The 'v good chassis' comes home

Whilst still pondering how to get this chassis home, a friend (Caddy at BugBitz) pointed out that the NBOC were having a camping weekend and VW show up in Armagh, and why didn't I come up to that.
He'd been threatening to sort out my 12v leisure system in the camper for ages now, and he suggested I come up on the Thursday, he could sort out my electrics and we could both head off the the NBOC weekend at Oxford Island on the Friday.

Hmmm...a plan forged itself in my head, and I sent a PM to Owen on the Type 2 Ireland forum to tell him I'd be coming up to Armagh for the weekend, and then on the Sunday I'd head to his to collect that chassis.
I asked Caddy if it was OK to leave a trailer at his place over the weekend, but he didn't reply for a while.

But, wow! When he did reply I was bowled over.

He'd been on the phone to Owen, and between them they'd arranged that Owen would put the chassis on some wheels, attach an A-frame to it. Tow it down to Caddy's, leave it there over the weekend and then come camping with us at Oxford Island. Then I could simply tow it home on the Sunday, and bring the A-frame back to Caddy when I met up with him the following weekend for a T2i camp on Achill. Perfect!

So, a simple trip up to Armagh would kill 2 birds with one stone! I'd get my 12v leisure system sorted in the camper, I'd bring home my shiny new replacement beetle chassis, and I'd get a weekends camping thrown in for good measure. Bliss!

The weekend was great, but I was itching to get back to Caddy's to finally get a good look at my chassis.



Better than I imagined! Owen challenged me to find where the repair sections joined the original chassis...and he was dead right...you can't see the joins at all. The edges are invisible.



Owen stuck 4 wheels and some running gear on it. Interestingly the wheels he put on it are GT wheels...that were put on the GT beetles...I keep offering them back to him, but he said keep them! Caddy advised cleaning them up and using them, nice to have the choice! Caddy changed a couple of wheels for me, as the tread (or lack of) might have attracted some garda attention. But we stuck the GT wheels we weren't using in the camper to take home and clean up.
It also came complete with a gear box (with gear stick in place) which feels OK. Either way I'll take it off clean it up, compare it with my own gearbox and use the best one.
The hand-brake cables and the accelerator cable has all been checked and declared in good working order. So that's those finicky bits dealt with.
There's just loads there that I didn't expect, that may or may not turn out to be perfectly use able after a good clean up. Who knows, we'll see.

Time to take the chassis home.



It towed like a dream...and has to be the ultimate head turner as a trailer! Pedestrians were almost giving themselves whiplash to get a second look at it as I drove past, and cars overtaking me slowed down as they drew alongside, to get another good look at the contraption attached to my towbar.
Every time I stopped at a garage or service station for a coffee boost it attracted a crowd of folks desperate to know what it was. And then entertaining me with their vw-flavoured family history. (my friend/brother/uncle/father/grandfather had a beetle/camper etc)

Once home I parked it next to my beetle so they could get acquainted. Just for the night though. The chassis is now safe and sound in a dry shed, awaiting the chance to be used again and help return my beetle to her former glory.



Now to get researching heater channels...and how to replace them. The next logical job.

A 'v good chassis' catches my eye!

There was I browsing the Type 2 Ireland forum, with my beetle and its impending resto gently nagging in the back of my mind, when one of the forum members casually mentions that he has a 'v good beetle chassis for sale'. I registered the comment in the back of my mind, but didn't give it much thought. The member in question is up in Derry, a long, long way from Tipperary, and with the long journey, and the fact that he'll want paying in Sterling (UK Pounds) I figured a v good chassis could quickly turn into a v expensive chassis.
Then my partner read the same post later that day, and mentioned it when he got home from work.
Which of course, brought the whole thing back to the forefront of my mind again.

So I fired off a PM to Owen on the forum, and out of curiosity asked him (a) if it was suitable for my little 1970 standard bug, and (b) how much he wanted for it.

The price was reasonable...very reasonable, not much over the price of 2 replacement floorpans, and if I added on the price of a new battery tray (all things my little bug desperately needed) the chassis became definitely the cheaper option. The chassis is off an 1974 standard beetle, and my body etc should just go straight on with no bother.

