Woody's favourite spoon & a mouse

Woody's favourite spoon -
Woody has (or rather, had) a favourite spoon - he was beginning to form an un-natural affection for said item of cutlery.
So we (well, Simon actually) decided to modify it a bit.














Woody's revenge for the spoon - Simon, I did try to stop him but they are strong you know!
Aaaaaah! blackout, I'm going down!

Tom's Baja video

So we took the car up to the D353RT (which is somewhere we're not supposed to go) for a shakedown

This is the first time out with just me driving



And a little more



Next time out and Tom has a go with me as co-pilot



Getting better all the time



Tom's First Solo drive, I'm just a bit nervous - no need though



Getting plain cocky by now, not bad for his first day - Boy's got petrol in his veins



Nearly wiping me out, time to let me have a go and you settle down Stiggy



My turn taking Tom's Baja for a spin

Sites I Like

Here are a few of my favourite websites

Wikipedia, an invaluable resource for all facts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

Uncyclopedia, an irreverent take on Wikipedia - very funny
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Dark Roasted Blend, full of amazing stuff
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/

Tom's Baja - Part the Third

Building Tom’s Baja
An ongoing tale of learning from mistakes,
mostly those of other people!

Part the third

Shake-down!
Well we took the beast out to play as a reward for our endeavours, you can probably see the results elsewhere on this site or on youtube.

Surprisingly the car acquitted itself very well, sure we had flaky front brakes and a soggy back end (ooerr!) but all in all a good day out.

Back to it:
We re-indexed the rear end by two splines and the car now sits much better, albeit with a slight positive camber attitude but that’s the price you pay for increased ride height on a swing-axle car.


Rarrr!












The front beam was removed and inspected, there was a little bit of corrosion on the lower section of the off-side tower so we decided to use the perfect beam from the 1970 car.

Sway-away type adjusters have now been welded into place on both torsion tubes…..sorry forgot to take any pictures.
Rather than weld them in allowing for equal adjustment up and down they were fixed to allow all the adjustment in the up direction only (rotating the trailing arms down – lifts car up).
We now have up to four inches of front-end lift…..kick-ass!
The limiting factor to lift however is the length of the front shock absorbers, they are jammed at full extension, not a good thing - when replaced with longer-travel ones the front end of the car will rise higher…..nice!

Useful tip - While we had the beam in bits we also installed some urethane torsion bar bushes, these replace the needle bearings (and seals) in the end of the tubes and hopefully will be better suited to our application.
We encountered just one problem during fitting of the urethane, removal of the old needle bearings – this was solved with a bit of lateral thinking, we used a really big-ass rawl-bolt, the kind used to secure bridges to motorways etc. it proved much easier to pull out the bearings than collapse them inwards using pointy things and a hammer.
See below:


Rawl-bolt remover













Rawl-bolt remover expanded













Rawl-bolt remover in place













Bearing on its way out













Urethane bushings fitted













Beam in place on car













Hard!













Front and rear raised – Cool












The next job is to fit four new balljoints as most of our existing stock of used ones have torn rubber boots.
We have assembled the front end using these duff joints purely to get the vehicle mobile – we don’t expect them to last long off-road when they have been exposed to muck and grit but we might as well give them a good send-off……..
New balljoints are cheap to buy and therefore it makes perfect sense to replace them while the front end is being worked on.
However, before we can fit them we need to build a suitable press to extract the old ones and press in replacements.
I have a stash of sturdy steel beam at work and a 10-ton bottle jack which should make a really effective press………..more as I build it.

Following on from balljoint replacement is the fitment, of front disk brakes and calipers, these have been saved from the 1970 1500 we broke previously and will need checking over first.

Future plans include fitting a Golf 1.9 TDi motor which will be liberated from Man-John’s Golf before it is scrapped.
The logic behind this conversion is two-fold, the engine will have over twice the power of the 1200 it replaces at 90bhp and also plenty of torque for turning those big rear wheels.
It will not be adversely affected by water as it has no HT (spark) ignition system.
An added bonus is it can be run on cooking oil as a rolling experiment before I dare to try it in a family car…….might even use recycled oil from local chippies.
We will detail removal of engine from donor Golf and also fitting into Beetle as we go.

Tom's Baja - Part Deux

Building Tom’s Baja
An ongoing tale of learning from mistakes,
mostly those of other people!

