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 :)
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