I played it all over in my mind. The labour and skills required for me to replace all these things myself, and then the priming and painting of the current chassis, and attention to all those little things that would rear their ugly heads only once I'd got stuck into the job. Then I considered the important role the chassis played in the safety and structure of the whole car, and then I considered that Owen was craftsman in jobs like this, and I'd always been impressed when I looked at resto works he'd done on bugs and buses.

So I fired off another PM, just to test the water, to get a price off him for fixing the one small hole it needed patched, the new battery tray it also required, and then priming it and painting it so there was absolutely nothing I needed to do to it, other than swapping over the running gear ready for the body to go over on to it.
Whilst waiting for an answer I poured over various parts catalogues and priced up what I needed, the hours it would take me, then the dreaded prime and paint, and worked out what it would cost me to do it all, and then converted the magic figure into sterling.

The price he quoted me surprised me even more! How can he do things this cheap? So, I gave him the go-ahead, and then concentrated on working out how I was going to get it home. Owen originally said it would just be the chassis I was getting, it wouldn't be rolling, and there would be no running gear. That was OK. My beetle's running gear seems OK and I have loads and loads of bits in the job lot I bought a few months ago, so I was confident I could make up enough good bits (or sell of what I have to fund new parts).

Either way, I was now looking at needing a good sized trailer to sit the chassis in to bring it home, and coming up with bizarre ideas to wrap it in blankets, pad it out with foam, so I would damage any of the fresh paint on the long journey home...

A few pics from Owen of the work-in-progress



















To be continued

A Question of Colour - Chinchilla?

Looking at some of my bugs non-black bits we have come to the conclusion that she started out a beigey-grey colour. Looking up the colour codes for her year I identified this as Chinchilla Grey.

Then looking at various websites who had little colour squares to demonstrate the colour it was hard to imagine how the colour looked on a beetle. Various searches on a few online search engines for pictures of Chinchilla coloured beetles yielded nothing, except cute pics of various colours of Chinchillas. Cute, but not helpful.

So, whilst attending the NBOC's show at Oxford Island this weekend I was thrilled when a beetle rolled in coloured a vaguely familiar beigey-grey.

A quick chat with the owner to confirm the colour, and out came the camera.

After being 'not so sure' about the colour, after looking at Chinchilla coloured boxes on some websites, having now seen it in the flesh and on a beetle I have to admit I'm smitten.

Had some odd colour ideas, no doubt some may be discussed here at a later date. But always leaned to keeping her colour original to her year, if not her own original colour. Wanted to decide on her original colour only after I'd seen it on a beetle, and until now that was proving difficult.

Her owner stated he'd never seen another Chinchilla Grey beetle in Ireland, so I was dead lucky to see it at all.

Well, I like the colour now I've seen it. What do you think?

Life gets in the way

A quick note the followers of this bog after receiving a few email from folks concerned that I'd given up and run away screaming at the enormity of the work ahead of me.

The bug resto is still live, I'm still alive, just the drag of real life getting in the way of getting anything productive done.

The welding course was concluded successfully, still trying to source a decent enough welder up to the job, simple to use and within my probably unrealistically small budget...

Back soon, I promise

Welding Week 3

Got there this time, but the OH had to drive me there, and wait while I attended class. Still suffering from a sticky starter motor, so his generosity is much appreciated.

Finally got my hands on my very own welding mask, and a cool little flame-retardent cap thing to go under it. Wouldn't want your hair catching fire now would you! The tutor solved my 'female' problem with a simple snip and trim along the bottom of the mask, so that I could bend over with out my chest pushing the mask up. The ability to use both hands now made a huge difference in my welding, read on!

Had a good chat with the tutor about mig welding, and he very generously said that if we did manage to buy our mig welder before the course finished, and assuming it was of a portable size, I was welcome to bring it to lessons and use that instead of the arc welders supplied. I'd also need to bring some lighter steel to practice on, as all the school can privide is the thick stuff...but I have a scrap car here I can happily remove bits from (a Peugeot 306, NOT the Beetle!) Just need to get a mig welder now, as I feel that is an offer well worth taking up.

