i had a day off today after what felt like about 3 weeks... it was no where close to that long but still felt that way.

i thought about doing vw stuff but ended up sleeping on the couch for most of the morning then hung out with my son after lunch. i feel so guilty for not doing anything on the car or much cleaning, but it was so good to be able to just do nothing (well i cleaned up but still could have done more). the girls are back at school so there wasn't the constant bickering of 2 girls a year apart and full of pre/teen attitude. we all played sillybuggers out the back after they got home from school, an excellent bonding day really, so definately not a day wasted.

more "presents" turned up in the mail over the last few days, lovely. i have really become a bit of a period packaging pervert. i am devoloping a "thing" for the packaging NOS stuff is in. aka the lovely plastic boxes that the points and rotors i got turned up in. the makers name and the "made in australia" boomerang symbol  embossed on the lids of some, cardboard tags inside most and paper wrapping holding the plastic box halves together on another. none of this moulded plastic glued onto cardboard or shrinkwrap. these were packed as though they were valuable and intended to be kept safe for long periods if nessecary. you could re-use it for something else if you wanted too. quality.

i didn't get a chance to do that much but it felt really good to do something.

ages ago i read about fitting early type 3 wide 5 drums onto BJ front ends. (in the speedpro beetle suspension and brake book). i remembered that a guy i used to know worked out that if you used the inner race from a specific set of bearings with the outer from another you could put BJ discs onto beetle linkpin front ends. put 2 and 2 together, you should be able to fit, with the right bearings, type 3 drums on a link pin beetle.

i know very little about type 3's but i do know they have bigger brakes and twin leading shoes on the front. both desirable as far as braking goes.

to start i realized that the brakes will be a bit more complicated than i had thought, so added a comment re this on the previous post.

back to business.

well about 8 this evening after work etc, i donned the thermals, multipule shirts, fleece jacket, heavy beanie plus mechanics gloves and faced... the shed...  in winter...

i hope that is how you spell opate... it wasn't... fixed now.

the actual work done today was zero but i did post some more crap up to swap. what i'm after doesn't relate to my ragtop project but i never claimed to be well focused. i also bought another thing on e.bay, not directly used but it should be useful.

last night after typing the entry i did go out to the shed and have another go at the nut, still no joy, certainly not for my neighbours . tempted as i was i did resist using the dremel to grind back the tip of the offending bolt, though i did drill into it a little more, more than noisy enough. i do generally try quite hard to be considerate of the neighbours but it was before midnight on a saturday night. we never have parties anymore so they can deal with a little shed noise. i realized that if i had had the money to chase a factory wide 5 drum puller that sold a few months ago, there would be no hassle to this job at all. why is it that the really useful stuff comes up when you don't have the spare $ to go big.

now is where it turns into a lot of boring concepts written down so i don't forget them.

keep the carbs in thier stock alignment. aka floatbowls to the front. 

swap the throttle shaft on the LHS carb so the long thread is on the RHS.

after looking at a few sites i just realized again, how much i want a kombi. to be specific, a brakelight engine lid model or perhaps in my dreams a barndoor.

i'm not sure what it is but i seem to prefer the look of earlier vw's regardless of the model (the possible exception being type 4's) not nessecerally the earliest of each type but early enough. i guess it is the simplicity of the earlier versions. to be honest a 63 isn't my favorate year (that honor falls to 1956)(though 51/2 is right up there)

but then again i have a 63 and it is a ragtop plus the car has a lot of meaning to me. it is probably one of the first large projects in my life that i finished. i'm using the term finished loosly, but it was running and registered which was a long way from where i got it. since then i have changed and grown up a lot (not that it was hard to mature from where i was) but it still holds meaning.

it's not like i want to spend time with my children...

this is truely getting beyond a joke, if everyone wasn't talking doom and gloom about the economic climate i would probably have quit (or at least gotten serious about applying for other jobs). 

no tangable progress vw wise. spent a little time with my head in the vw suspension suning book. always interesting to read/learn/relearn. i'm surprised with how much i'm forgetting of late. it is probably from underuse of my brain. though on a slight tangent, my typing speed has picked up quite nicely in the last little while.

