Club 80-90 Forums

Hi all,

First time post so bear with me.

My wife and I where given a fantasic VW T25 1.9 water cooled Holdsworth camper as a wedding present last year from a very generous uncle who has owned it most of its life and wanted it to stay in the family!

It is a bit rusty/tatty and after giving it a little mechanical tlc and using it for a year we have realising that we loved campervanning and the whole VW scene we have decided to do more or less a full restore job. It is going in for some body repair and then a full re-spray and a new interior after that.

Trouble is we haven't yet decied what colour we want to do it. we could just keep the original white which would be fine, but we figure we'll only get one shot at this so maybe we will do something a bit more funky.

Any thoughts or pictures you have to inspire us would be great.

I have attached some pictures (or tried to at least!) of how the van currently looks.

Hi. Welcome to the Forum.

It's hard to provide advice on this sort of thing because it is so personalised but Im sure people will have there ideas.

What sort of thing are you into? Do you prefer Ratty? Rod? Classic? Two -tone? Modern? Period? Origianl?

Maybe google them and get some pics of things you like?

Lots of photos here

Keep it the original colour

keep it original but i was really tempted to mine like this

Thanks for that link Cjh.

Been looking around Google but its a bit limited really. My main concern is the fact that its a high top, as I'm not sure that metalic paint or anything.else fancy would work due to it being fiberglass
Does anyone have any experience/pictures of custom high tops?

We are also considering a two tone look, as some vans were like this from new but again not sure if it would suit a high top.

The only thing I'm not into is ratty, thats what it is now without trying!

Ta.

We are in the same position with a Hightop Auto Sleeper, as far as i'm aware there is no issue painting it but my worry is it's such a big area you really need to get the colour right.

We keep fliping between (almost) Original) and something way different. We have a little while before we need to decide.

Jez

We were in the same position, a white high top van seemed uninspiring to us so we took a chance on an orangey-bronze metallic (a Volvo colour - Volvo saffron gold 435) and are really pleased with the result - it makes our D reg look far newer and certainly draws the looks (not that that was our intention, but it's nice in a way). It's a personal choice of course, but I'd suggest taking a chance if it feels right to you.

Hi and welcome

I recently had ours "done". We kept to white. If you change the whole colour, you really have to factor in painting the inside bits as well (doors, "A" pillars, rear tailgate and surround etc).

I would say keep it the same colour but look at adding "decals". There are plenty of places that can custom design and fit them for not a lot of money. Our "other" van (just sold) has a very nice "Z" shaped stripe in a kind of metallic grey that changes colour depending on the light landing on it



I always intended to mirror that stripe to some extent on the roof, to break up the expanse of white, but I never got around to it !

VW Ivory (I call it cream) is more subtle if you want a small change!

ghost123uk wrote:I would say keep it the same colour but look at adding "decals". There are plenty of places that can custom design and fit them for not a lot of money. Our "other" van (just sold) has a very nice "Z" shaped stripe in a kind of metallic grey that changes colour depending on the light landing on it

With decals, a little goes a long way. Our van had grey/rainbow decals (which I hated) when we bought it, but for under £50 we added blue decals and it's made a big difference:

Old decals:



New decals:



That said, if you can afford the respray, why not go for it?! We only went down the decals route because a full respray is beyond our budget at the moment.

My dream is to get it respreayed in a nice deep, retro orange, possibly leaving the high top white.

One day...

This one was white last year but wanted to be a bit different it's not every ones taste but we like it. and we are still working on it!!!

bluedirtydigit wrote:This one was white last year but wanted to be a bit different it's not every ones taste but we like it. and we are still working on it!!!

Nice fade!!

bluedirtydigit wrote:This one was white last year but wanted to be a bit different it's not every ones taste but we like it. and we are still working on it!!!

I think that's great

Hi and welcome,my holdsworth has just gone to the bodyshop today for a full respray,pastel white "code l90d" the original colour,the fiberglass roof is to be polished by the body shop and they say it will come up like new,i am one for original as i think its best.I am going down the decals route with a few classic touches to make it different nothing to fancy just subtle enough to make her stand out from the crowd.
Go to some VW shows you have a fab time and also get alot of inspiration from whats on show,hope this helps