I took a bit of good hearted slagging for not making it the previous week, but they all know that I have to come the farthest, and across the bad quality bog roads, so no one was surprised that I didn't risk the trip. All too easy to slip off those narrow and desperately uneven roads, and into the unyielding bog, without any help from ice or snow!

So onto the welding. Bart (the tutor) suggested I do a little of what I'd been doing the previous session, to get 'back in to it' so to speak, and then to progress with my straight lines, and practice stopping during a line, allowing it to cool off, and then starting again in the smoothest way possible. I was extremely pleased with my straight lines, and joined-up lines, but I do have to work on my tendancy to lay the welding rod over at an angle (as if writing with a pencil). Whilst I can lay it at an angle in the direction that I'm moving in, I must work on keeping it absolutely straight from on top, otherwise when welding a jont I'd be transferring uneven heat to the two pieces being joined, and one would be getting far more heat than the other. This needs to be even for a successful join.

I am thrilled to say I wasn't the only one who was pleased with my very straight, even lines. The tutor accused me lightheartedly of practicing during my week off (if only!). He was genuinely surprised at my progress, and couldn't believe how quickly I was improving.

We swiftly moved on to joining two pieces of flat metal together. He showed me how, doing it with various gap sizes so I could see what happened when the gap was too big, and also too narrow. Sometimes (in real life) you won't be able to adjust the gap, so he showed me some techniques for successfully joining narrow and wide gaps. Then I had a go myself. I did a 'good sized gap', then turned it over to check penetration. I did a 'wide gap' and did the same, and I finished with a narrow gap. Bart tried to snap the pieces apart to test the strength of my weld...and I was thrilled when he couldn't. He seemed very pleased with my work. I started to offer a stupid goofy smile at myself then. but was cautious not to get too cocky. I continued joning flat pieces together until the end of the class. The tutor didn't think we had time to start on joining pieces at 90degree angles, so I welcomed the chance to practice and hone my skills on joining flat pieces, and starting and stopping in the middle....just to be a bit flash (to myself) and use up the practice time productively.

All in all I came out of there with a bounce in my step, feeling I was really starting to acheive something and that I really COULD do it. I'm still having trouble *starting*, so don't start believing I'm some welding wunderkind (I certainly don't!)...but even that was improving as I took my time and put a bit more thought into what I was actually doing and how to successfully (and not stickily)achieve the initial spark.

No class next week, as the school is on its mid-term break, so catch you all in two weeks time...unless I do something with the Beetle in the meantime.

Side note: We bought a replacement engine for the T25 yesterday (a 1.9D), so now to get it installed...and, hopefully, no more griping on here about that particular vehicle!

Welding Week 2...

...didn't happen I'm very sad to say!

We had a fair bit of snow Wednesday night, and it continued to snow all through the morning on Thursday. Thursday afternoon and evening were freezing cold, and the laying snow was going nowhere. The roads were treacherous and the radio was warning of worse conditions to come, with very icy roads. Now my bus is approx 2 tons, with a strange centre of gravity at the best of times and rear-wheel drive....so half my mind was made up late in the afternoon.

A quick pic of the bug with a dusting of snow


The final decision was taken when I went to leave work and my T25 wouldn't start, due to a slow and lazy starter motor complaining about the cold. Half an hour and a tow rope later and I got him running...but didn't fancy the idea of being left stuck at 10pm in a college car park an hour from home with no way of getting the engine running.

So, with a very heavy heart, I drove the T25 home from work, instead of to Johnstown, parked up and spent the evening erecting a new dog run outside instead. Just wouldn't have been happy sitting indoors doing nothing, knowing I should be somewhere else...so that seemed to keep my mind occupied.

This week I will mostly be trying to find a replacement engine for the T25 (the starter motor is the least of his problems)...but with the danger of this blog being more about the T25 than the Beetle I'd better stop there.

Hopefully, my next post will be telling y'all how wonderful Welding Week 3 was, and how I miraculously caught up with all I missed this week.