well its nearly 5 years that i have had my little rod ,and it has been through many guises and back .it was supercharged and went well now its not and because of the low weight it still goes bloody well it has had apug front bonnet and now its going back to a super bonnet.one day i will be finished but i'm not counting the days as i always have it when i get bored,it's there andi can go play

well hallow to all

steve  (greedy)

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g104/greedy53/volksrod/tn_sideviewwithnose-1.jpg

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g104/greedy53/volksrod/13c90d67.jpg

i picked up some socket rails today from super cheap. is there a single tool in that place that is decient quality? the socket rails certainly aren't.

having said that at $5.50 total for a 1/4" and a 1/2" rail you can't expect too much, plus they will do till i find something better. (they were the only ones i could find anyway)

the 1/4" are basically squared away, though i may get another rail so i can get one clip to put the short expension on the rail as well. the 1/2" inch are partially done, all of the smaller ones are done, plus some of the odd stuff. aka most of the addaptors and plug sockets. i will need to get another 1/2" rail and cut it down to size to put the imperial (sp) sockets on. don't worry, that heathen imperiel stuff is in the bottom of the tool box, away from the proper tools :) . it is odd knowing that my socket set won't be in it's box, it has been in there since i was given it as a combined b'day and christmas present from my parents and grandparents. i kept the tag that came on the present in the box (yes for 10+ years, it means a lot to me).

the most amazing thing happened today but i have no idea why. to cut a long story short i came home from work super grumpy so went and had a sleep, i was woken up by my daughter coming in and saying "mum wants you to come and look at something" eventually i crawled out of bed and marnie was on the computer looking at a beetle in the trading post, and asked me "what do you think?" she said that she even put a bid on one (nfi where as it wasn't e.bay)

i am seriously stunned at this, actually stunned isn't strong enough a word. i have no idea what has changed, i really don't get it but i hope that it lasts. she has always acknowledged my hobby (addiction) and said that she would like me to get my ragtop moving, the funding for it is another story though. she has been saying we need a second car for a while but always said that she thought a cheap newish (10yr old or so) thing would be better than a vw. if you are reading this you probably understand why i didn't agree with this. to spell it out, i think i can maintain a vw with little to no outside assistance. aka for the cost of parts only, plus if looked after properly a vw will only go up in value as it gets older.

some now it looks like my wife has come around to my way of thinking, i don't know what happened but i'm really pleased.

not much happened today, had a staff meeting after work so late home...

finally got the sockets all on their rails (rails cut to legnth etc), i'm not 100% about how i have them organised but the only way to know for certain is to use it a bit. i so want to buy more/better tools for myself. the screwdrivers thati have are a mishmash of various old things that i pinched of my mother back in the day. mostly rounded off and mostly very beaten up. i new set would be nice. the majority of the other stuff is decent but not the screwdrivers. 

20 posts in this blog. the thing that really sticks out from them is i need to do some more actual work. while i'm at it i should finish some of the projects started during the course of this blog, maybe some of the many already started before as well.

not today though.

         I stumbled upon this at my local vw repairer.  I asked if it the owner had it there for repair or sale and as luck would have it, it was for sale. The owner was called and a deal was struck so now I have another VW. Only A few things needed to be done like engine reco, new tyres, cut and polish and a good detail. Remakably it is rust free. It was originally sold new in Canberra then sold to the people from whom I purchased it from. It has been a country Victoria vehicle all it life hence the no rust. This now becomes the newest aircooled Volkswagen I have ever owned. Picture is as I bought it so as soon as the detailing is finished I will post an after photo. So I guess all I have to do now is go camping. Bring on spring

        Just got given today a Hazet special tools box. Unfortunatly without any tools so now the hunt is on to hopfully fill it with the correct tools. A hard task I know. Also picked up from a local swap meet in March a hazet spare wheel tool kit. I won't tell you how much I payed for it but it was cheap compared what I have seen some people pay. As you can see I not only collect Volkswagen vehicles of which I will show you more of what I've got later on but also any thing to do with VWs. I have collected over the years a range of things from brochures , nos parts , magazines , vw accesories and toys both old and current. These I will also share with you vdubbers as time permits. To start withh here is just some of my Hazet stuff.                   

                                                   Cheers Jason

damn the blog entry that i just typed was so boring that it crashed firefox...

