VW T1 Camper mods

kyrotek

My Mother has recently become enamoured with #10220 VW T1 Camper and I expect she will be purchasing it very soon (after the real-life car passes the MOT). Her only comment when I took her to the local John Lewis to see it in the box was "the doors are on the wrong side" about the double side doors. I expect once the build begins she will also comment on the left-hand drive too...

Has anyone worked out if the side doors can be switched over to the left hand side? I don't want to interfere in her build but would like to help realise her hopes in making it "UK standard". Not sure I can create a sliding rear side door like their old blue one was, mind you. Any help is greatly appreciated as I have only found a youtube video for right-hand drive conversion so far.

rich_b

Yep it's pretty easy to make right-hand drive just by mirroring the build when doing the body. Looks much better I think. No idea on making a sliding door though.

Sethro3

Having only seen one of these in real life and only while it was driving, I guess I never noticed the doors were on the wrong side.

twoninerken

The ones I have seen have the doors on the right side. Not sure if that is the case on the right hand drive models though.

I think it would be easy to mirror the build and switch the doors and steering wheel if you wanted.

zipsforbananas

As @rich_b‌ and @twoninerken‌ have said, it's just a matter of mirroring the build.
Making it right hand drive is easy enough, you just have to mirror the dashboard and move a few parts.
But moving the doors across would be a big job. I don't think there are any parts that would stop you from doing it, but the entire interior of the back section, a fair amount of which is built into the sides, would have to be mirrored. I suppose you'd want the exhaust on the other side too (I'm feeling like I've done a poor job only switching the drive side and wing mirror!) so mirroring the entire build is the obvious answer.

So it can be done, but I imagine it would be a big undertaking for an inexperienced builder - not wanting to assume too much about your Mother of course, she may well be more than capable! I'd suggest a quick scan of the instructions to see how much it would involve.

CupIsHalfEmpty

Looking at the parts list, it would appear you could mirror the build. All of the parts that are winged or sloped to the Left or Right have an mirrored part included. From this I assume that you could mirror the whole thing out of the box.

I'm almost tempted to try it...

kyrotek

I shall have to wait and see if my mother can see how to mirror the build, she is pretty handy with quite the imagination so it's do-able. Time to start the conversation and see how she takes the idea onboard first.

Cheers chaps!

jon11380

I have done a complete mirror build. It is just a matter of building each side the opposite direction way once work on the interior begins. No extra parts are required. It's a great set.

kyrotek

Awesome news, thank you @jon11380