As with assembling most things, whether an Ikea flat pack, or a classic car, the order in which things are put together is pretty important. This is especially true of the Type 34 interior.

It’s been a few weeks since I posted a progress update,  not because I’ve not done anything, but simply as I’ve been too busy to be able to to spare the time to blog about it. If you’ve been checking my photo stream you would have noticed that I did manage to upload some pictures of what I’ve been up to and you would have noticed that the build is ticking along nicely.

If like me you have wondered how or where you can mount the trigger wheel for your EFI Type 3 engine, well ponder no longer, the answer is here :D

Rawhide references aside, this weekend broaches yet another milestone in the build. For the past 5 or so years the car has sat on axle stands whilst I tinkered about with different suspension setups, but now, after deciding to postpone my plans for the crazy suspension and fitting a stock (ish) IRS setup, it finally stands on it's own four wheels again.

The weekend I turned my attention to getting the rear brakes sorted out. The new backing plates and hub centres finally arrived from the states and so I could fit them up and check out clearances and offsets.

I finally finished off the engine mounts today. I decided to bolt them in rather than weld them in, mostly as I feel that it will be a lot stronger. To do this I fabricated a plate to fit on the inside of the engine bay tin. This helps spread the load out and reinforce the panel. It will also prevent the bolts from pulling through the metal.

I’ve been pretty busy the past few weeks, so much so that I haven’t even had a chance to blog about what I’ve managed to get done. I’ve really been getting a push on to get the car ready for the 50th anniversary celebrations that we are having in September, and so have been flat out at every opportunity.

With the 50th anniversary event slowly creeping up, I’ve got a renewed enthusiasm for the Ghia and I’m managing to get quite a bit done. This weekend I set myself the task of getting the engine in the car as a trial fit so that I could look to fabricate some engine mounting brackets up. To make the job easier I decided to strip all unnecessary weight off of the engine both to make fitting it easier, and also to improve access around the engine bay. Removing the tin will also allow me to clean, prep and paint it in readiness for the new engine build.

I’ve made some good progress on the Ghia the past couple of weeks. After assembling the IRS last weekend, I stripped and painted the front beam. The front beam was already partially stripped having been removed from the car some time ago. I had previously prepped and painted the steering box and had already removed the hub assemblies too.

Managed to spend some time on reassembling the rear suspension this past weekend. The paint I applied last weekend has not come out too bad, but the issue I had with the thinners reacting has left a bit of a mottled finish. But, as I’m now on a mission to get the car back on the road by September it’s just something that I will have to live with. Mind you, it’s really not too bad, and it is one of those things that will not really get scrutinized. (in reality it will not even get seen), or maybe I’m just trying to convince myself so. 

Spent a bit of time yesterday stripping down the Type 3 IRS that I will be fitting into the Type 34. This came out of the fastback doner car I bought a few months back. The suspension is in pretty good shape with no rust, dings, modifications or bits missing.

Managed to get the bench finished off this week. I topped it off with some 28mm MDF, which makes a nice sturdy worksurface. I plan on covering one part with stainless steel to make a clean area for engine / gearbox assembly, but this will have to wait until I find some.

Spent a few hours this afternoon working on getting the workbench finished in the garage. The basic frame is now properly bolted together, and the rest of the timber cut to finish it off. The bench is about four and a half metres long, and will have a single shelf underneath, this will give me somewhere to store my power tools.

If I was still in England, right about now it would be spring time, the time of the year where traditionally you would clean your house after the winter. But I don't live there any more, and I still can't get my head around the seasons over here in Oz.

So instead of spring, it's currently autumn, and I have finally got around to doing a little more 'spring cleaning' out in the garage.

Whilst checking out VIN plate data for the new Type 34 Registry update, I ended up on a site with a rather nifty bay bus VIN decoder. http://www.alltheprettybuses.com Being completely sidetracked from my original task, I decided to see what VIn decoders there were for the 15.

As luck would have it, I snapped shot of the VIN plate from the 15 on my phone this weekend. I have no idea why, but it's a good job I did.

After a little bit of a google, I ended up over at The Samba, where they have a nice page listing the various VIN plate options. http://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/info/id.php

The Details on my plate tell me that the bus was built on the 11th of September 1961.

It was supplied with the following options.

Had a bit of a VW weekend this weekend.

Managed to score some nice VW stuff from a fellow VW enthusiast (cheers razor ;) ).

Picked up an original venetian for the Razor. It's an Aussie only part and appears to be a pretty rare thing. I have seen venetians for razors before, but most of them do not wrap around the rear screen correctly. This one is correctly shaped to fit the screen. I've only seen one like this (this one), but the PO said that there are maybe three others in existence.

I spoke with a fellow bus enthusiast just prior to Xmas as he had some Belly pans for sale over on DSK, I need a set of these for when I get around to doing the splitty as I am planning to convert it to a double door. The reason for the belly pans is that the bus is left hand drive, and so to make it practical for use as a family wagon, it needs to have cargo doors on the kerb side, as adding in an extra set of doors seems the simplest way to go. Unfortuately the double doors weaken the structure and so the belly pans are used to add in the additional strength.

Been meaning to post some pics up of the garage since it's near completion for some time now, so thought I might as well add a blog post to put down what has been going on.

OK, fresh back from the scrutineering meeting yesterday, decided to get cracking. Went out and sourced some steel for the scatter-shield, and the RHS braces that were discussed, and also some sheet metal for fabricating up the new bulkheads and patching a few bits of tin worm here and there.

Feel a bit lost without the car to work on, so have been a bit slack. Have spent the time doing a spot of research on ye olde interwobble, trying to track down some cheap gauges. Found some flea bay specials for a very reasonable price - oil pressure, oil temp, boost pressure and a 5" tacho for not very much dollahs. They're el-cheapo snide Autometer clones, but will do the job for time being, which is likely to be one weeks use at speed week - assuming the car lasts a week that is :)

Delivered the oval to Donegal Engineering today to have the cage made up, big thanks to Paul Penny and his brother for helping out, was good to hook up. Sorry I couldn't have stayed a bit longer, but had an appointment at upullit to get a throttle body.

Progress was good today, managed to get the IRS finished, all that is required is the final welding and a little patching where I've relocated teh handbrake cable to the lower half of the pan. I will leave the final welding until after I have had a chance to get the car back on it's wheels with the engine in place so that I can check the wheel alignment out - this will need to be done with a little weight in the car.

Fitted the 915 box in today, it sits pretty good. Had to cut out old front gearbox mount to get enough clearance. Still got to make up mountings but will fab some custom ones to fit. I've also cut the pan for the shift linkage, everything seems to line up better than expected. It is a bit of a tight squeeze in between the frame horns, but it all fits. There is only one place that really needs a bit of clearancing as it is a little close to the case, but not really a massive issue as the box shouldn't be moving around too much. I am very tempted to hard mount the engine and box in, as this will certainly be easier, but not 100% at the moment.

The past few weeks haven't seen much progress with the oval, most of this time has been spent waiting for parts, but a little more about that later. We have also been pretty busy trying to get the ezine out before christmas, this is nearing completion and should be out any time soon. Keep a look out for an announcement in your inbox.

So I finished stripping the oval today, the doors didn't want to come off, half of the bolts came out with a little persuasion from the rattle gun, but the rest had to be drilled out. the keeper plates will have to be cleaned up and re-tapped before refitting. Fortunately, door hinge screws seem to be something I have an excess of.

Just a quick post to say that the strip down of the oval is now underway. The shell has been mostly stripped out, with only two wings (fenders) and the doors left to remove before the body can be lifted from the pan.

This may seem strange to some, but after being into VW's for over 20 years, I've just bought my first Beetle. The car in question is a 1956 oval windowed bug that I've bought to build as a budget racer. The idea is to put together a car for Speedweek 2010 and the rest of the year use it for drag racing.

Well, it's been a little time since I actually did some work on the Ghia, recovering the interior doesn't really count as it wasn't me doing the work. So spurned by an invitation to the Victoria day of the Volkswagen in November (Cheers Grey54) I've decided that I will try and get to the event - especially as I was also invited last year, and truth be told the Ghia is pretty much int he same state as it was back then.

Well, things are progressing along at a rather nice pace. The past week or so was spent at home tidying stuff up in readyness for the imminent arrival of the garage, I moved the existing garden shed, and all of it's contents, I made a new gate for the driveway and added an automatic closer thingymajig to it so we don't have to get out of the car to open and close it (the gate - not the shed), cleared the pile of lumber from the driveway, tidied my tools up that were scattered around the garage from various half baked projects and TOOK DELIVERY OF THE GARAGE.

Managed to source a pair of bumpers for the bus. Good bumpers don't seem to come up very often, every set I've ever seen sold over here seem to need a fair bit of work, and finding a pair of slash style before someone else snaps them up is more than a challenge.

The pair I bought have already been straightened so no work needed to be done apart from painting them and fitting them. Unfortunately they're not the correct slash style - they're the earlier ribbed style, but this fits with my plans for the bus and they are much better looking in my opinion. Just need to source some brackets for them now.

