Has it really been a year?

No it hasn't, we did most of this work last year but I've just been too damn bone idle to actually post anything......
The heater channels are now fitted and as this is the second time we've done this I couldn't see the point of detailing it all on here.
They went in much easier this time round though, I can tell you.

Before we fitted the channels we removed the internal metal pipework to allow for installation of long coolant pipes inside the channels in the future...useful if we have a front-mounted radiator.
It's a Baja and will probably never have a back seat so if we stay with an air-cooled engine we can just route the heating into the car from the back seat area.

A small repair to the front inner wing area to finish things off and we got started on replacing the front bulkhead

The bulkhead was rank-rotten at the bottom so a new panel was grafted in, you can just see the light coming through where we cut out the panel

Here's Tom cleaning the cut edges with a bastard-wheel on Mr.Bosch.
He gets all the best jobs, lucky boy!

Bulkhead panel in position and ready for stitching up the sides

Old scrap floorpan being used to check fit of panel, none of the welds have been dressed at this point

Because I bought some cheap heater channels that, it turns out, are 1303 items there are no captive nuts in the ends of the channels to bolt to at the frame head. Oh...
This means we'll have to fabricate something to bolt through to secure the front of the car at the framhead area........oh well, it's all practice.
Having checked a "correct" set of heater channels I'm sort of glad we are going down this route as the original captive nuts are in a cage within the end of the channel which would be slap bang in the way of our proposed radiator pipes as they exit at the front of the car.

The plan was to finish of the welding over the last bank holiday but as usual plans change and no real progress has been made this year.

It's all Tom's fault, he managed to pass his driving test so we've bought him a (standard) Beetle for the road.......how cool are we?
The Baja will have to wait while we fettle his bug, it's not modified (honest) and is really cheap to insure.
In fact it's about the cheapest car for a new driver and it has the added benefit of being a 1972 model, registered "historic" and road tax-exempt - win!

Hopefully he'll be too busy with the bug, he'll forget all about the Baja and I'll be able to use it on the road.
When it's done that is :)

Boobies are great

Paint stripper, elbow grease and more tinworm terrorism

Had an hour or so in the garage and decided to expose some of the factory panel junctions ready for removal and replacement with new metal.

I used some chemical paint stripper, a scraper and a steel brush along with a large jar of good old fashioned elbow grease.

It's much easier than a bastard-wheel on a grinder, gets into all the tight spots and lets you see exactly where to remove spot-welds & seam welds etc. ready for fitting new panels.

Why do later bugs have so much sodding seam sealer in all the nooks and crannies? it's not like it ever actually worked - just gave hungry tinworms a nice cosy place to set up home.
There's a small tinworm town right there look!

Hopefully the seam sealer I'll be using works better then the old stuff....
Anyway, with the spot and seam welds visible it'll be a piece of piss to accurately remove the heater channels and bulkheads.
Sweet.

Rust never sleeps, starting work on Tom's Baja

STOP! Baja Time.
It's been nearly four years since we first set about building Tom a Baja.
The car we used was very good for its age but did need a few repairs at the time.
There were also some areas I just couldn't be arsed to do, like the floorpan and bulkhead etc....
The car was not going to be road legal so we just went offroading.
That was then.

This is now.
I'm not getting any younger so now it's time to do it right, road legal.

Matt & John came for the ceremony and we unbolted Tom's Baja from it's floorpan.
I say "we" but Matt and Tom did all the hard work while John and me offered sage instruction and smoked fags.
Well, we have done it all before and thought we'd let the youngsters learn the way of the skinned knuckle.

The floorpan was even ropier than expected, good job it's not needed.

Just as we thought, the entire bottom of the 'shell needs repairing.
Both heater channels, whilst very solid are shot at the ends so will be replaced.
Front and rear bulkhead areas have the appearance of swiss cheese so they'll get a dose of the same treatment.
It's a fact that no two bugs rot out the same, near perfect heater channels except for real bad rot on the front and rear ends - spooky!


On the up-side, the bottoms of the door-posts and b-pillars appear perfect where they join the heater channels.
Both rear quarters are solid as well so there's a good few jobs saved.
The few repairs I did when we first built it are still sound and won't need doing either.
Good times!

