All right Story time. This right here is the August edition of Motor Trend Magazine and you see that guy here. this guy his name is Robert Downey Jr and that is a BW bus. Let me tell you the story about this BW bus.

As you might already know I like BW buses this is my shop here and I have several of them. This is uh the latest one that I bought I'm going to convert it to Electric this is another one that I bought a couple years ago and um it's also it's in the process of being converted. this one is the original one I bought this 10 years ago more than 10 years ago and I converted it back then and then I used it for about seven8 years I want to say uh, this was my daily car, my daily driver and then uh, it was electric and then I took it down, took the the batteries out in the motor because I wanted to paint it right and so in order to have this one sent to the shop I thought well I need another one and so that's why I uh started working on this one. it almost looks exactly the same, but this one is a 67 since 10 years newer and I worked on this live on the YouTube channel and uh in 10 days I was able to get this from like nonworking been abandoned for like 30 years to then being able to drive it and then this Uh has been my daily driver for about 2 years.

Last year I parked it because it was too cold and too wet and then I just started driving my modern car and then it's been here abandoned ever since so you know I got to work on the batteries a little bit and then I got working. but last year sometime last year I got a phone call from a TV producer and they wanted to know if I would be interested in working in a BW bus where uh they wanted to convert it to Electric So this build was for a TV show and it was in somewhere in New York and I I don't know if you know but I love New York and so I was like I'm down. let's go and this is right uh around the time right after Covid. so uh you might see some masks in there and stuff and I so it ended up being somewhere in Long Island right? Monday morning let's go.

You have the big cameras and here's the first time that I get to see the bus. this is what it looks like and uh it's a Brazilian so I'm not too excited about it but it's a bus so and I'm going to be on TV so I don't care. Right away the Uh part started coming in. All right, the net gain motor is here like this is the uh, the net gain motor and so we start working on it right away.

There's a very short schedule here. Uh, when the TV Productions right? All right. put the sets, screw there to hold the key lock tight so it doesn't work itself out. Oh, you're filming? Yeah, Well the the camera crew is not here so someone's got to film it.

Want? Well this is the top. Yeah, this is the top. so there's the top. We could do that as top.

The index it right about here and we have the we got. We got four bolts, four bolts and it's in the hardware bag. Yep, we're going to locktite those. We locktite those too so they don't come off.

Yep, yeah, you don't want your motor to fall off. Stop. This is the western part of Long Island where we're at now. A western? Yeah, but we got to put that we got to make that cutter.

Here's the star of the show. man. Hey, you did great by the way. Hey, you're a great guy that was good Trying to give you some of the New York styl.

forget about it, forget about it. Then after uh, a long day of working I went and and met up with my friends. This is Ron and Vali Don't go fast dude. The first time I met him we rented bikes in New York and he took me down the busiest one of the busiest like streets in New York City It was wild dude.

look at this. Zoom though yeah Zoom is insane. Bam Oh don't let us over what are you doing you psycho. So then I started wiring all this things you know like all the the the very important things that are not going to make it to camera.

I started doing those and then these guys were just doing all the other things like putting the ports, doing some more the wiring. oh really the bottom ones are going to pull through the holes and then uh, here's the motor. we were going to put it up there. uh and get the whole thing running all right.

These guys are having all the fun they're doing. the time lapse, the moving time lapse. let me see what what are you get oh that's great I like it can you working? no what's up with that I don't know but it has to get done, has to get done. They're recording the the tire over there but yeah that's that's the tire is the is the star of the show here but not not the guy doing the work.

What's up with that? That's right I'm in Long Island this morning back in the east coast. let's do this. Oh got light. oh you just do that light.

yes that's for you cuz I thought you couldn't see what you were doing cuz it's taking you so long. Well I'm just messing. All right here we go. A quick video tonight: I am on location trying to Electrify a BW bus right? This is the battery.

It's all wired. Uh, this is battery minus. this is Battery Plus right? So I already and then this is the uh main. Uh, tomorrow? What I'm going to do is I'm going to hook it all up, try to get it running uh so that we can.

uh then let them finish the box and then put all the stuff together. So here's how I suggest we do it Like what Eevee West has done before. they've hanged this box from up here. This is the So what I ended up happening is that I was there for 2 weeks and we got it done.

