Last weekend was a bit of a milestone in the build with the bus's first trip around the block. One thing that was instantly apparent from the maiden voyage was that the accelerator linkage was absolutely cactus. The second thing that was also readily apparent, and was made a lot worse by the first thing was that PICT34's and 009's do not play nice together. The bus had the infamous flat spot, which made you want to stamp down on the loud button to get things moving. This worked (to a degree) but ended up with the worn throttle sticking in the down (flat out) position. All in all it made for interesting driving.

 Nick Bentley's Badass Rat Oval

Nick Bentleys 56 rat oval is a regular part of the South Australian scene and can often be spotted at events and meets. Sporting perfect patina, a big Type 4 power plant, all round disc brakes and a close ratio box not only does it look badass, it's lots of fun to drive too. Here's a bit more about the man and the rat straight from the horses mouth...

You might recall from my last blog Paint Your Wagon, that I ordered some parts from MoFoCo, unfortunately they were not posted out so after a bit of chasing up they were finally mailed out to me express. Well according to USPS they should have arrived no later than 5 days later, so after waiting for 6 days I decided to lodge a paypal dispute. The initial slackness on MoFoCo's part, and time limit that PayPal put on making claims pushed me past the point of trying to pussy foot around the issue. I figured that if the parts arrive - all well and good, and if they didn't, then at least I could order them form somewhere else.

Not updated the blog for a week or so, but that doesn't mean that I've been idle, just too busy to be able to get my thoughts translated into the electronic ether.

Last weekend I spent some time getting the doors prepped ready for painting. The front doors both needed painting, both having been partially prepped. The passenger door was already mostly done with only a few minor blemishes requiring attention but the drivers door needed a fair amount of work. The drivers door has at some time been badly dented and could ideally do with a new door skin, but in a bid to get the bus on the road I decided to see if I could make it a little straighter then it was.

This weekend I turned my attention to getting the rest of the brakes installed. The pedal assembly needed to be fitted and the SACO hydraulic clutch kit installed. The SACO kit replaces the clutch cable with a hydraulic setup which includes a small master cylinder that locates inside of the 'transmission' tunnel, and a slave cylinder that mounts where the stock clutch cable normally mounts.

The long overdue update to Vdubber is finally here. The new look site is now live and not only does it have a new appearance but the whole site has been rewritten from the ground up. There's heaps more features and its far easier to use than the old site. The reason for this is that the software platform that the site runs from has been replaced with a more streamlined version. But rather than bore you with techno-mumbo-jumbo, the best way to tell you about the new features is to give you a bit of a tour.

Took a few days off in the week to get some more stuff done on the lowlight. My target for this week was to get the brakes finished off, get the gearbox in and paint the front doors. As I had already done most of the brakes there was only the front nearside left to do and change out the rear flexi hoses and shocks.When I removed the front nearside drum I was met by a bit of a surprise, the brakes were missing. There had been a Burnley.

Was stoked to get a text message today from MelleMel. In it was a photo of my new rego plates for the lowlight. See if you can spot the mistake...

Decided to sort out the brakes today. I had already ordered new shoes, cylinders, hoses and master cylinder, and whilst waiting for the remaining engine parts to arrive thought that it would be a good idea to fix up the other things on the todo list.

Had a bit of a result this week, finally managed to source the remaining parts that I was looking for. If you've been reading the blog you would know from this post that I've been searching high and low for some bukhead tin for a 1600 lowlight. Well as luck would have it, a bloke called Gary replied to one of my wanted ads and said that he had most of the parts that I needed. After taking trip out to go though his stash of parts i walked away with a whole bunch of goodies. Not only did I get the bulkhead tin, but I also got a pair of air vents, a pair of seat trims, a grab handle and a nearside sill repair panel.

This weekend I managed to get a bit more done on the Lowlight. After rebuilding the heads last week I decided that I should really split the case and at least take a look at the bottom end to make sure that there were no gremlins in there. Whilst this will add a week or two to the build at least I will get a peice of mind until I get around to building a 2150 for it.

To get the Ghia through the engineers inpection I need to address the issue of tyre to arch clearance. It had been noted by the engineer that I need to increase the clearance by approximately 10mm. There are a number of ways of acheiving this, most of which I have considered at some point, but all of which have some kind of compromise. My plan was to cut back the inner lip of the wheel arch and raise the suspension a little, but his was far from ideal. However, given the alternative - narrowing the IRS arms, it was the easy option.

