Strand Patt Theatre Lamps

Got myself a Strand Patt. 23 Theatre lamp to polish
check it out

Set about dismantling the thing

Reflectors removed

Beam-shaping shutters

Lens tube

 

Finished, polished

 

Various views
I left out the beam-shaping shutters as I need the lamp to spread the light as wide as possible - something it's not really designed for. I don't live in a theatre and don't need to "throw" the light any distance or shape the beam pattern. I also removed the 500W lamp (bulb) and replaced it with an energy saving version for the same reasons.

Scored some tripods

With polished tripod, a Davison Star D

Oval window conversion for your Baja, sir?

You may have noticed the oval window clip hanging up in the garage?
I've always fancied an oval-windowed baja, but even I would never butcher a real oval.

I decided I would only attempt the conversion if I could do it right; this involved finding a method of properly grafting the panel in place. Properly means securely, rigidly, inflexibly - as if it grew there!

Butt-welding was out of the question on a panel of this size and shape, maintaining an even 1mm gap all around the panel? A panel with this much edge?
After much deliberation and head-scratching there was only one way...... 
Step-flanging or joggling an overlapping joint was the only way to go for this gig, full strength and some tweaking potential.
Joggling using a normal squeeze joggler, 15mm at a time, would just ruin the edge of the panel and lose all reference to the roof curvature.

Patience, patience

I found a Rola-Step tool.
This little baby uses a pair of driven rollers to form a continuous stepped edge - and has a very small contact area, so no loss of panel curvature.
Once this piece of the puzzle was in place there was no excuse, shit or bust!


Time to make a mess of the recently painted rear window area......

First I drilled out the spot-welds fastening the rear firewall to the window section, there were an absolute shitload of them! Not much metal left.....like swiss cheese.
The joint still held firm despite my efforts so out came Mr.Bosch and off it came, I'm holding the panel back in place to illustrate where the panel joint is.

Next I removed the spot-welds and small tack holding the window surround on the inside.....paint looks good eh?

A bit if chemical assistance was used on the outside so I had a nice clean area to mark up and cut. Since this is a 70's car the rear window is the largest VW made and as such there is very little room for error when choosing where to cut.
The red line indicates where to cut, avoiding the rolled edge of the window aperture and keeping the swage line intact. I just followed the same idea around the corner and across the top.

I realised that Mr.Bosch can't cut around a corner as well as a jigsaw so I went inside to remove the corner sections and allow the jigsaw blade clear passage. All the straight sections were ably despatched by Mr.Bosch and the corners with the jigsaw.

It's out! - both inner and outer window skins.

Oh dear, looks a little forlorn doesn't it?
The only option now is forward....or a convertible

Cleaned out the nasty foam VW put in there to aid corrosion

The removed section compared to the oval

The inner skin of the oval has a return that fouled the inside of the roof so off it came. It wouldn't attach anywhere anyway.

Small sections needed removing to allow the double-skinned panel to slide under the roof skin
They were shot anyway so no real loss......will replace with better metal later.

Oval window section mocked up and clamped, marked position of roof skin on panel and a few reference marks for final positioning

Now to get the rola-step on the job

What a nice job it does

Corners? Easy!

Tacked in and looking sexy, all reference marks aligned

View from inside

Fully welded, entire perimeter of the panel.......

Took bloody ages. One tack at a time, alternating left to right, resting to allow cooling and minimise panel distortion.
Breathe again, loosen sphincter!

Some filler to make up any imperfections, now needs finish sanding and painting

Once finished it will fool casual observers, anyone who really knows bugs will see the tell-tale clues (like the rest of the glass being slightly too big) and know it's a wind-up.
I'm happy though........now to find a full-length rag roof for the complete sacrilege effect

Lazy bastard painted the interior

Shows what a lazy bastard I am when I haven't updated this tripe in ten months....oh well what ya gonna do?