Also, after a bit of research i decided on an exhaust - just ordered one from vintage speed.

With the exhaust - that's pretty much everything I need as far as the engine is concerned.

Now all I need to do now is find the other 3000 odd parts that my bus has missing. 

Made a bit more progress towards getting the Vdubs back on the road this week, in fact it's been quite an eventfull few days. The garage has been manufactured and so I paid off the remainder of the cash owing - hopefully it will be delivered at the end of next week. In readiness for it's arrival I relocated the existing garden shed to the opposite end of the garden, all I need to do now is transplant a couple of roses and the area is clear

I found out a funny thing today - my old silver '69 Ghia was originally an electric sunroof version that was painted cobalt blue with a black roof. The current owner fond out this info by sending off for it's birth certificate. This is pretty astonishing news - as had I known this - I probably would never had sold it. '69 Type 34's are pretty rare - sunroof models even rarer!

Got a call from the outlaws this morning to say that they had noticed some kind of VW meeting going on at Cross Roads bowling alley, so me and MelleMel decided to jump in the family wagon with little Locke (our newborn) and go take a look.

Went and picked up the interior for the Ghia today. Gotta admit, I'm well pleased with the job they have done.

Well I've been pretty busy with work the past few weeks, the end of financial year meant that I had a lot of stuff to sort out, this also meant no direct work on the Bus or Ghia, but some indirect work has been accomplished. The first thing (and possibly the best thing) is that the planning approval has been granted for my garage extension. Tomorrow I will go down to hand over some more cash, so that they can commence manufacture. This also means that most of nexy week will be taken up with moving the existing shed to another spot in the garden.

The past week or so has been a right PITA regarding the site. All of our merchandising was deleted from our store by some jobsworth at zazzle, who decided that as our site (and also therefore our merchandising) was VW related we must be in contravention of Volkswagen of Americas copyright policy. The funny thing was, that VW actually allow the use of thier logo and name in relation to advertising goods and services relating to them. 'Johnnys Volkswagen repairers - We repair Volkswagens' is perfectly acceptable. Erik (the farkwit at zazzle) failed to actually read the policy, and if he did read it - very obviously failed to understand it.

Damnn - I just spent about 30 minutes typing out this blog and accidently deleted the whole thing by pressing the wrong button, I bet it's half as eloquent the second time around. :( I've not long been using a mac - previously I was a (fairly) long time Linux user - and before that a windoze user - so I'm still getting used to the shortcut keys - the one that always seems to catch me out is 'home', somehow I always manage to make the browser go 'back', instead of the cursor, losing all of my hard work in the process. Ahh well, guess that's what you risk when typing epic blog posts - lol.

I actually managed to do some stuff directly related to the splitty today. I took a trip down to visit Unique Fabrications workshop at Holden Hill to see what things were like there. After the recent phonecall from ian, the owner, about restoring the bus, I decided that i should take the time out and go and pay him a visit, both to show that I'm serious about getting the 15 restored and to have a bit of a nose at his operation.

There was an array of cars being worked on - two 356 Pre-A coupes, a Type 1 Ghia that had some nice tasteful and well executed body mods, a couple of bugs and theier current show project a volks-rod. Unfortunately the body was at the paint shop so I didn't get to see it, but the chassis was there and looked like some pretty good work.

Currently Ian outsources the painting and just concentrates on the steel fabrication side of things. He is well tooled with equipment like a 3 metre guilotine, 3 metre box and pan folder, english wheel, swage rollers and the usual mig and tig setups for welding.

The work that I saw on the Ghia was impressive - the rear arches has been flared to take wider wheels (the car is being prepped as a rally car) the flaring was very subtle and did not look out of place.

Whilst I was there i was introduced to a few other customers, and Ian took the time to chat to me about the business and his plans. Overall a top boke, I hope things work out.

I'm now waiting for Ian to come round and take a look at the bus, he's still booked up for the foreseeable future, but hopefully this is one step closer.

Last week something strange happened, the guy who i spoke with a few months back about restoring my splitty phones up out of the blue, I originally spoke to him back in February or March where we discussed him coming to look at the project. He said he would call - he never did. I had pretty much given up hope of finding anyone in Adelaide to do the job and had decided to do it myself, but the phone call has got me thinking again about simply paying someone to do the work.

I must confess that I was a little pissed off previously with the lack of interest I had received from the guy - I figured that a splitty resto is a LOT of cash and huge entrustment, and I expected a little more enthusiasm - perhaps I expect too much? Anyhows - in his defense he said that he had lost my number and that he will come around and take a look at it - I guess I will wait and see if he calls.

I don't know about most people, but for me, I like to business in a direct and transparent manner - you want the work - you come and look at the job, we discuss some terms a deal is struck, we shake hands, the deal is sealed.

I hope he comes though this time, I have heard good reports about his work, and would prefer to entrust the job to him in preference to anyone else locally

The past week has been a bit slow as far as both restoration progress and website updates are concerned. The main reason for this is the imminent birth of our first child. Today, should have been spent at the hostpital as it was supposed to be due, but like it's father, it looks like my child has inherited the 'lateness' gene. It's a good job I have a lot of patience :)

Just noticed today that there are repop right hand drive front cab floors for sale on DSK. Have PM'd the seller - hopefully he has more for sale. The Right hand drive conversion is probably the first thing I need to sort out on the bus, so the floor is the first panel that I need to get.

Fingers crossed!

Looking back it's hard to remember how I ended up looking for another splitty, I used to own one a few years back and always missed it after selling it. I think i was looking for something on ebay and stumbled across this bus by accident. After looking through about a hundred photos on photobucket I decided that it was too much money and too much work.

But the problem is... once that idea takes hold...

Anyhows, I ended up looking to South Africa for a bus. i figured they're right hand drive, in a warm climate, and a bunch cheaper.

Finding a bus there is pretty easy - just go to gumtree and browse the classifieds (don't bother visiting any South African forums - they don't like seeing busses leave the country and you will likely get flamed or worse). I found a nice looking roadworthy and restored bus for about AU$8K. After getting quotes for shipping and speaking with a past client of the seller here in Aus I was ready to go. Unfortunately, as it took me so long to get everything sorted the bus sold the day before I was ready to buy it. :( Ahh well - wasn't meant to be I guess.

So then I get to thinking about the 15 window again. My old bus was a nice looking cal look 11 window, but after spending a lot of time in it I decided that a 13 / 15 window was the way to go, and best of all it was a walkthrogh - just like my old '71 westphalia I toured around Europe in. The more I thought about it - the more I had to at least go and have a look...

So, I went and visited the owner, took a look at the bus, bartered a bit and left owning yet another project.

And that's pretty much how things have been since last December.

The bus is a left hooker, but came with a RHD beam and dash, it needs a lot of work and rust repairs to the floors, as well as patching up speaker holes and dents. I will probably get a second set of cargo doors put in to turn it into a double door - mostly as it will get used as a family wagon. It's been dropped on lowered spindles and a straight axle kit - and this is probably how I will leave it.

I will keep you all posted on the progress.

Well my plans for extending the garage are about to kick off as I have now finished putting up the new rear fence. The fence needed replacing as it was practically falling over, it also needed to go up before the garage. So with the fence done, I'm now at the stage where I'm ready to go full steam ahead with the garage.

Well, my intention of a post a day is taking up a fair bit of time (see previous blog post) - the posting itself doesn't, but I now remember why i don't frequent forums much - you lose hours from your life :)

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For example - I've just spent about 2 hours reading this whole thread - http://www.ssvc.org.uk/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39870 which was linked from the DSK forums as a motivation booster. Well all I can say is mad skills, this guy makes my bus resto look like a walk in the park, in fact I don't know why mine isn't finished already. :) If you're restoring or planning on restoring a splitty, this is an excellent resource, for both reference and inspiration.

Well it's been a very interesting past week or so in our household. Our first child was born, which turned out to be a boy , we had decided not to find out the sex as we wanted it to be a surprise. We thought that as there were few surprises left in life that weren't unpleasant, we would not find out the sex before the birth. Nine months of anticipation was ended when we were handed the little fella - a very emotional moment - especially to find out it was a boy. It was also my birthday a few days prior - definitely the best birthday present I've ever had.

Made more good progress today, i fitted the new pan halves and got the body back on the pan. Somehow I managed to do this by myself - I guess it's a lot easier if you're not worried about scratching paint. I postponed fitting up the new front beam as I didn't have an adjustable 18-22mm reamer, which is necessary for reaming out the king pins to fit after they are pressed into position. I will try to source another beam as a doner and then outsource getting the king and link pins fitted as it will probably cost about the same as an adjustable reamer.

Many of you may know me from the other web sites that I run or help manage, these are invariably specialist sites that focus on one model, make or marque. I've had the idea of a broad based VW social network type site for the past few years, but have done nothing about it until now. With the success of sites such as facebook and myspace it was hard to ignore the effect that the social networks phenomonon has had on the web and so I decided it was about time to do something about it.