As we've done all of this before on Matt's Baja I won't go into too much detail but I will hopefully have a few new tricks up my sleeve.
Lessons learned from the first "resto" should help speed progress too.

First job - brace the bodyshell
I decided not to brace the door openings in an X fashion like we did on Matt's car - with hindsight it was great for stopping the door opening going out of shape but no use for keeping the width of the car right.
This time round I have built a frame inside the car that braces both side to side (transverse) and front to back.
I intend to use the transverse braces as reference members for heater channel replacement - I'll put a long piece of box section or similar under the channels and measure up to the bracing to get the height and alignment just right.

I don't like tack-welding to a perfectly good panel only to hack it off later (and have to refinish the area) so I used the seatbelt anchor points at the b-pillar.

No such nifty tricks at the front, though I did consider using the door-hinge fixings but decided against it as the fixings can move up and down for door adjustment - bad for a brace/reference member.

Hopefully the bracing will allow me enough room to replace the heater channels comfortably.......fingers crossed.
Soon be breaking out my old mate Mr.Bosch and removing some metal!

Finished welding Matt's Baja

It's done!
We tidied up all the little jobs and the welding is now complete - YAY!!

The bottom corners of the windscreen surround needed work, so we robbed a section from the old roof I saved - the rear side window aperture is just the same profile so we used a bit of that.
Man-John's idea and a very good one at that.

Very tricky to cut this bit out and not damage anything else

Managed to make a decent enough job all the same, just a little bit of weld "filler" to dress back.
Matt's having a go with my favourite fettling tool, die grinder & tungsten carbide burr - cuts through weld like cheese.

A quick lick with the flap-wheel and we're done

I'm quite chuffed with this repair

Did the other side as well, not so pretty but the donor section wasn't so good.
That's my excuse and I'm sticking with it.

We had to let in another large piece of gutter, we used every inch of useful gutter from the donor......very tedious.

We also did the other side of the bonnet line, more butt-welding :)

Sprayed with galv' paint, sweet.

I'm glad that's done, there hasn't been any part of the bodyshell left untouched.
We've replaced or repaired the bottom few inches of the entire car and plenty more besides.
I've enjoyed it though, I've learned some valuable new tricks for the next one.

Next job is to get Tom's Baja body removed from the ropey floorpan it's sitting on, we'll use Tom's 'pan to move Matt's bodyshell back to his gaff.
Matt's going to slap on some filler, some primer and a nice top-coat......looking forward to having a test-drive.

A few weeks rest and we'll start on Tom's Baja, I'm sure there will be plenty to do.
When Tom's is done it's going onto the Semi 'pan.........

Confused?

Matt's Alfa-powered 1302S

I have been thinking for a while now that the ideal Beetle for fast-road use, suspension-wise, would need to have IRS at the back and (can't believe I'm saying this) Mc.Pherson struts at the front.
This would give the best handling characteristic and the best hope of avoiding catastrophic acute deceleration trauma to man and machine alike.
I'm referring of course to the entertaining habit older Beetles have of swapping ends if you lift off mid-corner or get a bit lairy with the loud pedal on a roundabout.
Backwards down the road can be fun if you're prepared but proper scary if you're not.
Hitting walls and trees is never a chuckle, prepared or otherwise.

I've known for years that an IRS rear-end is far superior to a swing-axle one, mainly due to the fact that (with IRS) suspension travel doesn't significantly alter wheel camber.
I've also known for some time that Mc.Pherson struts are superior to torsion bars at the front, (for many reasons) but being an off-roader I prefer torsion bars - for all the other reasons.

My own personal "ideal" car is the semi-automatic bug as it's unique in the fact that it has IRS at the rear and torsion bars at the front.
That's why I have one......I also prefer the cleaner styling of torsion-bar (pre-strut) cars.

Anyhoo, I digress.

If you want proper fast-road capabilities you're better off with IRS and struts - you therefore have two choices, either a 1302 or a 1303.
I've never been a huge fan of "strut" Beetles generally, such as the 1302/1303, but can appreciate their merits over earlier cars.