Been working pretty hard on getting the bus engine fixed up this weekend. After stripping the old fasty engine down and cleaning the barrels and heads ready for reconditioning, I decided that I would tear down the 1300 in readiness for it's new parts. I also wanted to get all of the tin off of the engine so that I could paint it.

Great news. Just got back from Regency after registering the bus. Fortunately there was an old rego sticker still on the windscreen so I was able to fill out the rego form with the old details and get the bus registered. Now all I need to do is get the engine finished off and the brakes overhauled. I also ordered a personalised plate too. :D

Last night I spent half hour out in the garage going over the fasty engine that I have spare. I want to use the 1600 barrels and pistons (and maybe heads) on the 1300 bus engine that I have.

To determine the condition I did a compression test but his was not really conclusive as I could only turn the engine over by hand which didn't really give a suitable reading. Not deterred i decided to take the heads off and inspect them instead.

The new site update is nearing completion. Just a few more bugs to iron out and we will be permanently migrating to the new platform. The new site has a whole bunch of new features and is much more user freindly.

The biggest changes are to the way things work. The features are mostly the same but the new site will be a lot smoother. There are of course some great new features such as twitter and facebook integration. This means that posts you make here can also be posted to your facebook page and twitter feed. They will also appear on the vdubber facbook and twitter pages too.

The estimated time until launch is about a month, so please start preparing for something great.

vdubber.

This weekend saw the kombi roof that I brought back from Mount Gambier go off to its new owner. Andrew, the guy that bought the roof, also had various kombi bits that I needed so he dropped them off at the same time. Andrew is a top bloke and was the person kind enough to loan me the trailer to pick the Kombi up on in the first place.

Managed to spend some time this weekend going through the lowlight and taking check of whats what. The bus was packed to the brim with parts and so it needed to be unloaded to see what parts were missing and what parts needed to be sourced. The bus was supplied with some nice extras such as a roo bar and a spare full width rock and roll seat including the rear matress and all of this needed to be taken out of the bus to be able get in and take a look

Just picked up another project, a 1970 lowlight bus courtesy of @Matt here on Vdubber. I actually bought this several months back but only just got around to picking it up this past weekend. After a bit of a road trip to Mount Gambier and a couple of days with the very hostiptable Tully Family, we towed the bus back to Adelaide to it's new home.

We also brought back a complete roof clip section from another bay for another local Vdubber (splitmeister from AVD). This was strapped to the top of the bus and made the load very top heavy, which made for some 'interesting' driving.

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.

not much happened but i thought i'd write a bit anyway.

i'm currently trying to flog off a heap of stuff and was supposed to photograph some of it and pack some other stuff to get shipping prices. with the way i have put it off you'd think i didn't like money. :)

i intended to go for a drive on saturday but life (and the better half) had other plans. i did get to drop in to my friend just out of town for a chat, but couldn't stay as i took my 6yo and he went totally bezerk so i had to leave. i was super grumpy over that one.

i went out there agan this afternoon to drop him some bits he needs and pull some bits i need off a parts car. while i was doing so i noticed amongst the random crap under the bonnet, a australian accessory door pull handle. needless to say we struck a deal and it is home safe and sound.

i made a post on a forun this evening that got me thinking about what it was like "back in the day" before the whole internet thing took off and became what it is now for our hobby.  

i first got into vw's about 1995, so not long before the first chat rooms started getting popular.

back then just about everything i did with regard to parts hunting and information gathering was completely different. there was none of this instant gratification available now. well, not to me anyway as i couldn't afford the books, catalogues that would have made it easier... i doubt i even would have thought to use them then. now if i want to know something i just go on the net, and visit the samba if it is general info or occasionally in2vws.com for info relating specifically to australia colours or australian accessories. in most cases the info can be found within a matter of minutes.

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.

got the sub frame out now. the old mounts are toast but expected that after 40 years I have rounded up 6 new mounts out of the 8. But i going to try to get them cast in urethane.

Everthing is cleaned up now treated with rust blast and then painted with KBS

Well I have started now on the IRS conversion with the 944 alum arm

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.

​Mighty oaks from little acorns grow. What started off as an idea a few months ago, has finally grown into Issue 1 of our Ezine. Utilising MelleMels skills as a typesetter and contributions from the UK, we have managed to put together our Ezine Debut. We're rather proud of it. The Ezine is 100% free and can be accessed at the link below. ...