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.

i grabbed the speedo out again to give it a rough once over this evening, unfortunatly i can't say i got too far, but as i'm not going to open it up i couldn't do it all that well anyway.  just before bed time harry came over to look at the speedo then sitting on the coffee table. he picked it up and i pulled him up onto my lap (just in case). firstly he said various things along the lines of "dad, we've got to fix the beetle", then he just sat there and stared at it only muttering the occasional "wow". he had this look of wide eyed amazement on his face. he looked as if it was the most amazing thing he had even held. it almost brought tears to my eyes watching him.

i share interests and hobbies with both my parients, i really hope him and i can share at least this one.

i had a day off today. i didn't get my hands dirty on vw stuff but i did spend a little time in the shed.

as i have probably mentioned abfore i work in retail. not my choice in profession (infact i don't really belive in consumerism, but that is another story + i'm certainly caught in the cycle) still it's a job and it is a lot better than the last one. last night i had to go out to do a service on a click clack lounge that was "busted". i'm sure the lady is lovely in a social setting but other people i work with have had a lot of trouble with her in the past. plus even before she came in with this problem i remember the manager talking about how this ladies kids were treating the lounge, needless to say they weren't being gentle to it.

i was reading the early 70's book i picked up yeaterday about vw's and it furthered some ideas / thoughts that i have had for a little while.

basically, what is must have been like for people back in the day driving and modifying vw's (aka the 60's and early 70's... even back into the 50's for some)

it got out into my shed this evening and did a little work (well it feels like it was play...). i feel so so good now. realy satisfied and somewhat relieved that i have broken the thing i was going through, i was stuck and didn't know how to get going again.

i'm surprised how good i feel though, i really need to do things with my hands, to create, to fix, to improve something.

it has been a little while since i wrote here...

not that much to say really. lots and lots of nothing interesting has been happening (as it tends to do when there are responsibilities in life). there hasn't been all that much car progress. a little here and there but nothing noteworthy that i can think of. at least anything reciently... aka that i can think of. i've actually had to work at work lately and i'm not really used to it anymore. aka carry around big heavy boxes the heaviest was 51 kg but most 20-40, unload trucks etc. i got used to being a salesman that sat around and made bad jokes.

i remembered that i picked up a couple of key blanks last week. another of the ask everyone things. i was at the local (to my folks anyway) hardwear shop and saw that they cut keys... "got any vw key blanks?" they aren't the lovely HUF or lockwood cut out ones but they are for 6V cars and say "fur volkswagen" so the will do. at $1 ea it was a simple case of "i'll take the lot thanks". that totalled to 4 keys in 2 profiles but i'm sure they will come in handy.

yesterday i remembered that about a year ago i asked a friends dad if he still had the regtop mech his son and i pulled out of a dumped ragtop circa 98/9. they have both been out of vw's for years now. tonight i called him and he thinks he knows where it is so with a little luck it might come my way. i just wish that back then we had cut the roof off (it was damaged but with the $ they go for now it was fixable) or at least pulled the rails that were a little bent. oh well you live and learn. 

now i just need to call a friend and see if he still has the 60's black faced domed glass VDO gauges he got from his dad years ago before he too got out of cars.

edit. gave him a call. no joy.

well i guess to start my name is todd my partner is nicole and i have owned a few beetles a t4 and a 2006 polo . well the beetles a 62 deluxe grey and white lowered with a 1916, the next was a 68 i call feral it ran a 1500 with 1600 heads and lokked feral but went ok when it ran right . then  came the polo it was airbrushed and lower with roh mantis wheels white the air brushing was of a dragon on a snow mountain( everybody has an opinion ) but my partener loved it. then a t4 caravelle which was to be done and cleaned but illness stuch and that ended that . now i\'m well and looking for a good project to start a come back, maybe a mark 1 golf or type three .

              An early start to today for the Wagga Wagga swap meet. Usually not a great deal of Volkswagen stuff on offer but you just have to go just in case. The first surprise for the day was a mint Factory November 1963 parts list for the Type 3 1500/1600/variant and a factory 1965 Volkswagen 1500 workshop manual. Total cost for both $25.00 Yipee for me. And that was all I could find for the day for genuine Volkswagen collectables.                                                                                                                                                                               Next, Volkswagen diecast toys. Quite a lot on offer but not anything that I really liked or needed at this present time but what caugt my eye was some 1:43 minichamp porsches. 1st a 1967 911 targa, 2nd 1977 911 gendarmerie targa, 3rd 1961 356B hardtop coupe, 4th 1961 356B coupe, 5th 1959 356A coupe, and 6th 1949 356 Gmund coupe. These six set me back $20.00 each. These would normally retail for about $50.00 each so i thought why the hell not I deserve them. Well that pretty much ended my day at the wagga wagga swap meet, all in all not a bad day.