Part Deux

First job as always, break out Mr. Stihl my two-stroke best mate
Cutting off the back end was easy enough as it was the third time we had done it, we just had to make sure there was a surplus of metal to allow final trimming when we came to bolt on the wings.


Me and my two-stroke mate Mr. Stihl






















Mr. Stihl in action – notice complete absence of ear-defenders, goggles, gloves, commonsense,
maturity etc.















The red paint, although faded was a good base for a new paint job, except on the roof which was deeply cracked like the baked earth you see in those pictures of African droughts.
Anyhow, the weather was fine and there’s no motivator like a quick-fix paint job……
On the roof we actually removed the paint back to bare metal as the white underneath was also shot –very strange.
We applied two coats of green primer and two coats of an olive-green coloured paint I snagged from work.
Painting was made easier by the fact that the glass was still out.
The paint itself is very close in colour to the “Camo” green Man-John has used on his Transit van.
It is an MIO (Micaceaous Iron Oxide) paint, the type we put onto lighting columns that are exposed to all weathers and motorway traffic – It’s good stuff.



Primer coat












Top coat














We took a look-see at the engine, the previous owner had removed the sump plate and drained the oil. Presumably to prevent the oil draining out when it was up-ended into the back of the car?.
Two of the six sump studs were stripped and would need renewing, no problem on five of the six, but one (one we needed to swap) also holds the oil-pump pickup pipe inside the engine.
This can only be swapped when the engine case is stripped and split into two halves.
We weren’t about to go to all this fuss on an unknown engine, so with amazing skill and dexterity we managed to cut off the damaged portion of the thread and (working through the sump hole) also managed to tease a little more thread out of the engine case.

The other stud was swapped in a couple of minutes

We fitted another sump-plate, an earlier one with a drain plug as for some reason all later engines use just a plate with no plug and require the plate to be removed to drain the oil.

- Rant time -
A sump-plate with no drain plug? -This has never been a good idea, repeated removal and replacement of the plate during servicing would surely lead to failures of the relatively small 6mm studs, oh it did? – well well!. I am sure VW probably saved a good few pennies on each engine by this illogically backward step but I am equally sure that any mechanic who ever changed oil cost them those few pennies back (and many more) with stud repairs, bandages and clean up costs associated with having a sump-full of hot, dirty oil dumped in one big rush from the underneath of cars and vans across the globe.
-Rant over-

With the sump sorted we turned our attention to getting the engine bolted to the gearbox.
Well we would have, if the studs that secure the engine had actually been in place.
The bottom two studs had seized-on nuts and had un-threaded themselves from the engine case during removal, taking a lot of the internal thread material with them.
Magnesium alloy is none too tolerant of cack-handed stud removal
(a little WD40 would have allowed the nuts to undo as intended without pulling the studs – maybe the last owner had never heard of WD40?)
The seized nuts were removed and the studs re-fitted into the engine with a drop of stud-loc (a sort of thread glue which hopefully will also make up for any lost metal)
Next the top studs, on later engines the stud behind the oil cooler fastens to a steel insert in the case itself rather than with a nut. (this is because 1300 and 1600 Twin-Port engines use an offset “dog-house” oil cooler for improved airflow to number 3 cylinder and there is no access for a nut/bolt arrangement, obviously all engine cases (including the 1200) after a certain date used this method)
This stud must also have seized and had been removed with the aid of Mr. Angle Grinder, cutting through the metal of the engine case, bolt and insert in the process.
Now don’t get me wrong, Mr. Angle Grinder is a really good mate of mine but he was not the best man for the job in this case…..
A small repair to this area involving a longer bolt, nut and washer allowed the engine to finally bolt up to the gearbox.

Now to try and start the thing.
I have always reasoned that any engine which will allow two complete revolutions by hand will actually run…. However poorly.
So we gave it a go..
A drop of petrol in the choke of the carburetor, a tap to the starter solenoid with a medium sized hammer and the engine turned over. Encouraging.

A little more cranking and the engine fired up, a bit lumpy and with no idle.
Replacement of the vacuum advance hose and slight adjustment of the points soon improved things.

Mally logic prevails again!

Rejoice! The car now moves under its own power.
Now for the clutch adjustment and brakes not to mention the Baja kit to attach etc etc.