Oriiginally I had the idea of expanding on the more traditional community VW sites - ie the forum with more social networking type tools, but the main problem I found is that none of them really integrate with the core - it is always a forum with some hacks to add parts on to it. I ran a lot of test sites where galleries / video servers and blogs were 'integrated' into the forum, but all of these lacked the overall functionality offered by sites such as myspace and facebook - invariably, whilst the hacks intagrate with the core, they rarely integrated with each other.

This site is my answer to that problem. The philosophy of the forum as the main portal has been replaced by a central community core focus on users. All of the other aspects are integrated into this central core and function with each other. The traditional forums still exist, but you will also find group forums, profile commenting, chat, video, and other modes of communication. A high value is placed on user participation and content rating, it is these aspects which will promote user content and increase content visibility to other users.

The site is currently in beta release, which means that it may have a few bugs, it also means that the member base is also small, but as time progresses this will expand as more people join.

Please feel free to create your own groups, invite friends participate and get involved. If there is anything that you think would make the site better, don't hesitate to suggest it.

I have been building my Type 34 Karmann Ghia for the past 12 or 13 years (it's been so long I've forgotten when I actually bought it).

So far the restoration has been documented on my personal website www.t-34.co.uk or over at the Type 34 Registry (ww.type34.org) where I help manage the site.

The current status is that the engine and gearbox are built and ready to fit, the car has been repainted, the suspension and brakes have mostly been finished and the interior is currently at the trim shop being recovered.

The only major works left to do are to get the engine and box back in the car, which requires finishing off the rear suspension and plumb the engine in

The engine is based around a Type 4 Unit and runs at 2.7 litres on a set of LN Engineering nickies. This is fueled by a turbo / EFI setup runnning from a DTA EFI unit. The engine drives a Porsche 915 5-Speed through a 944 rear suspension setup and has 996 / 944 turbo brakes all round.

Well, This week I've been continuing with getting the site up and running. The basics are all there so I'm now concentrating on fixing up the niceties.

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One of the things that I've been sorting out is removing the software branding from the site - this basically involves paying a fee and installing an 'ad-free' version of the software. After trialling the software for a few weeks now I've decided that it's good enough as a base and is worth investing some money in. Removing the branding is good for a number of reasons - Firstly, the Vdubber branding should be prominent - it's our site after all - why should we have other logo's stuck all over the place - The second is the removal of the ad banners from the bottom of the chat window, shoutbox and music players (and anywhere else it appears). The banners are on some kind of affiliates exchange program which means potentially that banners could pop up for all kinds of sites. This could be a right PITA when you consider that there are a LOT of adult 'dating' sites that use this software, and who knows what they might have in thier adverts :O

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You will probably have noticed the merchandise store is now up and running as well. I have created a number of tees / tops with the 'Von Dubber' logo. Currently I'm not sure if I will adopt the logo as the logo for the site, It's obviously quite a catchy logo - but then only to those who are familiar with Von Duffer or the spin-off clothing label. The prices are pretty much set by zazzle - the people who host the store and do the printing and distribution - the markup can be changed, but the darker coloured garments and some of the 'non-basic' products are pretty expensive to start with. This is the reason that some garments appear to be a LOT more than others. I've ordered myself aplain white basic tee to check out the quality.

I've decided that running two lots of forums on the same thing is probably a bit of a waste of my time so I intend to close down the forums on my personal site (www.t-34.co.uk). There's probably not much of value (not in the public forums at any rate) but there is a pretty good thread on the 915 gearbox conversion that I will try to bring across. To do this i will probably have to migrate all of the members across as well.

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Will keep you posted

In a bid to drum up some traffic here I've decided that i need to take some action. Starting a website, especially one that's community driven such as this, is a BIG task as gettign people interested is very hard, especially if they already have some kind of online routine with other sites.  It's not polite to simply go to other forums and spam them with a post saying come see my site... etc... - most moderators take very dimly to this and delete such posts. So I need a different tact.

The best way i can think of is to actively contribute to as many forums as I can find and hope that people take an interest in what I am doing. A bit like advertising without actualy advertising.

Maybe most people will take a dislike to me and avoid vdubbers like the plague but hopefully some will find value in my posts.

So on this basis I have made a pact with myself to put a post a day on all of those other sites (and there is a LOT of them).

So, If you see me on another site, talking drivel, now you know why - and don't forget to put a good word in about vdubbers .

Decided to get rid of the annoying flash banner for logged in members. The pics are great, and really help sell the site, but once you've joined up, you probably don't want to have to keep looking at them.

You might have also noticed a new logo as well. This is not the final version but just a draft version I have uploaded to check out how it looks.

I need to update the logo with 'beta' or 'pre-launch' (as that's currently where the site stands). Once teh logo is finalised I can get the stickers printed up and sent out to those members who requested them. Hopefully this shouldn't be too soon.

Well I got a little closer to getting the garage finished today - I lodged the application for the building consent. This involved filling in a couple of forms, drawing a scale layout and parting with some cash. Also cleared a bit more of the paving from the area.

You might also have noticed that I have uploaded a new site logo and changed the appearance a little. I'm still playing with the overall visual style of the site - at present I'm going for a clean uncluttered look - I figure that there is a lot of info on the main page and so it doesn't need to be made too overpowering by adding lots more graphics etc. - well that's the theory at the moment. This may change in the future of course - probably when I learn a little more about what makes a good layout.

The interior is finished - Went down to see it today. It looks great and I can't wait to get it home (picking it up later in the week).

I went for a medium grey leather, with matching vinyl panels. The panels also have the correct heat seams in them too.

Will post some pics of the Interior when I get it home later in the week.

Just need to get the thing back on it's wheels again so that I can take it to the trimmers to get the headlining done, unfortunately this will have to wait until the garage extension is done.

I was remeniscing with MelleMel the other day, about my early career plans, and how I wanted to become a graphic designer when I left school, but ended up a controls engineer instead. Ironically, I now do a fair bit of web design, but having missed out on a formal design background, everything I do design-wise probably takes me twice as long as it should, and perhaps lacks a certain flair. MelleMel on the other hand has just spent the past 12 years or so working in the print industry, and so has more of an eye for the way things look. She regularly keeps me in check by pointing out my errors with passing comments like "Roll up, roll up, for the Wheeeeeeel of fonts" (her description of the hidden page ear advert in the top righ hand corner).

Differences aside, somehow I've managed to rope MelleMel into helping put together the Ezine, for which fortunately she has lots of patience. The first issue has been a bit of a steep learning curve for me, as 've never done anything like this before. Sure I've written plently of articles, and published articles from others on web sites, but I've never dealt with more than one source before, and that's the crux of getting a magazine together - getting all of the articles in by a deadline to allow the magazine to hit the publishing date.

With the Ezine, the first issue has afforded us a bit of room to manouver, as we did not commit to a specific date, well we kinda had a date in mind, but this has long passed. With subsequent issues, we have a strict 3 month turnaround. Unfortunately we were let down with a few articles, which means that there is some coverage missing that we would like to have included, but we've decided to press ahead and publish, otherwise by the time we get the thing together, the articles we do have will be so far out of date, people will not want to read about them.

So, hopefully, some time this week, the Ezine will hit the web, and work on the next issue can commence.

Site Modifications

The site is slowly getting moulded into the community that we are aiming for. The competition is proving a great hit and has hopefully encouraged a bit more posting. We now have added Google maps functionality to our events section, which means that not only can we display a map of your local events on the front page, but we can also offer you turn by turn directions of how to get there. Simply type you starting address into the box on the events page and hit enter to open a new page up. We still have some more features to add to the events pages, such as events galleries and messages.

We have plenty more plans for improvements around the site, the next area to get a bit of a working over is the groups section, which will be receiving some added functionality in the way of it's own events section, comments and bulletins, allowing better communication between members. After that we will take a look at the profiles section and the blogs, adding further customisation features that users can incorporate. The idea is to try and provide everything that people want and need in the way of a VW community.

As usual, comments, ideas, suggestions - all welcomed.

Well if there's one thing that i didn't expect to happen in Adelaide it was being burgled, unfortunately this is exactly what happened to us the other week. We got home after dinner at the outlaws, we were only out of the house for 3 hours, more or less the only time the house is unnatended lately due to small child taking up most of our time, and when we returned we found the back window smashed and a lot of stuff missing. Whoever had broken in had tried to jemmy every window without success before smashing one of them to get in - talk about determination.

They mostly stole electronic goods, including mine and the missus' laptops, which is not only a right PITA but also meant that we lost a lot of photos. Almost as bad is the fact that i use my latop for work and have lost most of my recent work and all of my book keeping from this year. Not to mention that MelleMel also lost the draft version of the Ezine. What utter *&%kers, especially as they stole the backup drive as well. GRRRRRR...