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.

as the title says i have asomething that i'm working on but only time will tell what actually happens.

i got a call back re the ragtop mechinism, the guy couldn't find it but thinks that it may be in one of 2 steel boxes that have audi engines sitting on top of them. aka he can't check them without a bit of extra muscle.

the net at home has taken a dive for reasons unknown so i couldn't give an update yesterday but a friend has gratiously let me use his net so i'm typing this.

i went and checked out the beetle i got word about yesterday (i dragged my eldest along as well and she seemed to have fun). it was by nomeans a short drive but enjoyable. it is one of those cars you would never find it if without being told, not even an aeroplane would  help with this one (one day i will spend a day or 3 with my pilot friend car hunting). it turned out that it is a 65. there is nothing that really makes it stand out (well there is but i'll get to that once it is in my hot little hands) it was birch green but has since had an external repaint. to be honest birch green is probably my least liked 6V vw colour... so booring imho. it will probably need a couple of panels to get it where i'd like it but only time will tell (i still have to talk my wife into it... ). the thing that i most lke about it (apart from the copious spares that it comes with) is the fact that from what i could see the main rust is a small patch in the drivers A pillar (famous last words...) the pans looked solid, the front of the rear inner guards the sill bottoms. mind you a good high pressure wash may reveal more once the the mud is blown off. now that i think about it one of the door bottoms may need a little work. it looks as if it has taken a hit in the rhs of the bumper od similar as that side of the wheel well is a little pushed. the other side is ok though. all in all it is a fairly lean country car. much better than most cars i saw in sydney 10/15 years ago and it would prob make the UK guys cry with jelousy. the motor that it had in it when the current owner got it got seized by his kids at some stage so it now has a 1600DP but with a little luck the og case is one of the others that are included. (an early 40hp, a 36hp beetle and another 40hp or later case plus god knows what else (i saw a bastard head in the pile of stuff here's hoping for a VJ4 BR25 :) )

i'm a bit of a hoarder when it comes to vw stuff (amongst other things) so when it comes time to sell stuff i find so many different reasons not to. actually getting it up and advertised can be really hard. it doesn't help that there are a few things that i regret selling (actually that is bullshit, out of all the stuff i have sold there are only a couple of things i wish i hadn't).

i'm really good at making excuses not to sell stuff even when it is for my own benefit. (how do you spell that?) i have poked about in my shed and dug a few bits and pieces out but keep finding excuses not to photograph them etc. today i had the day off, i did spend a chunk of it doing stuff for my wife which is a valid excuse im my book, but damn what do i have to do to make myself do this. even writing this is probably to get out of actually taking the pictures so i can advertise and hence SELL stuff. i really do get seperation ansiety (again spelling?).

why the fuck do i even bother? (yes i am breaking my self imposed 'net ban after a whole 15 min...)

i decide to talk to my wife about the hoarding thing as i thought that she would find it amusing plus well whe is my best friend...

i'm still struggling to get out to my shed to dig stuff out. i have photographed one thing the i'm hoping to sell, but there are others that i need to get pictures of.

there is a guy after headlights that i have, they are worth a reasonable amount too so i really should offer them up. but i'm a headlight perv. i LOVE early headlights (almost to a point that might be illegal in some states of the US :) ) they are beautiful. i like playing with them, pulling them to bits cleaning them up and putting them back together. they look nice lined up on shelves in my shed... but i need the $ and well i have a good set of 50's bosch sematrical lights with the scripted rings and VW logo's etc, i don't need 3 more without the lense logo's. (not to mention several "parts" lights for, well, spares [bar lenses that is]). they look so pretty on my shelf, but it is not like i will need multipule sets of early lights in the forseable future. (plus i still have the odd vw logo'd hella light that, if i found it a mate, would suit an early car)

not a lot of movement but more than has happened for a while.

my wife, while she may sometimes drive me insane, is so cool. her work was about to chuck out some giant stackable wire basket/shelf type thingies and a frame to wheel them around on, so she grabbed them for me so i now have some more storage in my shed. :)

Great!!