Anyway, after removing all the old interior paint I gave it a healthy dose of cold-galv spray followed by a few coats of MIO. The plan being to get the shell ready to stand outside (not turning rusty) while I worked on the floorpan.

Nude dash

Cold-galv dash

MIO dash - sparkly goodness

 Rear in cold-galv

Rear in MIO

That was the plan..................The plan's changed!

Respect Mr.Bosch

The interior of the Baja was painted, badly, with some kind of red paint over a crappy black over a decent white.
I wanted to remove the red and black so I could key up the white for spraying.
Copious amounts of cellulose thinners wasn't doing it so out came the chemical paint stripper.
I used some large rubber gauntlet gloves to protect my little pinkies from the nasty flesh-eating goo and set to work.
Once the paint stripper had done its work I used a wire wheel on Mr.Bosch the grinder to get back to nice, shiny metal.














Now hindsight is a wonderful thing.....
With hindsight I should have removed the thick, clumsy rubber gloves once I'd stopped using chemicals.
With hindsight I should have used a pair of leather gloves to work with the grinder.
"Should have" and "did" are two very different things!
You can probably see where this is going?
Allow me to elaborate.

New, bitey wire wheel

Catches hold of thick, clumsy rubber glove 

Result = Sudden, painful reminder from Mr.Bosch 

Somehow the rapidly spinning wire wheel caught the bulky glove and ripped off one of the fingers.
In that split-second of realisation I glanced the floppy flying digit out of the corner of my eye and noticed it was empty.
Surprisingly all my extremeties were intact even if the glove was toast.

Cat-like reflexes.....and dog-like stupidity!

In summary: spinny wire wheels are great for taking paint off old car bodies, it turns out they're even better for taking sizeable bits off my finger.

Baja's on it's feet again, the £50 flip front and Baja Karma

Flipped the Baja back the correct way up - about time too!
Lobbed the old flip front on for a chuckle.
Yes, forgot to mention I'd bought a flip front, there's a funny story about that.............not funny ha-ha though.

The funny story goes like this.......
A long, long time ago, in a land far away.
Actually about 1986 if I had to guess, in MansfieId probably, I had my first Baja build going on.
I got hooked up with this chap in Derby who raced a Baja and had a mould for a flip front.
I managed to snag a loan of the mould and got my very own shiny new flip front made; straight out the back door of the local boat-builders for £50.
I ran the car for a few years, latterly with a beast of a 1700 Type IV motor complete with a Weber twin-choke carburettor on a homemade manifold.
Good times indeed but I digress.

I retired the car with all good intentions of turning it into a race project; we even worked on it a fair bit.
More ideas than money and young families eventually put paid to that grand plan.


We broke the car and sold everything including the flip front, more than likely for £50 and we were thankful to find a buyer - times were 'ard................and we ate coal for breakfast! - not really. 

Fast forward to 2006 and thoughts of a Baja come flooding back, so we built Tom's Baja.....detailed elsewhere on here somewhere.
A thinly-veiled excuse for me to spend time in the garage when I should've been doing something useful.
Tom's Baja.....that Tom has finally conceded will be mine.
Ian's Baja now.........
Digressing again.

A few pictures of the Baja that started it all, fluorescent day-glo orange no less

Huge Type IV engine hanging out the back

Looks red in this pic

Towed a caravan round Wales

Nice flip front

Although the Baja currently has a fibreglass 4-piece front end I still loved that old flip front and wondered if I could find another one.
I put a request onto a VW forum and got some replies; one of them with an eBay link for a flip front for sale locally - looked a bit tatty but beggars can't be choosers as they say.













I didn't notice immediately but looking at the listing picture above it looked familiar somehow.

It was only my old one from 25 years ago!
Check it out, even has part of the old number plate sticker still on it.
No other bids and I won it for, you guessed it - £50!

Some kind of Baja Karma?
It hadn't been polished every weekend that's for sure and it's a bit ragged round the edges but we can always use it for a plug to make another mould.......
 
So that's the story of the £50 flip front, dull and boring but you just read it :)