Anyhows, all of the stuff was insured, so the biggest loss is just the sentimental stuff, but trying to get back up and running again is a real pain. I've had to go out and buy a new laptop as teh insurance company have dragged thier heels a little, and so far it has taken days just to get to the point where I've loaded the software back onto the machine. I've now got to reenter all of my book keeping again - fantastic considering that it's BAS time. Not to mention trying to remember all of the stuff that was in progress and work out some kind of plan for getting back up to speed.

Unfortunately this has meant that the site and projects have taken a bit of a back seat, not to mention that my Dad is currently over from the UK, and I've been busy improving security. Hopefully i should get back on top of things in the next few weeks.

Yesterday i took a trip to Adelaide International raceway with a buddy of mine to visit the Gazza Nats. AIR is Adelaide's only proper 1/4 mile strip, but has unfortunately not run 1/4 mile races since the late 90's. Having never been there before I was interested to go and see the venue, and to check out the strip.

The strip is quite narrow. It forms part of a larger track that has been used for many different types of racing in the past, including touring cars and drift exhibitions. The strip is currently blocked with concrete blocks preventing use.

The story I heard is that it was bought by Bob Jane, the famous 60's / 70's Aussie race driver and tyre outlet owner, who after carrying out many improvements sought council permission to do further upgrades. The council refused on the grounds that the zoning of the site did not allow what he proposed and so Bob basically closed the site down. This is pretty unfortunate as the one thing Adelaide is lacking is a quarter mile strip.

There are still events held there, such as the Gazza Nats, and some drift expo's, but it has been some time since it has seen serious competition. Currently the Australian Motorsport club is working towards getting the track reopened for drag racing and have some upgrading and reconstruction works in progress. It was anticipated that the track would re-open earlier this year, but so far it appears that regular events are still not back up and running.

Fingers crossed, the AMC can get AIR open and back on the map.

The past week has been pretty busy, I've had to re-enter a massive amount of info to catch up with my book keeping which was all on the laptop that was stolen, and this still isn't going to be finished in time to submit my BAS. Yes I know I should be entering receipts and reconciling bank balances and not typing a blog, as I have about an hour left in which to submit it, but to tell you the truth, I've simply had enough - it can wait - my brain was hurting.

It's amazing how much data you accumulate / use on a day to day basis, this is probably far in excess of normaility for me as I generate pages and pages of code for both my work and stuff like Vdubber. Some of this stuff I have now recovered / re-entered, but some I have simply decided to do without - a bit like a spring clean. Unfortunately, my accounts did not fall into this category.

I've spent a bit of time over the past week or so updating the site code to fix up some bugs and annoying aspects, and have also paid someone to install some modifications - this is a first for me - as i usually loathe to pay someone for anything that I can easily do myself, but time is precious and so it seemed like the most cost effective way to do it, plus a little investment in the website is a good thing.

The biggest news this week is that the oval is now in it's new home. It arrived yesterday after a weeks journey from Caboolture, just north of Brisbane, down to Adelaide where it's now waiting to be turned into a salt flat racer.

The first jobs on the agenda are to sort out some kind of clear coat to fix the paint from rusting thorugh any more - The Adelaide weather can be a little wet at times, and the nice sub burned and faded paint would soon turn into a furry mess. The patina will be staying!!  I also need to sort out a beam adjuster and some moon discs before i will be sending it out to get the roll cage welded in

Next is to assess the state of the floor pan - the battery tray looked to be a little rusty although not too bad, I need to find out what panel work (if any) will be required to make the car safe, this will also determine if I need to split the pan. My original idea was to split the pan, restore the chassis but leave the body the same, but I might have a change of heart and just fix it up as it is. The idea with this car is that it is supposed to be a budget racer, plus I don't relly need yet another another money pit in which to pour cash.

So the initial objective is to get it prepped, whout going overboard.

Pics to follow....

Last night I went along to the Volksenthusiasts club monthly general meeting. This is the first VW club event that I've been to since leaving the UK. The meeting was mainly to go over club business, and discuss organisation for the upcoming Volksfest event on the 19th November. There were a few faces that I've come to know through my VW dealings here in SA, and many new ones too.

Having just joined the club I was unsure of exactly what to expect, but got to admit i was pleasantly surprised at the organisation of the event and the attendance. There must have been some 50 or more people present, many of whom were directly involved with organising diferent aspects of the club or club events.

As far as club activities, there seems to be something going on most weeks, and something for all tastes, from Volksfest to a kiddies outing to the christmas pageant. There's a lot of family based get togethers as well as runs and rally's.

I made a couple of new contacts for parts, and received some very good advice too, so my membership fee has probably already paid for itself

If you're into VW's, and based in SA - I'd reccomend looking into the Volksenthusiasts Club. Well worth the while. You can join by printing out the membership form on thier website - http://www.volksenthusiasts.org.au/

This years Classic Adelaide seemed a bit down on numbers compared to other years, there did not seem to be as many spectators, competitors, and not as many classics. The Green bug of local boys Peter and Adam Debiassi unfortunately withdrew only days before the event with engine trouble. The car suffered engine problems running a hillclimb event the previous weekend, but after repairing the engine, it too suffered with issues, so the decision was made to withdraw. I was really looking forward to seeing how the boys did this year as last years result was a tough one to beat.

The final of the event was held in King William Road, in Hyde Park, with many of the shops staying open for the extra custom created by the event, which kept the missus happy.

The VW stable was represented by a 1960 Karmann Ghia, driven by Rene Felkl of SA, and also by the 550 spyder replica driven by Peter Perrin. There was also a Porsche RSK replica in the thoroughbred touring class. There were plenty of aircooled engined cars with a majority of the entrants seeming to be Porsche 911's which echoes other years. Seems to be that the 911 is the weapon of choice.

This years event also saw tragedy in the death of Gary Tierney and David Carra, in the Kersbrook Reverse stage on Thursday. Thier Porsche 911 RS came off of the road and hit a tree. Both occupants were found dead when the on-course emergency crew arrived. This is a tragic loss, and my thoughts go out to their familys and friends. All cars wore a black tape stripe on thier left headlight as a mark of respect for the remainder of the race.

For those interested there's a few more snaps in the gallery - http://www.vdubber.com/photo/gallery_tag/Classic+Adelaide and if you would like to find out the results or other info you can visit the Classic Adelaide website - http://www.classicadelaide.com.au

This evening I went on the Volksenthusiasts Club (VEC) Volksfest cruise. This is the precursor to the Volksfest event happening on Sunday at Port Adelaide. The cruise met at the Botanical Gardens and went for a run through the city before finishing up for pizza and coffee. I was fortunate enough to hitch a ride with Fin, a fellow razor owner, who let me ride in his razor, so at least I got to cruise in style. :)

The turnout was excellent, despite a very heavy downpour just an hour before the kick off time. Fortunately the weather held out and didn't put off the cruisers from attending.

The range of rides was pretty varied, with some new just finished rides such as the white and candy red splitty, some stock, some custom, some ratty, and even a new style emerging with an oval bug with exausts through the fenders - definately something new happening there.

Today I went to the Volksethusiasts Club Volksfest Show, at Port Adelaide. The Show was held in Todd Street, which had been closed off especially for the event. Some initial doubts about the weather turned into a day of sunshine, with the weather holding out for the whole day. There were a varied bunch of cars in attendance, ranging from normal to insane, there was also a fair turnout of busses, in fact I would say that there more busses than bugs - something that you would not have seen a few years back. There were a few guys that had made the trip over from Victoria, bringing some cool rides with them, definately a great roadtrip, and a lot of fun, I'm sure.

It was a great day, hooking up with a few people I know, and also meeting some new people too, I managed to score a rear screen for the oval (thanks Fin for putting it aside for me), take some snaps and checkout some cool rides - Couldn't ask for a better way to spend a Sunday arvo

For more photos of the event, check the gallery - http://www.vdubber.com/photo/gallery_tag/Volksenthusiasts Club Volksfest Show There's also a couple of videos in the video gallery too.

Took a cruise out to the Uraidla rod and custom show yesterday with the Volksenthusiasts club. A 9am start from Burnside, preceded a nice mellow cruise up through the Adelaide hills and on to Uraidla Oval, Uraidler. Afer a little confusion about how to get on the oval, and our cruise leader getting everyone to do a u turn only to find out the oval traffic was one way, meaning everyone had to do a uturn back the other way again (not aming any names *cough* Fin *cough*) LOL.

The show had a really good turnout, with a lot of early rods as well as the usual array of 60's chrome. The Autojumble was a dissapointment with only new parts on offer and no treasures to search through, but the quality and variety of cars more than made up for it. The weather was very good, but the hot weather forced many cars into the shade of the trees, which meant that it was hard to get a good look at some of them.

There's a vid of the cruise up there here - http://www.vdubber.com/video/gallery/Uraidler-Rod-and-Custom-Cruise

And some (VW) photos from the event here - http://www.vdubber.com/photo/gallery_tag/Uraidla Rod and Custom Show Volksenthusiasts Club Cruise

First off, if you haven't noticed, we finally released the first issue of Vdubber magazine, thanks for all of your kind words, and support, it looks like it's a success. A big thanks to all of the contributers and also Melle Mel for typesetting the whole mag.