Shes a 2L 1975 Kombi and shes very colorful!!

And to tell you the truth, I cant be bothered posting three lots of info about Daisy, so here is her blog http://daisythekombi.blogspot.com/

Feel free to leave comments here or on the blog!!

errr now i've gone and done it... not 100% but two tests both showed 1 strong and 1 faint line.  yes, if you hadn't guesses pregnany tests.

my children are the only decent thing i have done with my life but 3 is enough. my wife kept pushing for another till eventually i gave in and left it up to fate. i wouldn't swap my children for the world but i don't know if i have enough emotional room for another one. i already feel that i don't give my children enough now let alone with a baby on the scene. my eldest two are 13 and 12 (both girls), we really should be focusing on doing what we can to help them through what is going to be an interesting few years for them. of course i told my wife all of this and much more but still she had her heart set on it.

      Just been on just over two weeks holiday. I really did need a break. Plan, take in a little of the FIA World Rally Championships aka 09 Repco Rally Australia, Volkswagen drivers club of Queensland Action Day, Dealer and Media release of the new Triumph Thunderbird (work related).

      Day 1 : Up nice and early to start the drive to Kingscliff NSW which takes about 16 hours a long drive I know. But I just hate two day trips, it just takes up so much of the days you have. All was going well 1200 km in 12 hours so i was right on schedual, as it was a light drizzle and rain most of the way lights and wipers was used most of the day. Travelling between Glen Innes and Grafton I noticed that my wipers were starting to go a little slower than normal and a little further on my headlights started to dim. A check of the dash and no sign of the alternator light but being 50 km from Glen Innes and 100 km to Grafton I had to press on as it was 6.30 pm and dark my 2000 model AU falcon Series II had other ideas and started to slow. Loosing power I had to pull over. Car stalls and wont restart (flat battery and one toasted alternator) and no phone service. Hazard lights on and wait for next car and wait and wait. This is not one of the busiest roads at night. A few cars drove by without stoping but eventually some one did. Luckily he had an in car phone which had signal and the NRMA was called. Gotta love roadside assist. NRMA arrives checks charging system and tells me the alternator has given up (no shit). Says he will call the tilt tray and have me and my car picked up in about 1 hour. Gee why dont we just put the new battery in that you bought with you and I follow you back using your headlights. New battery in, back to Glen Innes for a motel for the night.

     Day 2 : Now Glen Innes has only one auto electrician and its now sunday morning. NRMA man said he might be able to get said auto eletrician to look at car if i'm lucky. 12.00 noon arrives and a knock on the motel door. Good news get your stuff and I will take you to the auto electrician. Five hunred dollars later and I'm back on the road and find myself getting to Kingscliff by 4.00 PM Sunday

     Day 3 to 6 Catch up with freinds

     Day 7 to 9 Take a look at the WRC pit/service park which has been set up at Kingscliff (3 blocks from my mums place). I did not go and see any of the rally cars in action as there are only about 10 cars in the top level and the distance and time spent to see these cars would of just taken up to much of my time (maybe next time).

not really much to say car wise. i did get a little more done in my shed, the rack i started packing a week or two ago is now in it's place. (well as of yesterday)

i can't get over the stunning weather we have been having. part of me wishes that i would get sacked just so i could hang out in the sun and warmth. i do kind of miss being unemployed for that reason (that's about the only good thing about it though).

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.

     Just a follow up on the second part of my holidays.

           Day 10 to Day 15 : Went for a drive with my freind Bob (who was the previous owner of my Beetle Cabriolet) to a place called Stokers Siding near Murwulimbah NSW to catch up with another freind, Alan who is the owner of Stockers Siding Garage. Alan has quite a lot of respect when it comes to working on and or suppling parts for Volkswagens from Queenslands gold coast to the northern rivers area of NSW. In conversation with Alan he told me that he has now sold the garage and is going to retire. Looking arond the garage alan has quite a lot of second hand and new parts that he will keep for resale at a later date from a back yard shed that he has ( the premises will no longer be used as a garage).  All his parts cars will be dismantled and the left overs will be sent off to the metal recyclers. There was nothing worth salvaging for myself but my freind spotted a 70,s Westfalia pop top. With all the original material still there it was to good to leave behind so it now resides in Bobs shed complete with cutout roof section.

