Just doing preliminary work on the 1979 green Kombi/Transporter. Last month I got it all cleaned out (years of dirt, mud, pine needles, sawdust, construction screws and nails, wood bits, more dirt and mud, rust, etc) and dried out. So, and some of you will curse me for this, our intention is to build cabinets and install a spare z-bed I had picked up a few years ago and make it somewhat like a tin-top Westfalia (i.e. no poptop).
Yesterday I went to remove the back bench seat and as you likely already know, the bottom section of the bench seat is attached via two big bolts to the floor and those came off easily. The back piece of the bench seat has a release mechanisms that allows the back part to disengage and hinge forward onto the bottom section making a more or less flat area for cargo carrying (but not sleeping as there is a big gap and.......yeah, no foam mattress. The two large bolts (one at each end) of the hinge piece of that back seat section go through to the wheel well which turned out to not be a great design cuz it gets rusty in a hurry. On my bus, it clearly completely rusted out right there and at some point the back of the seat likely no longer was held in place at all.
So rather than replacing the rusted out section with metal, some previous owner made a semi-permanent repair by filling in the holes with some combination of body filler/epoxy/whatever and sunk the bolts into it where they would remain forever (or until that repair failed one day with more rust or an accident). Anyways, kind of a tight area but a 4" cutting wheel on my angle grinder and out they came. I'll fix those two spots later after I figure out where the z-bed needs to be bolted in.
Kind of a slow VW Bus news story day today but here's a couple pictures of the bolt mounts as I found them. Oh yeah, and that is the same place the seat belts are anchored. Jeez.