I picked up the oval this week as the cage has now been finished off. We lifted the body off today, and I stripped the front beam off and trial fited the new narrowed beam up. I had to keep the car rolling as i am going to a scrutineers meeting tomorrow and need to be able to get the car on and off of a trailer, so I temporarily fitted the new drums up too, but all of this will need to come off to be able to finish the pan.

Haven't had a chance to post much lately, been pretty busy either working or getting the oval back together. Progress has been marred a little by real work, which has taken me out of Adelaide, this has meant that work on the oval comes to a complete standstill (there is only me unfortuantely). Looking at the countdown time on my widgets, it's telling me 21 days to go, not a lot of time, but still lots to do. Since getting the pan back from the cage builder, I've been busy getting the suspension and steering back together, and also getting the scatter shield made up.

The scatter shield has probably been the biggest headache of all - not only does it have to be custom made, but i also had to figure out how to mount the 915 gearbox in as well - double trouble. I started off making a simple hoop out of flat bar which I was going to mount  to a beefed up trans support, but this didn't look strong enough. Then, whilst helping the father in law with his Triumph Bonneville I spotted a prime mover brake drum, that he said he had used as a brazier - perfect size, but unfortunately cast iron and not suitable. He called me back a few days later to say that he had found a rolled steel extension that was made for the top of the brazier - he dropped it over and work started on scatter shield mark 2.

The scatter shield needs to be 6mm thick steel, and whilst there are not any actual reccomendations in the DLRA rules, general consensus within the drag racing fraternity is that it should extend 1 1/2" forwards and back of the flywheel. For the V8 guys this is easy - just go to your local speed shop and order a replacement bell housing for your trans - job done. Unfortunately, the Porsche (or VW) box is all one piece and so this simply isnt an option.

The rolled steel I got from the father in law (cheers Chris) was a litttle too big in diameter, so I had to cut a section out and then use ratchet straps to close up the gap before re-welding it. it's not the prettiest of jobs, but without a set of rollers, it's a hard thing to fabricate.

With the scattershield done, and the pan painted with a generous coating of gloss enamel underneath and matt enamel on top, with some POR 15 on the exposed front and rear frames , the refit has started. the front and rear suspension are now back on, and the brakes are next on the list - everything is new, so hopefully it's a case of reassemble rather than rebuild.

The gearbox is officially in. The shift rod has been shortened and gears have been selected - I modded a repro hurst shifter to work with the 5 speed box, had to bend it a little to prevent my knuckles grazing the roll cage, and ideally would like to add spring gates to it, but I will leave this as a last on the list job, as currently I can select gears.

The schedule is now really out of whack, but 3 weeks is still time enough if I knuckle down - it takes about 2 weeks to reassemble a car including trim and this doesnt have anything inside at all. Need to get the body back on to clearance for the engine, and also see if the extra 25mm I managed to push the gearbox further forwards will now allow the stock deck lid to close. If not I managed to source a cheap semi-w to cut a hole in for the Porsche fan.

Off to get the brake shoes relined tomorrow, then I can get the pan rolling again.

Fingers crossed.....

There's heaps more pics in the gallery - just search for the tag vdubber - http://www.vdubber.com/photo/gallery_tag/vdubber/50/1

Well, at the beginning of this week I decided to throw in the towel with the oval build and admit defeat. Whilst it would still have been possible to get the car running and to the lake, I would have been missing out on any shakedown time that I had planned. Unfortunately, a few delays, have meant that timing has slipped, and the time I had set aside for running in and teething troubles simply dissapeared.

So I decided that I had given it my best shot. I did not want to run the risk of blowing an engine, or worse, just because I had rushed at the 11th hour. Bit gutted to say the least, as this has now been my main focus for months, but not to worry - I now have plenty of time to make sure it's 110% for 2011.

At the moment, I'm having a bit of a siesta and concentrating on getting some $$$'s earned (anyone need a website?) but will have a look at the VW events calendar and see what is coming up in the near future - Having just missed out on Portland last weekend, I now fancy hitting some drags.

I will be taking the Oval to the club show at the end of March, so if you fancy having a look, make sure you tag along.

It's been a pretty busy time of late, not really had a chance to post much to the site, most of my time has been put into getting a new business venture off of the ground. I've been putting together some software modifications for sale online and starting a webhosting / webdesign company. I seem to spend most of my time online, so I decided to see if I could make some money from it - seemed like a logical thing to do.

So whilst not much has happened VW-wise, I did get to go to a local show - Day of the VW.

For those who are not familiar with Adelaide VW clubs - there are two of them. The VW peoples club and the popular peoples VW club. From what I understand, one stated as a splinter group from the other (something to do with a disagreement over which biscuits to serve with tea). In a way they are like two warring factions, vying for the same members, but oddly enough many Adelaide Vdubbers are members of both, and even more strange than that  -  all thie VW shows are called the same thing - The Day of the Volkswagen.

So anyhows, I hitched a lift with Fin in his newly painted Razor - (he's had some lacework detail added to his roof - an awesome effect) - and off we headed to the show. The turnout was pretty good, with some good quality cars in attendance. Swapmeet had a few stalls, some choice parts too - NOS split single cab roof section, NOS 11 window complete rear corners, various bits and bobs, but no mangles :(

I managed to hook up with Rusti Ovali, and persuaded him to let me do a feature on his car, so we commandeered a spare bit of field and managed to snap off some pics for the ezine. Funnily enough - just as we were leaving I heard that he had won another award - Good job!!

I've posted some pics up on the facebook group and will post them up in the gallery here when I get a spare 5 mins - for those who cannot wait - here's the direct link - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=7703&id=100000743599840&l=55d11e5222 and a few pics to be getting on with

Guess most of the regular visitors would have noticed that things seems little different round here - that's because we have now updated the site to use a new and improved version of the software. The update has meant transferring all of the data from the old site, and converting it to work with the new software - it's practically a brand new website!

The transfer is mostly finished, but there are still a few things to transfer over - namely the photo and video view counts as these have currently been reset to zero, the points competition, the events map and some of the tags.

There are a bunch of new features including a new navigation system, a brand new user menu, new user photo and video galleries and a brand new layout.

All of the original features are still here, but each one has been improved and updated with a new layout, some have also been given additional features - for example, each new event in the events section now gets it's very own forum, photo and video galleries , and the ability to send out broadcasts to the events attendeed - allowing you to arrange and discuss the event and even post up pics and videos of it afterwards - pretty cool huh!

We've also addded a facebook style wall to everyone's profiles - this allows you post links, images, videos and messages to each others profiles,

Had a chance to hook up with Matt, from here on Vdubber - he was down in Adelaide visiting some rellies and decided to take the timeout to hook up with some fellow Vdubbers. The hookup was a cruise which consisted of a bunch of members forom the Kombi Club, with Me Mel and the Ginger Ninja in tow in our very non-Kombi like Suzuki.

The cruise started out with a 12:30 meeting at Kurrulta Park Kmart on the Anzac Highway, where introductions were made, and everyone waited for the rest of th posse to arrive. With everyone in place the cruise set off to pick Matt and his family up en route to the Hackney Inn.

We had a nice lunch, with lot's of VW chat, and also made some new aquaintances.  Eventually we parted to head back home with the Ginger Ninja, as it was getting near to his bedtime.

Was great to put some faces to names, and faces to busses,  and also meet some new faces too.

Makes me itch to get the bus on the road.

Finally managed to get back out in the garage this weekend. It's the first time since April that I've managed to get anything done on the Oval. Having not made speedweek in March, the bug has just sat there waiting for me to make some time to get back into the swing of things. So with next March slowly creeping up, I decided that it was long overdue.

Most of the weekend was spent clearing the back yard, this is in readiness for the concreting to be done on the garage extension - with the garage base in I can finally clad it and get some undercover space to work on the bug. 

Clearing the yard was fun - as this involved removing a tree - a perfect excuse to hire a chainsaw and wreak destruction - lol. With the tree 'pruned', all that was left was to pull it out of the ground with the Landrover. This is the third tree that the little Landy has pulled out - just lash up the tow rope to the front bumper, stick it in low range and then work the tree out of the ground. The key is to leave a long bit of trunk when you prune it so that you can get some leverage. Works a treat. And I cannot imagine that you could do the same with any modern 'softroader' it would likely just pull the front end off.

So - final scores - Tree 0 - Landy 1

With all of the fun over and done with, I managed to get a spare half hour to POR15 the rear brake backing plates on the oval. This should hopefully mean that I can reassemble the brakes next week and get the chassis rolling again. So not a massive amount of work - but at least a start.

With some deliberation, and a bit of a heavy heart, I have decided that after over 10 years of running my http://t-34.co.uk site, I am going to close it down next year.