          Day 16 : An early start to the day was needed as myself and my two freinds Bob and Rob were travelling to Brisbane to take in some Volkswagen therapy at the Volkswagen Drivers Club Of Queensland's ACTION DAY (see photo's in photo gallery) Not being to a show in Brisbane for quite some years I was a bit dissapointed in the total number of cars that were on display compared to how big the scene is supposed to be in Queensland. The quality was outstanding for the majority of the vehicles there so compliments to those that did enter their cars. The swap meet side of things didn't fare much better for me either but there were still a few people parting with their cash for items that I guess they needed more than me. Old vintage VW stuff is geting really hard to find at Volkswagen only swapmeets now but I did miss out on a pair of 1960/61 only taillights with serviceble lenses for $30.00.

         Day 17 to 19 : Check into the Mantra Resort at Salt for the Dealer release of the new Triumph Thunderbird. Second day there take in dealer meeting , see T-Bird motor dismanteld , go for 1 hour ride loop with eleven other riders on T-birds, settle down with an evening meal at peppers resort and then a good nights sleep as day 19 was the big trip home.

         Day 20 : Home now, just chill out in the shed as now my holidays have come to an end, work tomorrow.

hmmm. if is a little sad that there really isn't differance in my cars from when i started this blog.

i have a feeling that that may change over the next 9 months. marnie is SOOOO hormonal already. i had forgotten how full on she gets. it probably doesn't help that she was taking zaiban (sp?)  when she found out she was pregnant and of course has now stopped. dirty smokers....          ha! spoken like a true ex smoker :) . zaiban made my completely loopy when i took it a while back. it also does strange things to your head when you stop taking it.

Had my birthday on monday, got heaps of money for 'Zac's Kombi Fund'. 

Hoping to get some new parts for Daisy!!

ok not exactly vw realted but damn some physical labour can do wonders for your head. i had to do a few days in the wharehouse at work... i love it. yes i feel a little sore but it was REAL work, i didn't have to be nice to people if i didn't want to, i didn't have to try and sell people shit.

to top it off this evening i got a call from my ex father in law in a bit of a state, as he had cut and bailed some hay and it was starting to rain. it was only a few achers so it wasn't a big job and he has a really old bailer so the bails are small (and hence light) compaired to the modern monster bails. i quickly dashed out there and flogged the guts ot of myself lugging a bail in each hand to the pallet thingy he stacks them on, then running to get another 2 (normaly i don't run for anything if i can help it). i haven't had myself blowing so hard for years. i just kept pushing myself... i did eventually have to stop the running and then go back to one bail so i didn't fall over but damn it felt good. now i come to think about it this was probably the first time thati have really gotten to appreciate not smoking any more. 2 years ago there is no way in hell i could have done that.

after a lovely day at work, i went up to my grandparents tonight (it's really just my grandmothers now but it somehow isn't right saying that) for dinner with my family and parents. an interesting night. saw some more stuff that i hadn't seen before. aka pictures and things from WW1 that had been my grandmothers aunts and had come to her. there used to be more (most of which i had seen) but she donated it to the AWM. a good place for it really as the people weren't family, just friends of "the aunts". one of them ended up high up in the army in WW2 (and lead 1st div against the japanese at milne bay in PNG). his brother who also sent pics and postcards transfered to the english army between the wars and ended up as some sort of aide to edward the 6th post ww2?

some of the remaining stuff was really interesting, one postcard of a guy in a tent in Palistine i think with his rifle as one of the tent poles and all his gear was fascinating. plus the postcard from one of the guys above sent from london as he was recuperating after being wounded in 1917.

attempt 2, i lost the first one...

of late i have been thinking about the 36hp landspeed challenge. wondering how to go fast on the cheap. as you may have guessed from pervious posts money is always an issue for me, so finding a cheap option is good if it can be done (aka if i try to go the expensive option it won't happen).

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.

some days things go right.

to be hones t i wasn't really looking foward to today as the area manager was coming in to work. which generally means lots of work or at least trying to look buisy. (actually with this new area manager it is work... he keeps us going).