Fastening the fibreglass panel work to the Baja proved to be a real ordeal, a lesson was (re)learnt here; don’t buy the first Baja kit you see, quality and fit varies wildly and we picked a bad one.

Take the wings, you might think they would be an easy bolt-on right?, wrong again.
I have never encountered such poorly made pieces of poo in my life, the mounting flanges were moulded to the wrong angle and do not fit flat to the body even when bolted up tight.
The front bib-panel, whilst coming from another flat-screen beetle of similar vintage is approximately 20mm. too narrow and has had to be packed out to meet the front wings.
This involved lining each panel with gaffer tape, packing out with fiberglass filler, allowing to cure and then removing the panels and tape.



Tom prepping bodywork for the front bib













Front bib attached and secured













Front bib and the gaffer tape solution – building a support












Packed-out with fiberglass filler













The bonnet is also too narrow and was too flat with no natural curvature to follow the front scuttle panel (the bit where the windscreen wipers sit) and has had to be pulled together and braced with threaded bar to maintain its shape.
I could go on but it’s a pretty boring tale of triumph over adversity.
On the plus side we can now work convincingly with fibreglass and body filler.

Overall, the car turned out to be nearly as good as first appearances suggested but a little body work has been required – no real surprise.
It needed some minor surgery to both front inner-wing areas, specifically where the A-pillar and front quarter panel converge, a small repair to the rear of the driver’s side heater channel and a good sized patch to the front of the driver’s side floorpan around the pedal area.



Removed rot - o/s













Repaired panel – o/s














Filled repair – n/s












Painted repair – n/s













All of this structural work could have been left for another day but has served as a useful exercise in fabrication and welding and has turned a mostly-solid shell into a rock-solid shell.

As this is written the Baja now needs some serious attention to the braking system, it doesn’t have one……..it’s entertaining using the handbrake and throttle alone to manoeuvre upwards of a ton of metal about the place.
There is no hydraulic fluid in the brake master cylinder so there’s a good place to start

Hopefully, when the brakes are done we can take it out for a shake-down session.
We already know that the rear suspension will need re-indexing and the gearbox mounts are soggy but these issues will be addressed in good time and not before we have had a chance to have a play….
Future plans, as well as the above include front suspension lift via weld-in adjusters (sway-away type) and at the same time a disk-brake conversion.

One thing at time

Tom's Baja - Part One

So here we go, are we sitting comfortably?, then I'll begin.....
Here is the story of my son Tom's Baja (so far)

Building Tom’s Baja
An ongoing tale of learning from mistakes,
mostly those of other people!

A little history first…….

I thought it would be a good idea to teach Tom to drive and also teach him some of the rudiments of vehicle mechanics.
I’ll get him a car of his own I thought, what a good idea!
This is actually Tom’s third car, the first one to be finished though?
Read on…..

The story so far.

The first beetle was an abandoned project by its previous owner and came totally free of charge to us courtesy of my brother in law Jules.
Free - was on condition that it was moved the same night as the scrap man was coming for it in the morning.
The car’s owner was moving house the next day and had forgotten about the rusting hulk in the driveway – it happens…..
We dragged the car home using the trusty A-frame I had made about 15 years ago as an apprentice electrician.

The car was a 1974 1200 model in black with drum brakes, a dead engine on the back seat, a nice set of five EMPI 8-spoke copies, new heater channels fitted, various new panels badly fitted and a pair of unfitted floor-pan halves
What a find, I robbed the pan-halves and wheels and as I had no room to keep the thing I gave it away to a friend of mine, Deb….I had my Fugitive to think about after all.

So how did Tom get the car?

About a year later I decided to see if Deb had used the car as I was now thinking more seriously about sorting Tom a car of his own.
She hadn’t got around to doing anything to it and was happy that I wanted it back.
We dragged it home and checked it out, it turned out the “repairs” were bodges of the highest order.
The panels that had been fitted were crudely nailed in with little visits from the welding pigeon.
To make matters worse the previous “repairer” had cut away a lot more metal in various places around the car in preparation to accept his collection of repair panels without giving any thought to the structural integrity of the shell in the meantime.
This was going to be a major resto’ job when all we really wanted was to tidy-up a good shell.
We set about properly fitting the heater channels, did a little welding and stopped for the day.

