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 :)