This decision is mostly due to the fact that i have too many other websites to look after, and getting the time to update and maintain this one is simply too limited. Running Vdubber.com, as well as a variety of other non-Volkswagen related sites, and trying to keep on top of everything generally means that one or more sites suffer.

All is not lost however, as I will be transferring all of the info over to my account here at Vdubber. The blog entries here will get transferred over to my blog, and the images will get transferred to my gallery here too.

Along with this change goes a change of email address too. My new email is mick[#at#]vdubber[#dot#]com This is currently active, so feel free to use it next time you email me.

This is a bit of a catch up which I've been meaning to post...

So recently I've been working on getting the garage finished, About a month back I had a crew of mad Russians with their Bobcat come and level out the area and pour a slab, and since then I've been busy chipping away at putting the rest of it together. It's basically like a massive jigsaw puzzle - the frame bolts together and then the steel sheets are screwed to the outside. There are a few holes to drill to get the girts and purlins bolted on (the horizontal beams on the walls and roof respectively), but this is simply a case of laying them all on the ground and drilling the all at the same time.

Anyhows... Progress has been good, I've managed to get to the stage where i am putting up the corrugated sheets for the walls, and had nearly finished one side when I realised that I had run out of steel. This was not something that I was expecting. I had a bit of a panic - thinking that someone had stole it, when I realised that it was exactly half of the steel - basically one half of the garage. Fortunately I managed to find the delivery note, which did not have the missing parts listed. However, this was only one minor posotive - it had been alomost a year to the day since it was delivered.

I called Olympic Industries on the Monday, expeting to get laughed at. After all, i had signed for it, so surely it's my own daft fault. But, the guy said he would look into it, and anyhow, he could check the photo that the delivery driver took.

So a few hours later, he calls back - 'no problem, will deliver them next time we do a run, oh and by the way - did you also know that one of the end pieces is missing' - cool, all sorted, and there was me thinking the worse.

Welcome to the new look T-34 site.

It's been some time since I built the site in it's previous guise (December 2004 in fact!), so I decided it was about time to have a makeover. With over 40,000 hits to the site since it first started back in 1999 and about half of those since the last site upgrade, I guessed some people would probably be bored with the way it looked, plus now the Ghia is actually seeing some time spent on it, the site content is getting added to more frequently.

Most of the information available on the previous site has been carried over, a few articles have been dropped, some have even been updated, plus I have added all of the progress reports on the restoration that I could find from the previous websites - just for prosperity's sake. The Gallery has been migrated across so all of the pictures can still be found - although it is now known as the 'Media Library' as it can now contain most types of files, not just pictures.

New Features

I recently spent some time in Germany on a buisiness trip visiting one of our suppliers. As I work within the automotive industry I got to spend some time at the Wolfsberg VW plant looking at some of our suppliers installations. Although one plant is much the same as another it was nice to spend some time at the VW plant as I had never been there before. I also took the time to drive to the Karmann factory to take a look, unfortunately I did not get to have a look in the museum (this is only open to employees and I only had a few hours there) but it was nice to visit the place. I then spent over a week at the Audi plant in Ingolstadt where our client was commissioning a new system. Interestingly, at the Audi museum, along with the usual trinkets available in the souvenir shop there was also a lot of spare parts for sale from classic Audis -  mostly trim parts, but also some rare accessories.

Other commitments have meant that as usual progress has been slow, I've picked up a SACO hydraulic clutch kit which looks like a good quality item - It's pretty much a necessity as I'm sure the standard VW pedal / cable would not be up to the job of operating the Porsche clutch.

I have had someone give me a quote for painting the car which is a reasonable price so I'm gonna get him to paint it for me. As usual my work commitments are meaning I'm getting less time to work on the car and do this kind of stuff myself.

I've decided to remove the old how-to's from the site. The Type 34 Registry has now opened its doors to all without subscription, they have a far wider range of articles so I decided my few tech articles were no longer worth having. I've also added a link to a site called 'The air-cooled multimedia maintenance manual' this covers all aspects of keeping your VW engine in shape. I'm sure for all of you looking for maintenance tips the answer to your questions can be found on one of these two sites.

Getting rid of those articles has freed up a little space so I'm considering adding a forum, I've mailed my ISP to see what kind of scripts I can run. Hopefully I can set something up.

I'm trying to go for a change in direction with the site, I'm hoping to get rid of all the stuff which is just generalising and replace it with stuff specific to tuning Type 34 Ghia's and maybe Type 3's - There's far better sites out there that cover the general aspects of T-34's (well there's one - The Registry) so I've decided to kinda 'specialise' a bit more.

I've been spending some time updating a few aspects of the site. Fixing a few small issues and looking at ways of improving how the site works - and hopefully encouraging more users to post.

One thing that I've been working on is adding a wall to the home page so that all posts made to users profile wall's are aggregated in one place. This means that it's easy to see what's happening in everyones profile without actually having to go and view them. Just check out the Wall on the front page - it will display all posts from all users.

Currently, the Wall only shows posts from people that are your friends, which means that you will still miss out on stuff that non-friends are talking about, but this is something that we are working towards changing.

Another change that we are going to make is to allow any member to be able to post to your profile wall. Currently only friends are allowed to do this, which means that to leave just a simple message / reply / comment, you first have to ask them to be your friend, and then they have to accept your request, before you are allowed to post. We feel that this makes the site too hard to use, and is one of the reasons that the site is not used more.

We will still retain the Friends function as we will use it to allow you to filter how you view the posts on both the profile wall, and the wall on the main page.

The main part of the latest site update is mostly finished. The new update has added a Wall to the main page where all content is aggregated. Anything you post to your profile wall will also appear there as well, likewise, anything you post to the main wall will also appear on your profile wall too.

(To reach the main page, click on the vdubber logo at the top of the page.)

You can now also comment on any post to the main wall, there is no need to be friends with a member to leave a comment, however, you will still need to be a friend to make a direct comment on another users profile wall. (Wall to wall message)

The main reason for these changes, is to encourage more use of the site. Many users were happy to post comments into the shoutbox, but only a few regularly posted to blogs or other parts of the site. So we decided to improve things, by extending the Wall on the front page and removing te shoutbox altogether. Now all major actions can be carried out on the main page wall, including leaving shoubox type messages, hopefully this will entice users to post more. Additionally, the ability to comment on another users post without having to first befriend them will also hopefully encourage more interaction between users. After all, this is what the site is about.

Points

Finally the garage is finished. I managed to finish off putting the roof on and fixing up all of the little fiddly bits to make it water-tight. The biggest job was tying the roof of new garage into the roof of the old garage. The new garage is an extension to the old original brick built garage, it's a modern steel framed, tin clad jobby, whereas the original garage is a brick built one. Obviously they are two different sizes and annoyingly the roof pitches are different as well. This meant that tying to two together, and making them water-tight took a litle inginuity (and possibly luck). It still remains to be seen if it leaks though.

Now that the structure is finished off, I need to get it wired up with power and lighting. I also need to get it fitted out inside. I had spied some nice heavy duty racking at Bunnings recently, but unfortuntely, when I went to visit at the weekend, they did not have any of the long span pieces in stock, a visit to another store was fruitless, as they were out of stock too. Both had plently of the other pieces. :( Hopefully they will have some in stock this coming weekend, if not i will order some in.

I also need to finish off building the workbench I am making. This oddly started off life as a fernhouse in the garden. Whilst I was pulling it down I decided that rather than throw it out, it could make a good workbench, so I chopped the supporting columns down to bench height size, and narrowed the whole frame to the width of a bench. It's now about 5 metres long, and fits nicely at one end of the garage. I plan to get some nice thick marine ply or MDF for the worktop, and also cover a section with stanless to make a nice clean area for engine / gearbox assembly.

Other things to do are reinstate the water supply. There used to be a stand-pipe right in the center of where the garage now is. I removed this to allow the slab to be laid, but will re-run it, and fit the spare laundry sink unit that I have in the corner, as it will save making greasy marks in the house. Ultimately this means digging in a new drain - but this may wait until i fit the water tank at the rear of the garage, as I will need to dig in a wet riser to tie the tank into the house as well.

I also made a start on removing the rear wall of the garage, to join tyhe old space with the new. This is about half removed and just needs a bit of tidying up. Unfortuntely until I get the new racking in place I cannot progress any further as I need to move the old work bench in the old part of the garage, as it is in the way, but the tools that are in it need to go on the new racking.

Managed to get a spare 5 minutes this weekend to get out in the garage and finish off assembling the shelving that I bought. The shelves are similar to the ones you see in warehouses that are used to hold pallets, except, they are a little smaller. Each upright section is about 2 metres tall, and the self spans are 1800mm wide. The shelves themselves are 600mm wide, 15mm thick MDF, plenty big enough to fit lots of stuff. I bought 3 sections, which takes up a little over half of the length of the garage. Might add another section on, but not too sure yet, will see how I go.

So far I've managed to fill a couple up with the parts from the Ghia and the Oval, but still have plenty of room left.

