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.