Back 2 Skool

Last night I signed on and started an evening course in Welding. Felt really odd to be back in a classroom environment. Thought I'd left all that behind when I finished my degree in 2001.

We all had to do an intro. The "my name is Caroline and I'm an alcoholic, whoops wrong meeting, no I want to learn how to weld old cars back together", kind of thing.
There were just five of us there last night, and four welders to play with. So I was fortunate enough to have one all to myself (none of the macho men seeming to want to share with a girly - that's fine, suited me perfectly). If we have full attendance there will be eight of us, so in future weeks I will have to share. But getting my first night nerves out of the way with my own machine and bits of scrap steel, and no-one looking over my shoulder was just what I needed.

From what I could gather we will be mainly concentrating on arc welding, but from what our tutor said if we could master that, then the rest was easy.

We did a bit of theory sitting at desks, and had a thorough safety briefing, and then our tutor said the best thing we could do was go get at it. So we did

He showed us over an oil cooled unit (his preferred type), then he showed us over an aircooled unit. He messed with the settings, so we could all see and hear what it sounded like when set too low, and too high etc. Then he let us all off to set up our own machines, which he then came and checked after we thought we had done it.

The school provided us with hand-held masks, which are not ideal...especially when learning. So the tutor is providing us with proper masks next week, that sit on your head and are fully adjustable. Cheap and cheerful, for €20, but functional and not requiring to be held. I mentioned my problem I'd had when I'd previously had a go at welding, whereby, when I bent over to see what I'm doing my ample chest pushed the visor up and left me unable to see what I was doing. Fortunately he's come across this before with other ladies who have ample chests, and said simply that he will trim the bottom of my mask so I can bend over and get in close without pushing my visor up.

I then spent a happy hour or so, making globby lumps on bits of scrap steel. I experimented a lot, and some globby lumps turned into neat looking lines. My tutor seemed very pleased with my first efforts, and went so far as to say I'd be flying next week when I could get at it with both hands. My biggest problem was 'starting' so he advised me to just keep doing lots of short welds, an inch or so, so that I could get used to starting. Had a few occasions when I clearly didn't start well, and instead got my rod stuck to the metal...but I became a pro at unsticking it!

From now on our tutor wants us in cotton overalls...I felt my blood go cold when I heard those words. I HATE wearing overalls. I always end up looking like a mis-matched crossbreeding between a Tellytubby and the Michelin Man. Through 3 years at college, and a further 15 months at University, with plenty of time spent in the engineering workshops I successfully avoided this, but alas it looks like I won't escape it this time. So next week, I will be trussed up like some cotton covered horror film extra. I promise NOT to take pics.

All in all though, it was a great evening. I could feel my confidence growing...and I didn't jump and squeal every time I got a spark. No, really I didn't...just at the beginning. At one point however I did make a huge newbie mistake, whereby I stepped away from my desk to go and get another piece of scrap steel...but one of the cables was wrapped around my leg, and I bought everything crashing to the floor...fortuately the end of the live welding rod didn't catch anything metal so I got away with it, that time! Lesson learned!

Can't wait for next week. I'm gutted now that we didn't buy the welding machine we saw for sale in Halfords at Christmas...don't want to wait a whole seven days to do some more! Bring on the Beetle! OK, so maybe I'm not yet ready to start attacking the Beetle...but I do so want to more...and more...

As an aside...I'm starting to see a pattern now. Or perhaps I'm just being a bit anthropomorphic towards my vehicles (does that word apply to vehicles, or just animals?)...but it seems whenever I do something for the Beetle, so the T25 plays up (or perhaps the T25 just plays up all the time, and I mistakenly attribute it to the Beetle...are you still with me?). So I drove home, late at night, over the lonely, dark bog roads...with my alternator light on, glowing a menacing red at me in the oppressive darkness. When I pulled over to answer a phonecall my heart sank when the engine cut out. But it restarted perfectly, thank goodness. So, later today, when I can muster the motivation, I shall investigate the connections in the back of my alternator...and if that don't fix it, then I'll be calling for help.