My current aim is to move all of the stuff from the old work bench in the existing garage, on to the new shelves. Then I can dismantle the bench, and finish knocking the back wall out, which will allow me to move the splitty into the rear part of the garage, followed by the Jag, and the oval.

Need to get this done in the next couple of weeks as we've got a new swing arriving for Locke's xmas prezzie, this is due to go where the Oval currently sits, so need to get it moved out of the way, plus it will be nice to clear the garden out of old bits of car, not to mention that I'm dead keen to see the garage kitted out too.

Still got some other stuff to get done too, but slowly getting there.

This weekend past was the Volksenthusiasts club of South Australia's Volksfest show. It was held at Port Adelaide, in Todd Street, which now seems to have replaced the events previous home at Wiggley Reserve in Glenelg, with three events now having been held there.

The numbers seemed to be down a little from the previous show, and this may in part be due to the absence of many of the interstate visitors. But, whilst numbers were down, the quality was definitely up. The number of good quality cars seems to have risen, with some truly outstanding rides in attendance.

My personal favourite of the show was this grey oval bug, which was immaculately turned out, and possibly fresh from the oven, as it did not look to be registered, and so my guess is possibly a new build (turbo54 - is this yours?). Don't have any more details on it, but will keep you posted if I find out more.

For a change (lol) I hitched a lift to the show in someone else's VW - this time Matt 'Choco' Tully from here on Vdubber, generously donated some flying time in his gold bug. After meeting Matt and the other cruisers at Harbortown in the morning we cruised down to the show, with me acting as firewatch ;)

The shows atmosphere was pretty laid back, and rolled up with a nice lunch at the local pub, and some shopping at the markets, even MelleMel did not get too bored :) There was a good variety of rides, with the only thing missing being a Type 34 - which is surprising considering that Adelaide does not have that many shows, and there are quite a few Type 34's here. The swap meet also seemed to be a lot smaller than at past shows.

Regular readers of my blog will know that the Type 4 engine, and Porsche 911 gearbox that I have built for the Razoredge has been borrowed for use in my salt flat race car. Whilst pondering on how much grief it would be to get it installed in both the Oval and the Ghia, and be able to swap them over without too much of an issue, I came to the conclusion that it was simply too much hassle.

Whilst I had always dreamed of the big Type 4 powered Type 34. Now, after some 15 years of building it, and having moved to a different country, I've decided that I simply would like to get it on the road. There's no point in having a fast road car here in South Australia. There are no drag strips, very few race tracks, and with cops that hide in bushes with radar guns, little point in having a 350hp Type 34.

So I've decided to fit a stock IRS, gearbox and EFI engine,so that I can complete the car and get it on the road. And whats more, I've even sourced a Fastback to act as the doner car.

My whole intention with building this car may seem a bit sacrilegious to some, but the one thing that Volkswagens have always been lacking in is power. It is for this reason that I intend to build one of, if not the fastest T34's around, (I'm not really a boy racer, I've just decided to take my mid life crisis a bit early). Most of what my plans include will not permanently change the structure of the car, and so if I decide, it could easily be changed back to original.

The only major structural change I will make is to change the roof for one with a sunroof in, but then again I'm sure that most people wouldn't object to that (except the true purists). I had a bit of a lucky chance meeting with one Clive Richardson, now the Type 34 secretary (I think) of the Karmann Ghia Owners Club, who owns a very tidy RHD sunroof model. It was at one of the infamous Karmann Connection swap meets, I spotted his car and decided to go and have a chat with him. It was whilst in conversation with him I mentioned; "wouldn't it be great if you could get a complete roof..........", well the gods must have been smiling at me that day, as Clive then told me how he had bought a complete roof from someone in Germany, so as he could get the electric motor to replace the faulty unit in his car, what was more was that he was prepared to sell it. We struck a deal and Clive even delivered it to me.

The real heart of the project is the motor, a 2.3 Litre Type 4 unit, with a Ray Jay 0.8 AR turbo, and a 50 HP Nitrous kit. I've done lots of research on All aspects of turbo charging, and nitrous injection, and feel confident that I could get a very fast reliable motor together. (I met a guy from Sweden who ran a road legal home grown bug, which he used for strip racing, he ran well into the nines using a 2.3 Fuel injected turbo'd Type 4 motor, with a hybrid Garret T3 exhaust/T4 compressor turbo,).

The key to any turbo charged engine is to have a good fuel delivery system, and where most designs reach a limitation is their use of carburetors. It was once said that it was impossible to run a blow through system on anything over 5psi, although this 5psi rule has been proved wrong (Lotus Esprit Turbo's used just this method successfully running boost pressures of 12psi), both methods of carbureted turbo induction have their drawbacks. The biggest problems are fuel enrichment under boost conditions, and fuel separation within the inlet manifold. Carbs don't really have a good proportional control band, and tend to provide a very unreliable response when used in this application. (Remember a turbo engine running too lean on boost will burn out valves in an instant. Also as any air-cooled owner will vouch, when it gets cold carbs begin to ice up, can you imagine how quick this would happen in a suck through system, where rather than having an induction pressure of say 1-2psi you are running at 16.

The best way to deal with this problem is to use fuel injection, some units also benefit from a host of other features, such as extra injector control for boost enrichment, water injection or nitrous applications, soft rev limits, shift lights, boost control, switch-able program settings that can be changed `on the fly`, nearly all systems use a wasted spark type ignition system, this coupled with the crank triggers that these systems use means that you can chuck your inefficient distributors away. It is a well proven fact that bottom end power gains are over 25% better than using carburetors, how do you think that they can get a 1.25 Litre fiesta to go so fast? (sic).

One of the best systems that I've seen is the Haltec E6 unit, although I don't think that they have any distributors in this country, (I think it's an Australian company). I did at one time think of making my own system using an early Ford Sierra Cosworth brain, (the brain only controls the fuel injection, and not things like ABS, traction control etc. as most other OEM brains do). However although software is available to program the chips for these units, its much easier to get an after-market unit where you just plug your laptop into the brain, download a preset set of injector timing parameters, and tune them up as you drive around, (not all of us have a rolling road in their garage).

Nitrous sounds like a scary thing to have on a turbo motor, but truth be told its not used the same way as with a normally aspirated engine, the nitrous is only active up until a certain boost pressure, (full boost or just below) this in effect gets the engine up to boost quicker and eliminates any turbo lag, it is possible to keep the nitrous switched in when full boost is achieved, which is fine if you complete professionally and tear your engine down after every pass, however I don't think that it is a viable proposition to use it this way in a street motor. (engine life expectancy-One day if you're lucky). One great advantage that nitrous provides for turbo engines is that it considerably lowers the charge temperature, practically super cooling the air entering the engine, which is great news as turbo charged engines run phenomenally hotter than normally aspirated engines. Because of the way that the nitrous is used it also lasts considerably longer than in other applications.

The particular turbo that I am using is a bit oversized for a 2.3 Litre engine,(0.8 AR), whilst this gives very good high end power, it does also create a lot of turbo lag, which is where the nitrous helps out, eliminating the lag so that it spins up quicker. The higher RPM gains with a larger turbo mean that whilst most smaller Turbo's compromise their high end operating range to eliminate lag the larger unit will provide more power further up the rev range.

One modification that I intend to do but have not been able to find out too much about, is to fit a Porsche 5 speed, there's no way that I'm paying the extortionate prices that they want for a Berg 5 speed,( after all its still a VW box, and they're not that strong). Volksworld did an article once, but it wasn't really that informative, they told you how to reposition the gearbox mounts so that the gearbox would mount into the frame-horns of a swing-axle Beetle, but no mention was made of what drive shafts you should use, or how they needed to be modified, I can only assume that you had to cut and shut a Porsche inner with a VW outer to get the splines correct to match up to the hub. Although this sounds extreme I did have some drive shafts converted like this before, and they ran fine. If anyone has any info, then please let me know.

There is one cat that I am definitely not going to let out of the bag, that is my plans for the front suspension, think steering box, think not. All I will say is full height and camber adjustment, rose-jointed.......................

Well, I'm all excited now, I think I'll go and take the angle grinder to the roof.

I've been doing some research on suspension and steering geometry and have come across a couple of nice programs for calculating suspension dimensions. Although this is not a completely scientific art, it certainly takes out the hard math's aspect, out of calculating things like roll centres, wheel scrub and dynamic camber/castor changes.

I've made a basic design for the layout, all I have to do now is see if it will fit, unfortunately things are not looking good as I was hoping to retain the original frame horns, and it looks like it will lengthen the wheelbase too much if I try to fit the suspension in the position where the beam originally was. I guess if that's the case, I'll have to decide if I can justify cutting the frame horns off, I suppose I could always get another pan.

It's been long overdue but I've had to get on with doing some decorating in the house, (unfortunately the '65 is not at the top of my list of priorities at the moment). The parts amassed for it had to be moved as I am soon going to be knocking down the wall that they were resting against. This meant that I finally had to get around to assembling the racking that I had got for the garage, (it's only been sitting there for two years!), but I'm glad that I did, not only has it given me enough space to carefully store all of those parts, but it's given me space to store all of those things that were cluttering up the garage. Next thing is to chop down the tree behind the garage, as I'm sure that soon it is going to cause the back wall to collapse. Too many things....not enough time....