We installed everything and then we got the system running. Uh, after that I had to leave and then they were left with the tearing everything apart so that they could paint the bus in the air. My plan is to build way more. I'm just glad that I could help these guys get one of these ones done.

Yeah, progress. This is uh, an electric motor and so here you can see them tearing everything out, undoing everything that we had done. That's good. The quickest way to strip the car down is to Media blasted.

Once they media blasted they realized that the car was in really rough shape and so they had to replace. I Mean they had to replace every single panel of this bus? It's crazy the amount of work they did all these panels like normally. The next time I would see this bus it was a completely different bus primed and painted with a C that picked out and that would be in August of 2022 about 10 months after this first section of the build right. so this was a different shop this is in a different place in New York just up the street and stuff.

But this time what I had to do was literally well go through everything again because they weren't able to put it back together and get it working. And as a result of that, uh, we found that they had connected several things that were wrong and then they had killed a few things like one of the bad battery modules, one or two of the battery modules I think and then like the complete BMS system right? So I was there for maybe like 3 four days or something like that and we had to rush Parts in there. But we got it done. We we put it all together and then these guys were just doing all the minor little things like changing all the glass, installing everything that that it wasn't done by the other shop right? and so here we go.

This is the the day that we finally got it working but it wasn't a 100% It still had a few issues. not only bad but look at this see how wavy it is. the glass shot like super W Here we were pointing out all the defects right and we thought man they're going to shoot a TV show with this thing and it it looks terrible in some aspects. Got egg? you can probably? uh here what we're doing is testing the grill that they've installing there I Also had a few issues that we had to work out and so at this point the schedule was super tight.

It had to be on a location the next day and so we just had to power through this and get it done and get it on the trailer so that it can go and shoot the ETV episode. All right. So this one has been a long time coming. We started this project about a year ago.

Uh, this bus has changed quite a bit now but it's finally here. it's done. Obviously the universe had different plans for this TV show because uh, large portion of the TV crew got covid and so it was completely cancelled and so it would be months until we would actually get to shoot the TV show. Here you can see the vehicles arriving at my shop.

What they ended up having to do is ship the entire set of cars to the West Coast Uh, here in California And then here's where we were shoot this and so that's when this vehicle and a few others came to my shop so that we can finish the them up and do the last final things. This thing scoots. Yeah, it gohost like a a monster truck. Yeah it's a little, it's bouncy bouncy a little Twitchy but if you step on it when it when you're turning you lose the rear end really quickly right? it just you're like wow hey so when are you moving to California oh my God U maybe tomorrow What made you uh, leave elect garage and come work for Wrench for Jack 35 Well you know the P pace of work.

There is pretty laidback and everything work rening on this thing until what like 1: in the morning and everything you know and then we have to be there the next day to work and customer work at 8:00 So I don't know, you seem like an easier boss. You know there's no customers here. it's just us, it's just dark cars and we're just working on cool I I see how it is? Bail for me Okay here we go This: this is the uh tper to oh yeah got a little Drive Line vibration but oh yeah far steering still make get some weird noises bubbles in it. but I mean this is way better than what it was I can actually turn it comfortably now.

yeah you don't need to use a lot of muscle. so I mean it's kind of a little squirly but I mean we didn't build the suspension or anything on this thing. we just yeah, it's just a motor, You're the power train, right? Power train. I I Don't that acceleration vibration bothers me? I Don't know what that's from.

You can put a camera down there like a GoPro and then yeah. I Don't know if that's because of the uh, the rear drive shaft or if it's the intermediate shaft. There's too many shafts in this thing. Yes, it's all wheel drive.

it's got two divs and then it's got a uh uh, transfer case. Yeah. Tomorrow, tomorrow's another day to worri. Will it perform? Will it perform? Or we'll have, uh, performance problems? Does it need a blue pill? It only has to tow a giant jumbo jet jumbo.

Just an Airbus A380 You know, no big deal. All right. So here is a vehicle that has a net gain motor. The Oh, it literally happened seconds before and I'm uh, doing just last minute things like adjusting the throttle I'm making sure that it char chares correctly.

Uh, we're fixing just a few little things like it didn't have. Oh, it was overheating because it didn't have a cooling system. nobody. that other shop that was supposed to do this never did it.

So I just went in here and put a cooling system. Uh, this pump was too loud. so I put a smaller one, the batteries and the BMS system in there. So anyways, here you go.