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.

i picked my username years ago when i first got an e.mail account. it fitted at the stage of life i was in at the time. both as i had no direction and was just making it up as i went along and  i could also be a little grumpy. well i'm still somewhat directionless. i have an idea of the basics aka i'll be in my house with my kids and working to pay the bills. plus the way i view time has grown up with me. i'm also far grumpier and really don't like being disturbed when i'm focusing on something.

all that aside, the reason behind the title is as follows: edit: the following is rambling and prob unclear but it gets there eventually and sort of made sense as i was typing it. i haven't re read it to see if it still does)

if i say man tantrum to anyone here i'm sure you'd know what i mean. the outpooring of frustration when working on something mechanical that just won't go right. whether you suffer from them yourself or just know someone, you'd still know what they are.

i started musing ove rthe man tanti today at work when trying to fix a single lounge seat with a recliner mech in it. it got to the point i had to go for a walk around the corner to the bakery to unwind of i would chuck my version one. to be honest mine are generally rather tame, i've never been one for throwing tools or throwing parts. i liked my tools too much to chuck them and whatever it was i knew i'd just end up making more work for myself. the same with kicking things, i have once or twice but it didn't take long to realize that it really hurt. all in all i'm sure that my tanti's are rather dull, but they do still happen on occasion.

i do wonder though why we do it, why do we express our frustration this way. i just thought that you could make a rather ammusing reality type tv show of candid footage of guys chucking man tanti's in their sheds, there have to be some funny styles out there. i'm sure you could go to any country in the world and hear the thud of knuckles on sheet metal followed by the sound of a dropped spanner on concrete then muttering and swearwords. 

sometimes in the quiet moments when there is no one around (to tell you perhaps you need to up the medication) you have an idea. this one was inspired by a thread about distributors on the samba. it talked about how the stock distributor car is a limiting factor to the voltage you can run to your plugs. from my VERY limited understanding of electricity a higher voltage = a larger gap the spark will jump. also a fatter spark across the same sized gap (err i think). all usefull if you wantto run high compression etc.

whan i read this i thought to myself, "what about a big cap distributor?" aka an early 40hp distrubitor.thes then lead to the question "could you fit the guts out of a VJ4 BR25 into the big cap body?" giving you a distributor that had the bigger electrode spacing than a stock mech advance unit that is built from early bosch components that are said to be very good quality. this is about as far as the idea got for maybe a year. (to be honest i can't remember when i had the idea but i think saying that it was only a year ago is year generous).

of late the idea had been floating around in the back of my hear with regard to the 36hp challange. the rules in several classes state something along the lines of "must use a bosch distributor and coil". maybe this idea may have a home...

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....

well a hour or 3 in the shed has shown me that it is feasable. making it work with infinately adjustable phasing between the points is also doable but a lot more complex as the extra space needed for the upper and lower points plates would mean that a spacer would be needed to lift the cap. not something i wanted to do as it is getting a little further away from my intended result. being the guts of a BR25 in a bigcap body. all looking kind of stock.

at the moment i'm not giving up on the idea though as well i like adjustability even if i wouldn't have the knowledge yet to use it.

btw for the twin points i was thinking of using GB504's (i think that is the code) what they sell not for 36hp beetle dist's. both the fixed and adjustable would use these.

i was adding a coment to a post pelow and it reminded me of some of the other crazy ideas that have occupied my thoughts over the years.

as mentioned below one was for variable valve timing and OHC desmo acuated valves with different alignment on the valves etc.

another was for cross drilled vented wide 5 front disks with alloy hubs and ring type bolt on disks. think sort of like motorbike front disks on an alloy hub. i do think that this would be achievable and useful.

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/

i've been doing reasonable amount of thinking on things of late. specifically a full tilt 36hp motor, but not that much has really happened.

yesterday i did manage to pick up another big cap 40hp distributor. this one turns out to be an australian made one. i say turns out as at the time i had to lick a finger to try and wipe off the grot to even see if it was a cast iron one or not. it was caked that thick in grease, dust and general filth. much to my pleasent surprise it is really nice not the most of the grot is gone. i think that the german one will end up getting chopped as will the aust one is well australian.

i stripped it down and apart from a 2 shims and a fibre washer, everything is great. of course those are the hard bits to get... i only gave it a rough once over, i was at one stage going to strip and paint the body but found (or didn't find actually) the masking tape was gone so that idea was cut short. the joys of having children.