Here is the TUV Birth Certificate for the '66, as you can see it was in fact built in '65. This has put a bit of a spanner in the works, so to speak, as I had assumed that the registration number that came with the car was genuine, ( LHU 211E - 1967 ? ), and I would have liked to have kept it. As the DVLC went computerized in about 1983, they have no records dating to before that date, ( I guess someone must have eaten them), so if you have a car that has been off of the road since before then, as I have, they will have no record of it's proper details. This is not a problem, as there are two things that you can do: If you know the registration number, and it has not already been reissued to someone else, you have to supply them with some proof that the vehicle is of historic significance, and deserves to keep the number, (a letter from an approved car club such as the KGOC, is all that is needed), and then it can keep it's proper registration number. If on the other hand you either don't know the number, or cannot get a letter of approval then an age related plate will be supplied. This is one that bears the correct suffix for the year, but was not necessarily the one originally supplied with the car.

I think that I will end up with an age related plate, which is a shame, but it doesn't seem realistic to think that the above registration is correct, although, I suppose it is possible, that the car was not registered for two years. I think that I would prefer to have an unoriginal registration that is correct for the year, as I doubt that I would be able to find out what the original number was.

I have sent off for my age related registration number, which will have a "C" suffix, indicating 1965. As some of you have pointed out; the car would have been a 1966 model year and was probably not registered over here until 1966. But as far as DVLC are concerned, as it states on the TUV birth certificate that the car was sold in 1965, they are not prepared to issue a later registration. This is understandable I guess. Rules are rules.

I'm not particularly bothered, obviously I would have preferred to have kept the registration number that was originally issued to the car, but I have no way of finding this out.

I'll keep you posted on the outcome.

Well I managed to find someone to supply the Porsche parts that I need, so far I've picked up the wheels from him (a set of 16" Fuchs with a space saver spare), and hopefully this week I should be able to pick up the suspension and brake parts. The swing-axle rear end has been removed, and sold. The IRS axle has been trial fitted to allow me to measure for the positions of the engine and gearbox mounts, but I think I'll wait until the 944 'A' arms have been fitted before I get the welder out.

I managed to source a pair of headlights with trim rings and bowls, they're not original parts, but the difference is only slight, the complete cost was only £30. The headlights are exactly the same as the ones I fitted to Karens Ghia after it was imported, those cost £80 for the lights alone.

I've also bought myself a larger compressor so that I can blast and paint the underneath of the pan, there's a lot of prep work to be done under there, taking off all of the old paint, and blasting all of the surface rust away.

Once the rear end is sorted out, and the suspension is in place with the engine and gearbox mounts welded up I think I'll turn my attention to the roof. There's a lot of prep work to be done carefully removing the roof skin from the roof frame. I have already trial fitted a sunroof motor that I bought from the scrap yard, but the motor seemed to run too fast, it was way too awkward without the roof on the car, so it may be best to sort this out after the roof is fitted. I'm going to try to get as much prep work done as possible before the car is sent off to the boys at Paintbox as this will make their life easier, and possibly be a bit easier on the pocket as well.

Wow Looking at the date below, it's been some time since I've been to this page. So I guess in two years a lot must have been done (yeah right). I've managed to source some more bits, these include a NOS type 4 engine case, a Porsche 915 gearbox (from an '83 911 SC), a tacho, an IRS rear end and some other bits and bobs. The remainder of the chroming has been taken to the chromer's, all that remains is some catches and other bits that are to be zinc plated. I've started to strip out the remainder of the shell in readiness for it's trip to the painters (I've decided to entrust this to the professionals, plus I never seem to get the time). The boys from Paintbox have been round and had a look, and say that the roof shouldn't be a problem (they're experts at roof chops on bugs) so I need to get it ready for when they can fit it in, which should hopefully be sometime late August. This involves removing everything that's left on the car, and doing a bit of tinwork (I have to fabricate some engine mounting points, as the original top style mount will have to be removed, and a bus style (or later type 3 style) cross-member needs to be fabricated. to do this successfully the engine and gearbox needs to be trial fitted, (this will also allow me to weld the mounts for the Porsche gearbox cross-member as well).

The gearbox needs an overhaul as the synchro-mesh on first gear is shot, I have the parts to do both first and second synchro's and have been informed that it's a relatively easy job. This however is not the first job on the list, that job is to clear out the garage, which has been neglected for quite some time, as I need to create enough space to work on the Ghia (plus Karens Ghia is due back from the painters soon). So come tomorrow that's what I'll be doing.

Next on the agenda is to remove the old swing axle suspension and replace it with the IRS unit. At the moment I'm looking for a 944 rear end so that I can transfer the aluminum trailing arms and hubs / disc brakes onto the IRS unit. This is practically a straight swap - evidently even the torsion bars can be used.

Then the front suspension will get overhauled, again 944 / 968 hubs and brakes are going to be fitted, the best option is to go for the later units as they utilize a four pot caliper and larger discs, but this limits you to fitting 16" or larger wheels, and all of the best Porsche wheels are 15".

With the new engine for the Razoredge now procured, I've been looking towards what I need to do to it to get it up and running in the razor. The engine itself is a standard Type 3 fuel injected unit that is currently still in the '71 fastback in my garage. It leaks a little oil, but runs okay, and shows 80k on the odometer. this could possibly be 180k or maybe even higher, but this doesn't bother me as it runs fine, and I will eventually rebuild it anyway.

The choice of a fuel injected unit as opposed to a naturally aspirated unit is, to me, a no brainer. EFI is far superior in terms of low range power, fuel economy and drivability. Not to mention that they are more efficient than a carburetted engine - this is the reason that pretty much all modern cars are EFI'd - stricter emmissions regulations mean that higher efficiency is needed.

But anyway - I digress. I say that a fuel injected engine is better - but this is not regarded as the case for the Type 3. Over the years the L and K jetronic systems have come into a lot of bad press, especially amongst those who maintain thier own cars. The system is hard to diagnose issues on, as there is no diagnostics funtions available to assist in determining what's wrong. Fixing a faulty system is really a case of eliminating all possibilities, one by one, until the fault has been found. There is no laptop port to plug in your laptop, and get an instant readout of what is going on, and to many, this means that the system is considered complex and unreliable.

As I blogged about previously. the other main issue with the stock fuel injection systems is that they are not tunable. There is no way to modify the injector 'maps' to account for even simply modifications, such as fitting an extractor system. Change something on the system and it cannot compensate. Modern systems can overcome this. Either by closed loop feedback, from a lambda sensor, or by simply having the ability to be reprogrammed. This is the main reason that I want to utilise an aftermarket system, plus it is more suited for adding a turbo to later down the track.

I plan on using a distributorless system. this means adding a crank or distributor trigger, and utilising a coilpack instead of a distributor to take care of the ignition side of things. Distributorless systems have a couple of advantages over normal distributor controlled systems. Firstly, there is no electrical 'switch' in the HT (high tension) circuit, it has a direct lead from the coil to the spark plug. This means a stronger spark, and no degredation over time (wear). The other advantage is that the systems generally work in what is called a 'wasted spark' mode. This means that for a four cylinder engine, there are only two coils. This means that they fire twice each cycle, once on the ignition, and once on the exhaust stroke. The firing on the exhaust stroke brings a massive advantage, it helps scavenge the cylinder by ignighting any unburned gasses. All of this together generally means, more efficiency, and in turn, better performance.

I got a call from the guy I bought the Fasty off of last week, turns out that another customer had crashed her Type 3 and was on the look out for a doner car. So this weekend I removed the engine and gearbox from the fasty in readiness for it to be picked up.

It's been some time since i pulled the engine from a Type 3, and apart from it being the hottest day of the year, I managed to get the engine and box out of the car in a couple of hours. This included getting in running so that I could reverse it up on the ramps as well.

Fortunately there were no seized or rounded bolts, and the whole process was fairly painless.

Now all I need to do is rebuild it.

I spent this weekend finishing off painting the IRS for the Ghia. I stripped the paint from it last weekend using a combination of paint stripper and a zip wheel in my grinder. There was only some minor surface rust, so I sanded this back ready for painting.

I decided to paint the suspension myself, rather than getting it powder coated, this was mostly due to the shiny finish that powder coating normally gives, I wanted a low gloss almost satin finish to be more like the original.

I had some paint left over from painting the pan and roll cage on the oval so decided to use this. It comprises of an etch primer and enamel based topcoat. I generally favour this paint for chassis stuff as I can thin it with normal meths and don’t need to buy a special thinners as I do with other brands.

I had a bit of an issue with the primer separating out from the thinners, which I put down to it being old paint, this meant going out to buy some more paint and spending a fair bit of time cleaning the sludge out my spray gun.