Restoring this VW bus has taken years, but the open road for the family heirloom is just days ahead

When Ken Davison of London, Ont., was 16 years old, his dad handed him the keys to the family's 1971 Volkswagen Westfalia van and said, "'It's all yours.'"

"It was just an old rusty van to him," joked Davison, 59, who's had the vehicle ever since, but took it off the road in 1988, after it broke down for the last time.

"I parked it with the promise of rebuilding it some day," he said. "So it's just followed me around for all those years. So about nine years ago, it was decided it was time to get on with it."

Davison, who retired last year after closing down his computer business, figures that over 9½ years, he's spent 5,000 hours working on the van. 

"The best way to rebuild a vehicle in this kind of bad, rusty shape is to actually put it on something called a rotisserie and turn it on its side or use a hoist," said Davison, who has stored the van in a temporary carport beside his Old North home for years. "I had neither of those options. So I have spent many hours on my back underneath sandblasting and painting."

Davison rebuilt the VW's air-cooled engine, installed brake lights, BMW heated seats, an android-operated radio, a back up camera, a lane departure warning system — the list goes on.

"My computer, which I built for the engine, also comes up on [the screen], so I can get all my engine information, temperature, stuff like that," he said.

If all goes according to plan — and the engine keeps running the way it should — Davison hopes to get the Westfalia in for a safety check this week.

Davison has fond memories of spending time with his dad in the van when he was still a kid.

"Probably the best memory was that my dad and I would go up to Mosport Speedway and spend the weekends in the van watching the car races," he recalled.

But the van broke down. A lot.

In fact, when he and his wife, Jacquie, headed down the 401 from London on their honeymoon in the mid-1980s, they didn't get very far.

"About 50 kilometres or so out of town, the engine blew on it," laughed Davison. "We were stranded until my father in law got there and towed us back home,"

Jacquie Davison often took the bus on trips as a girl-guide counsellor in the '80s.