You step on the thing and it just goes. This thing goes PR fast. Here's Crystal driving the bus, testing it to see if it overheats. We're trying to see if she can break it because if she can break it then somebody is else is going to break it tomorrow.

Tuesday And the shoot who? Whoa. So that's just what happens on these builds. You got to drive them around, test it out, see what breaks, and then fix it, then see what breaks next and fix that. This thing prior to this had zero testing like it had no Road uh testing and so there was a lot of little issues that it had.

but now we're kind of working out. most of them were down to like one or two. Yeah and that Grill does look better without those batteries on the there there we go. These look like the 60s.

This is a 67 German bus. This is a Brazilian. It was made you know, 10, 20 up to 30 years later and it still look very very similar. Now there's a bunch of differences that are small and they use some of the older and newer and so they're kind of a bit weird right the the Brazilians and that's why we cut.

We make sure to distinguish their Brazilians but this is a Brazilian bus. Uh, it's now 100% electric. We converted this in New York and uh, last year, sometime last year and uh, now it's here in my shop because we were just running the final little touches right? This is a buz that is going to be for a TV show uh for a famous actor Robert dowy Jr and uh it has a grill uh and this is connected to the high voltage battery. When you turn this on here, the grill fires up H and you can cook and stuff and that's what we're going to do at the beach uh and also has solar panels up on top that charge the 12vt battery.

The electric motor is a net gain uh hyper 9 Motors that we installed in there with their little tm4 uh controller. It's got this little cooling system here and it's got a stock 70s uh transmission from a Volkswagen right with IRS conversion. The suspension on this thing is exactly the same thing that my buses have and are going to have is the wagon. West uh suspension all uh wheel w disc brakes all the way around so it could stop on a dime and it's got some custom wheels that are that are made to look just like Volkswagen's now this one.

For some reason they ended up doing a stock height uh where I like to have mine lowered uh but everything else is kind of standard. uh the seats. there's some custom stuff. the interior is not 100% uh, original and stuff they took off the Uh emblem uh and the color scheme is a One Tone uh they put LED lights and that is uh, what? Robert down Jr himself picked for this.

He likes these earthy tones that are not shiny that are uh, matte finish and stuff and so that is the reason why this one is like this. It's there's a group of six cars and they all kind of match this same theme here. same thing as mine. It has the uh safari windows as you can see there, these ones are paint to match the car.

uh and the electric systems are about the same right-? 80 Kow this one I think it's about 80 kilowatt. Uh, they run around the same voltage this one has Tesla battery packs five Tesla Model S modules. So about 25 Kow hours where mine has about uh 50 uh, 48 to 50 kilowatt right hour. so mine has about twice as much battery.

This one will go farther but this one. uh, we actually don't know the range yet, but well, it's going to be somewhere around 80 miles because this thing runs pretty good and it goes pretty fast. And the faster you go on this body shape then the more energy you waste because the air, well the front is. it's just waste.

All that it pushes has to push a bunch of air right through the through the air. and so the drag coefficient of these body style is not very good and so it wastes a lot of energy. So anything above 45 miles hour then you're wasting quite a bit of of uh of energy. And so that's why you know, uh, it's going to waste quite a bit of it's not going to be as efficient as it could be.

Now this system is more efficient than mine, so maybe it'll do 90 miles something something like that, right? But it's going to be somewhere less than 100 miles because it's got legit. Uh, about half the batteries that are on mine and so the batteries are all in here. be below this thing right here. There's a battery box in there that was made.

This thing now has a BMS in there. that's the BMS and it's balancing currently, but eventually it's going to be all nice and balanced all right. So Robert down Jr's bus is ready to go. It's going to leave here in about an hour and now uh, it's going to go on his TV de view There we goes on his way to the film seter.

So today is the day that we shoot the Uh TV episode with the bus there here in Malibu So now we're loading up the bus. They just did a bunch of like Beauty shots here on the beach. Now we're going to go to Robert to uh, we're going to shoot the scene where we reveal it to him and then there's going to be a driving scene after that. um all I know is I'm wearing a big white hat.

all right, That's that's a good idea because it was Blazing up. Yep, Yep. Yep. F These guys are kiding out the bus with GoPro They literally extract portable water from the air.

so these, um, hey, hi, what's up? Nice to see you man my brother. This is gorgeous. It's quintessentially Californian It feels really updated. Oh boy.

