flight!

http://www.aeroclub-wolfsburg.de/segelflug/gastfl%C3%BCge/

Let us know if You made it!!!!

In todays FPU we do have a nice couple of neat things what might be practical while working on your project…

First for the bus we do have this missing link for your jail bars in the middle of your back window…

0564-16  Center piece rear jailbar T3 05/79-08/92

Further we do have two modified products, we kept the same part n°s but the product is changed somewhat  somehow so we thought it worth to mention here…

2740  Hub for #2730-2734  Type 1  08/74 – 17mm

2742  Hub for #2730-2734  Type 1   08/59-08/74 – 22mm

a very  nice weekend for all of you!