The 1302 preceded the 1303 and is, in my opinion, nicer to look at as it retains the flat windscreen of the earlier cars and other touches such as the rear lights.
The 1302S comes with disc brakes, a 1600 engine and a better gearbox so that's the one to have.

I spotted this particular 1302S on a popular forum and thought it looked good value, especially as it had a 1500 Alfa Romeo engine from an Alfasud already fitted. It also had Porsche "Cookie Cutter" alloys (my favourite type) and it was under 10 miles away.

This is it - V.Nice, No?

After a moment of "that's so cool, I'll buy it" and another moment of "how many cars do you need?" I gave Matt a call and suggested we nip over to view it before it sold.
Next day we did just that and Matt left a deposit.
Sorted.

A week or so later we collected it with a spectacle type recovery rig loaned from Paul (thanks Paul).
What an ordeal that was, mainly due to the lowered front end and the front-mounted radiator making it impossible to get onto the rig.
We ended up locking the steering straight ahead and lifting the back up, towing it home backwards.
Oddly, when we finally got it to Matt's gaff all of 3 miles away it wouldn't fire up.
It had to wait a week for a closer inspection but it turned out the starter motor had a loose connection inside and it had picked that particular moment to fail.
Bummer!
I called to see a bloke called Tony local to me who's as potty about Alfas as we are about VWs, he ferreted a good used starter from an Alfa 33 out of his garage (thanks Tony).

I hauled ass to Matt's gaff to bolt it on.
As is often the way with modified cars we hit a problem - the starter wouldn't bolt up fully and needed a little clearancing with a file...........the adaptor plate, it turns out, was designed for an Alfasud starter which has a slimmer front.
We ended up spraying the new starter with paint, bolting it up and removing metal where the paint had rubbed away - like a sort of poor-mans' engineers blue.
The starter went in and out a few times, as we removed just a small amount of metal each time - It took a while but it worked.


Fits now!

Once the starter was in and the air-filter refitted all was well, looks the sex I reckon.


The engine in Matt's car is the desirable 1500 8valve and makes 105bhp,
this is due in no small part to the twin Weber 36 IDFs it breathes through.
The previous owner has rather skilfully grafted a 4 into 1 extractor exhaust from an aircooled bug engine to the Alfa exhaust down-pipes.

Time to fire it up.......
It sounds remarkably similar to a Beetle engine and looks very similar too.
Revs up much faster though and gives some obvious clues to its potential when you hear the throaty roar from those twin Webers.

Awesome Alfa music!


I just had to take it down the road for a quick blast, good job the road was closed for roadworks!


Goes like a bastard, like shit off a stick!

Though the car is virtually ready for use it will need a good dose of checking over before any serious work. It was sitting in a garage for a few years and as such may need a little TLC.
Get to it Matty me lad!

More next time

Inner wing repair, closing the rear end and tackling the attack of the tinworm on the bonnet-line & roof gutter.

We're getting towards the end of the welding on Matt's Baja, the main structural work is all done and now we're doing the bits and bobs.
So, we fitted the driver's side inner wing repair panel, we also fixed a pulled wing bolt fastener while in the area


Next we closed the awkward bit over the torsion bar at the back.

After a shot of zinc primer
That was last time out.........


This week we set about fixing the panel that runs under the bonnet line, this is a natural water-trap as beetles have a rubber strip there to keep out the weather. We won't be replacing the little rubber bastard, we'll fix a sealing strip to the bonnet itself if needed.

Here's how it looked

I managed to score some decent body-cuts from Stuart at Volksrod (thanks Stu) and we stitched one into the affected area.....both sides are shot, we've still got the other side to do.

New panel in place and butt-welded.....I'm really liking this butt-welding!

After the bonnet-line we went on to tackle the rotten area on the roof gutter.
This is a right fucker to sort as it's the junction of the roof and side panels and is folded over to form said gutter.
Rot always sets in between the folds and the result is a very unsightly bulging in the affected area as the folded metal opens up due to expansion of the rust, the only solution is to cut it out.
Luckily I saved a large section of a good roof from a bug I broke a while back, we robbed a bit of gutter section from that.

Bad bit out

Good bit in

Now we're all distracted by Matt's nice new 1302S with Alfa Romeo power..........must finish Baja first, must finish Baja first.........stay focused!