100 horsepower and 100 LBT of torque. Yes, it goes fast. Now it's not as slow as it used to be. Wow and it's quiet and it's clean.

We open this one over here so look how slick this thing is. Oo it's time to hit the beach with my brothers and sisters part of time. Let's go. let's do this all right.

Pull that up to this one, it's on. Let's take break off, right? You up that right? Have you ever been down to this? Were you down at this beach earlier? Okay, do you know why it's so iconic? What do you know? Um, when Charlton Hon finds the uh, the statue of the Liberty at the end of Planet of the Apes this is it. That's where it happens. Finally did itow and by the way, 350 other beach movies? True, it.

will it happen? Oh see, yeah. make it look like you're it'll go. You got it. You got it.

You got it. You got it. Look at that. A spare look at that.

Just professional. Are We There Yet After a long build, I Think it's great, we should enjoy ourselves and party at the beach a little bit cow time. Woo! All right, it's about time you haven't seen it. Oh dude, you got to see it.

Yeah, right right. So today is the day that we do, uh, the Red carpet and we see the first episode of uh Robert County Junior Dream Cars without my reading glasses. Seriously got you're wearing glasses By the wayes not fashion. Um okay.

so I would like to start by thinking David Z Now imagine that a clown like me having a car that I worked on at the Peterson Automotive Museum that is pretty weird I'm pretty lucky eventually once our episode aired I Had a little viewing party at my shop and I invited uh, some of my friends Robert wants to turn it into an EV J who is an expert on electric vehicles Jay who's become very well known on the internet for doing EV conversions and he specializes in VW buses which is exactly what we I'm a DIY YouTuber I do stuff that has to do with batteries. Back in the day 10 years ago when I was doing this I was the only one I was a weirdo you you need another take on that. Hey, good morning Jazelle So now we're inside here at the LA Auto Show and as you could see, these vehicles belong to a very, very well-known celebrity. Robert Downey Jr You may have heard of him.

these are actually his cars that he has completely EC modified. So you know we know When the 65 Corvettes came out, they weren't electric. but hey, Robert Downey Jr Decided to do a little Eco modification and this is what the result is is: I think I will be entering into the sweep Stakes to see if I can win one of these. but that's the thing about this.

Each of these cars Robert Downey Jr is a climate activist. He EC modified these vehicles and when you come to the LA Auto Show you can enter into the sweep Stakes for as little as $10 to potentially win one of these cars. So Chris what can you tell us about these cars and the Eco modifications? Oh, the're great cars and Robert had a hand in the design of all six cars. What's unique about that? Corvette Other than be electrified, it's got a mushroom leather interior.

Mushroom leather. Is this a new thing? It's a new thing. Chris is going to show us a few other things. So we've got the the solar panels on top here.

you've got the electric vehicles and then look at this. we've got a is this an old VW bus. Yep, it's a 1972 VW bus. Uh, it's also powered by electric motor and the unique feature here is we built a custom electric grill which rolls out for the beach.

Also powered by a solar panel on the roof of the vehicle. So we actually took this to Malibu and cooked up some burgers and hot dogs and I Got to tell you it was awesome! Really really impressive. So this is uh, perfect for this uh beach side. Beachside Living out here in Los Angeles there's a great Malibu Cruiser Well first of all they should come down to the LA Auto Show great cars here other than these if they want to win one, if they can come go to RDJ Dreamcars outcom and you can sign up there to win one of the cars.

Awesome! Chris Thanks for uh showing us a little bit of Robert Downey Jr's dream cars and we hope it. It's a dream for some people that they might one. Yep, lifechanging. So that right there is the crazy story of how I ended up with Robert Downey Jr's electric bus in my shop.

Remember you can see them at the LA Auto Show on until the 26th. I will be there on Thursday the 23rd. so tomorrow I will be there uh running around in the show and I probably will stick around in the area. so if you want to meet up and talk a little bit I will be there.

Keep an eye on out for me there and uh yeah, thank you for watching this video. We'll see you guys on the next one. Bye Robert Wants to turn it into an EV J is an expert on electric vehicles J Who's become very well known on the internet for doing EV conversions and he specializes in VW buses which is exactly what we I'm a. DIY YouTuber I do stuff that has to do with batteries.

Back in the day 10 years ago when I was doing this, I was the only one. I was a weirdo, yet you need another take on that.