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1963 VW Crew Cab Tow truck with dual motors!
Well this VW I just purchased and have yet to receive is taking on a life of its own and the history is slowly coming
together of how it came together. I found it for the first time on Vintagebus.com the 3rd week in March 07. Photos were
very interesting and the owner mentioned that it was for sale. His postings were from last year and I thought it was
already sold but for the heck of it something made me email him to see if it was still for sale. I had no response for a
week and almost forgot about it when all of a sudden I had an email from the owner saying it was currently for sale on EBay.
So I checked it out and it still had a day and a half left on the auction! I had some questions for the owner about the bus
and called him right away. I was talking to him about the bus and he said it had the buy now option on the bus and to my
luck I still had some money left on my equity line of credit on my house so bought it on the spot!
The owner's father bought it for him as he did not have the funds at the time. His dad traded a Porsche 914-6 for it and he still could not have the motor! He ended up trading a 1986 BMW 325 I for the motor! The previous owner Dave moved out east and he did not have time for it. It pained him to sell the bus but it needed to go as it was sitting in his hands for 10 years and probably 15 years when he bought it from the previous owner Paul at Baja Auto. So it has been off the road for nearly 25 years!
There was much talking and the thought of the dual motors could run independently but I just found out more details today on this magical beast. The Dave's dad just talked to the creator of the VW, Marvin Norton, and he told of how it was made. We also thought that this was in a vw mag back in the 1970's, this was false as the creator was a low key man that might have took it to a few shows at the most and maybe a shot on local TV briefly. I guess this is why I have not been able to find any info on this VW from anyone in the VW community. It did however spend most of its time working in a vw shop as a tow truck with it reported of moving 20 to 40 cars a day around the VW shop it was used at. The creator would drive it 100 miles just to pick up Vw's for his shop. The shop is Norton Enterprises in Burlington WA a small town about 44 miles from Canada.
The thought was the motors were stock blocks with several mods to make them work upside down. Not true at all! LOL! The motor was started Oct. 1977 and finished April 1979. It started with 88 mm pistons which he put on 2200miles on and later was bored out to 92mm pistons on both motors and created a 1852cc on both motor giving it a 114 hp at 4000 rpm! Everything was ported balanced and blue printed. All heads are single port heads, the Creator mentioned he wanted to go dual port but did not get around to it. From the photos it looks like all the single port heads are connected together around the back of the motors to maybe one carburetor that is now missing. It also looks to be a dry sump pump connected to the oil pump on the top motor and feeder tube for dry sump connected on top of the upside-down motor. It has 2 massive oil coolers that hold whopping 9 quarts oil! He logged over 82k miles on it with it all hopped up! He had to keep adjusting things as he built it, must have had a heat problem with the need of all that oil. The Cranks were welded on and then machined back down in what I believe was to get the pulley to match up. Over $600 dollars alone was spent on the pulley system alone. The motor is currently locked up and only turns a little each way; the motor apparently sat outside more many years and must be full of water now.
The Crew cab does support a winch for the Towing part. The front beam is bug and lowered. The rear gear reduction boxes are turned 90 degrees which moved the rear tires back and lowered the bus 4 inches. The rear seats are taken out for roll out tool boxes and the front dash has been cut for many gauges. I have also written to Burlington Washington town and library for any information on this crazy truck and have had a nice person that said they would help. My intentions are to preserve it and to also enjoy driving it around. I love history and this thing surly had that! As for the Dual motors, I hope to make a display for them to take to shows and hopefully one day we will be able to get those running for all too see. If we can get the motors running well maybe we can put them back in the bus just for driving to shows. I will stick with a stock motor to start with and then go to bigger ones as we get more funds. He did run over a 2100 cc motor in it at one time. Marvin Norton also dabbled into making other variations of the vw motor. One was cut in half with two pistons opposed and one was half a block making a inline 2 cylinder motor! So Marvin was some sort of Dr. Frankenstein playing with VW motors creating things just to do them. I don't know what happened to them but hopefully I will be able to talk to Marvin Norton some time to get more info. More to come as the story unfolds.
The owner's father bought it for him as he did not have the funds at the time. His dad traded a Porsche 914-6 for it and he still could not have the motor! He ended up trading a 1986 BMW 325 I for the motor! The previous owner Dave moved out east and he did not have time for it. It pained him to sell the bus but it needed to go as it was sitting in his hands for 10 years and probably 15 years when he bought it from the previous owner Paul at Baja Auto. So it has been off the road for nearly 25 years!
There was much talking and the thought of the dual motors could run independently but I just found out more details today on this magical beast. The Dave's dad just talked to the creator of the VW, Marvin Norton, and he told of how it was made. We also thought that this was in a vw mag back in the 1970's, this was false as the creator was a low key man that might have took it to a few shows at the most and maybe a shot on local TV briefly. I guess this is why I have not been able to find any info on this VW from anyone in the VW community. It did however spend most of its time working in a vw shop as a tow truck with it reported of moving 20 to 40 cars a day around the VW shop it was used at. The creator would drive it 100 miles just to pick up Vw's for his shop. The shop is Norton Enterprises in Burlington WA a small town about 44 miles from Canada.
The thought was the motors were stock blocks with several mods to make them work upside down. Not true at all! LOL! The motor was started Oct. 1977 and finished April 1979. It started with 88 mm pistons which he put on 2200miles on and later was bored out to 92mm pistons on both motors and created a 1852cc on both motor giving it a 114 hp at 4000 rpm! Everything was ported balanced and blue printed. All heads are single port heads, the Creator mentioned he wanted to go dual port but did not get around to it. From the photos it looks like all the single port heads are connected together around the back of the motors to maybe one carburetor that is now missing. It also looks to be a dry sump pump connected to the oil pump on the top motor and feeder tube for dry sump connected on top of the upside-down motor. It has 2 massive oil coolers that hold whopping 9 quarts oil! He logged over 82k miles on it with it all hopped up! He had to keep adjusting things as he built it, must have had a heat problem with the need of all that oil. The Cranks were welded on and then machined back down in what I believe was to get the pulley to match up. Over $600 dollars alone was spent on the pulley system alone. The motor is currently locked up and only turns a little each way; the motor apparently sat outside more many years and must be full of water now.
The Crew cab does support a winch for the Towing part. The front beam is bug and lowered. The rear gear reduction boxes are turned 90 degrees which moved the rear tires back and lowered the bus 4 inches. The rear seats are taken out for roll out tool boxes and the front dash has been cut for many gauges. I have also written to Burlington Washington town and library for any information on this crazy truck and have had a nice person that said they would help. My intentions are to preserve it and to also enjoy driving it around. I love history and this thing surly had that! As for the Dual motors, I hope to make a display for them to take to shows and hopefully one day we will be able to get those running for all too see. If we can get the motors running well maybe we can put them back in the bus just for driving to shows. I will stick with a stock motor to start with and then go to bigger ones as we get more funds. He did run over a 2100 cc motor in it at one time. Marvin Norton also dabbled into making other variations of the vw motor. One was cut in half with two pistons opposed and one was half a block making a inline 2 cylinder motor! So Marvin was some sort of Dr. Frankenstein playing with VW motors creating things just to do them. I don't know what happened to them but hopefully I will be able to talk to Marvin Norton some time to get more info. More to come as the story unfolds.
Photos here, http://dezionz.com/bus