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.

to be honest this is kind of just showing off, but i do love my books, even if most of them are in rough condition.

it amuses me to think about some of the distractions i have created for myself. enjoyable distractions that i followed willingly but still things that missed the point. things directly or vaguely related to vw's that really serve no purpose when it comes to actually getting one of my shitboxes on the road.

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

though i hate the expression "you snooze you loose" but it sums my situation up perfectly.

i called the guy with the cars i wanted and found out someone else layed down thier $ 2 days ago.

no point keeping the pics to myself as it's too late to worry about someone else snapping them up.

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.

what a day. today i spent to entire day catching up with 2 old and one new vw friend. i do basically all of my car socializing (if you could call it that) over the internet, but as i am in sydney on holidays i took a day to catch up with my 2 long long time vw friends and one guy who actually lives 15 min from my place but was down here as well. i originaly wrote this with thier names but figured initials would protect thier superhero identities better, having said that 2 have the same initial so it may get a little confusing.

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

i had a weekend off for the first time in far too long. of course the whole of saturday was spent cleaning up, but today i got a little car stuff done.

after a little outing with the family in the morning, i went to visit a friend who has vw stuff. i only went to say hi as i haven't seen him for a while, but ended up leaving with a pair of crowsfoot bus rims. i'll pick up another 2 or 3 when i take my tools out to pull them off. i really need to get a bus to fit them to. correction i'd really like a bus to fit them to. an important distinction in life. what we need is very very different to what we want. good marketing leads us to think that our wants are needs, hence liberating us from our $$$.  of course i saw more stuff out there that i'd like but i'll hold off till i have a few spare (haha) $

ahhh two days off, lovely. still only did 1/4 of the things planned but i had some fun playing with stuff..

this morning i picked up a fake hazet assistant that i found a few weeks ago. as i say, you always have to ask.  

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.

depressingly little happened for a day off.

i gave my one set of moderatly interesting rims a once over with the hose and a stiff brush. i wish someone could give me a definate answer as to who actually made them etc. i believe that they were made by "Neils" in the mid 80's but the name came from an add on e.bay that included a 4 by 130 set. some of the guys other info was a bit questionable so nfi if this is thier proper brand.

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.

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".

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 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.

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

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

Never really been into the blog thing so this is my first attempt

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 .

I purchased this Volkswagen of a friend who had purchased it in the early 80's already restored. The only thing that was added was firestone whitewall tyres. Jump forward to early 2004 I took a phone call from said freind who had decided to sell. He mentioned the price that he wanted and as these don't come up for sale very often I could only say yes. So now 5 years later and many happy miles this is my 1961 Typ-152 Karmann Cabriolet

err... never done this so i'm not really sure what the protocul is for a blog. i guess it'll just be a stream of conciousness thing for a while.

if you haven't noticed, spelling isn't my strong point, and i'm not overly fussed with the use of capitals on the net. i'm sure you're all big enough and ugly enough to deal with that. if not, too bad.

i guess my intention of having a blog is to use it too keep myself motovaited on my projects by posting what i have done on any given day. aka to do something every day. 

well i achieved approximately SFA today. the curse of working retail... 10 - 5 sunday takes the better part of the day away. add a few hours procrastination on top of normal family stuff and it is time for bed with no VW progress achieved.

i do wonder how everyone else organises themselves with regard to thier projects. i have multipule things happening at once. which i work on depends on my mood at the time. probably not the best way to do things.

i have to say that working with quality objects, built to fine tolerances and intended to last (such as the mechanical bits of a vw) is a great relief and de-stress after a day of selling wnd working with crap quality products that you know won't last and some of which you feel guilty for selling. i guess i make a bit of a crap salesman in some respects, today i even told a customer not to buy a product as it wouldn't last (not the first time and won't be the last unless they sack me). i guess there is only so much of your soul you can sell in the quest for the $. 

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.

as the title says... the grand total that has happened is finally getting some bits i had advertised packed so i could get prices for postage.

the money is already accounted for but it is something. once this stuff is gone i can dig out some more crap and try to turn it into stuff i actually need.

to be honest it will prob get turned into wants not needs. a slight problem i seem to have, lack of focus. i'm far too easily distracted by the unimportant stuff so put off getting the basics that i need.