By chance I spoke to another friend of mine Man-John, he said he knew of a Beetle locally that could be for sale.
We went to check it out…….Blagging it - just like the old days…
“Excuse me mate, we were just passing, looked over your fence and were wondering, is that Beetle for sale?”
An amiable Scotsman happily showed us around the car on his back garden.

There before us lay a 1970 1500 in Red, one of the better cars to use as it has front disk brakes and an improved-ratio gearbox.
The car had been “fully restored” by a local VW specialist 7 or 8 years ago including a new Volkspares 1600 engine – Score!.
Not only that, the car came with a file full of receipts and photos of the restoration process.

Unfortunately it had suffered a small engine fire and been parked up ever since – a shame but good news for us.
The damage to the engine was limited to a few melted cables and an HT lead and could easily be fixed, I reckoned.
We struck a deal conditional to the car actually running and set about making it go.

A good HT lead, a couple of wires to the coil renewed and points re-gapped ought to do it.
Much to the amazement of the owner and his wife the car spluttered to life showering all behind it with hot rust from the exhaust.
I love it when that happens as I always stand to one side away from the flying muck.

A quick check of the bodywork revealed a series of patchwork but seemingly solid repairs in all the usual places, the doors shut like new which is always a good indicator of a straight car.
One problem appeared to be that the heater channels would need new closing panels (the undersides) welding in as the ones fitted had rusted completely away while the upper parts appeared perfect, still in primer.
‘Strange’ I thought but as we could save the new-ish channels from the black car we could always slip them in and make a truly solid little car.
I was well-chuffed because the 1600 engine sounded sweet and the disk-brakes would be used on my Fugitive.
We paid the man and dragged the car home.
We scrapped the black car to make room for the red one but not before liberating the barely attached heater channels, unused repair panels and both doors for later use.

The next weekend we set about sawing off the rear end of the new car to take the Baja kit I had found on eBay.
Those heater channels were looking rougher every time I poked anything at them, and the corrosion was, as usual, worse than I originally thought.
The engine was indeed quite sweet as was the disk-brake front beam; these two items alone were worth more than the purchase price of the car.
We tinkered with the car for a week or two and were all set to begin welding new heater channels in when another conversation with Man-John sent us looking again – This was fast becoming a Deja-Vu situation.

On his daily walk to and from work Man-John passed a vicarage with a beetle-shaped car under a tarpaulin on the drive, he had been threatening to knock on the door and ask about the car for some time.

This particular day the car had been uncovered and was indeed a Beetle.

Here we go again; off we went to see the owner, the vicar’s son.
We were just in time again, the chap was emigrating and the car was being collected by the scrap man that evening, unless we wanted it.

Of course we wanted it, who wouldn’t?

This car was also red and was a 1975 1200 model originally in white.
The heater channels were A1 inside and out, original white paint still visible on the undersides, I have never seen that before.
There was just a small repair to the front of the right-hand channel on the under-side.
Other than that both heater channels appear absolutely solid.
The front area of both ‘pans had a few holes but that’s a fairly easy fix.
The doors were both removed and had suffered tin-worm to the bottoms – no surprise there.
All the glass was removed and the engine was once again, in the back seat area, upside-down this time.
The front beam, although drum-braked looked absolutely mint, this was the best yet and well worth the wait.
This was an honest, straight little car - it was refreshing to see it had not been messed with like such a lot of others.
We thanked the man profusely and dragged the car home.

The previous red beetle (the 1970 1500 remember) then had to be broken to make way for the new one, a difficult decision as it appeared quite solid.
So we broke the 1500.
Getting to be a habit this is.

Taking the body off proved no big shakes as the heater channels had completely disappeared on the area where they bolt to the floor-pan.
Very odd!
The full scale of the repairs became apparent, what a gash-job, enough said.

This brings us to where we are now…….
A solid 1200 with an unknown 1200 engine, a pile of useful bits from the previous 2 cars and a lot of work to do.

Mally's got a blog

So I got myself a blog.......
I thought I needed a website but that's too much like hard work and it costs money.
Facebook isn't the right platform for what I need as I don't care what other users think or what they are up to.
The purpose of my blog is to post stuff that interests me and people like me.
Stuff about cars, stuff about computers and stuff about toilet humour!