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.

        A customer of mine recently commented to me that his father inlaw had a beetle laid up in a carport since its registration had expired back in September 1994 and was considering selling. The owner originally purchased this beetle brand new back in 1965 while it was on display at the Volkswagen display stand at the Wagga Wagga show. As he had a company vehicle back then he told me he had travelled to Sydney and Melbourne once and the remainder of use was locally and on weekends to and from his favourite drinking venue. Speedo shows a total of 47184 km of which he tells me is original. Unfortunatly time has been quite hard on this example as it was never fully garaged. Even with the dry climate of Wagga Wagga it has its rust issues but really only very minor (front heater channel and floor).         

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.

wow it has been  while, not having the net on will do that though.

when all is said and done there isn't really much to report.

of late things have all been house and impending baby with a little work thrown in to pay  for it all. i'm sure that most of you know how it goes.

i had the weekend of vw hunting.

my vw weekend started a week or so ago when a customer at work gave me directions and drew me a mud map to a type 3 (1500 as he called it) out in the bush. i had planned to go and find it this weekend. (i have 3 day wekends every second one for anyone who cares, so tonight is my sunday night)

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

all in all it has been a good few weeks of playing vw's. everything has been a little crazy buisy with 5 extra extended family members in the house for nearly a week, plus work etc.

last weekend i went out to check out the rolled "62 1/2" on a property out of town. it turned out to be one of the most amazingly killed vw i'd ever seen. dead to the point of the rear swing axles being Z shaped, the frame head being crumpled and even the dash was twisted. all from being rolled, it looked like it had gone corner to corner (aka end over end) as well as normal rolling. i would love to have been the first one to get at the car as it seemed to be really original. aka crashed early in it's life. it had a matched set of continental cross plys (with lots of tread) and a rubber cased battery. if the battery wasn't broken i would have been so stoked as i'd love to have one for "the shed". all in all it was a very strange car as some bits (of those that were left anyway) were near perfect, but others were completely rooted. several of the few bits i scored have already been cleaned and put into the box for use on my 63. others haven't quite made the cut, but they are still the best that i have.

just a quick one.

i went to visit a vw friend yesterday, just to say hi as i hadn't seen him for a while. while there he asked me if i wanted a metal oil tin that he had (he has given me a few over the years). where he had them stored i saw a couple of old oil refill bottles and told him that he should look after them as they are rather collectable... his imediate reply was "i still use this one but do you want this one? oh and this?" grabbing another... then the top for a 3rd. after the usual "are you sure?" repeated a few times i now have a nice late 60's (i think) castrol metal toped 1 imp pint jar plus an 80's plastic top (castrol?). 

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.

bugger me. i spent ages last night typing up a long blog post and the computer chose to shit itself just as i went to post it. i had forgotten why i like linux so much, sure i still managed to break that but it took a long time to do so, not one evening.

i won't bother with the full story but the basics are as follows.

gave a friend a hand changing a handbrake cable. haven't worked on a complete, living car for years. absolutely loved it. reminded me why this is my hobby.

 Ok, i'll have a go at the catch up post.

I have been doing a fair bit of brain work.

Where to start.

NOTE: this is all completely off topic, just a rant and a few points. nothing interesting, nothing VW related.

OMFG. i'm not the type who chucky explosive tantrums when things don't go my way but right now i want to take this computer out the back for a little meeting with Mr Axe. of course i won't, but thinking about it is kind of satisfying, though it also makes me even more frustrated because i know i can't.

this time it was an hour maybe an hour and a half's worth of thinking and typing. i thought to myself i had better save it before the computer dies and when i went to the thing froze up. i feel like banging my head on the table... it doesn't help that i quit smoking again a week ago plus my wife has been a bit cranky for the last week or so (some might even draw a link between the two :) ) on top of that not working is doing my head in, i need the routine, i need to get out of the house every day plus all the psycological things about being a provider (even though i am employed and getting paid, i just don't have a position to go to yet...) .

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.

Right I'll have a go at rewriting the post I lost last night.

ok. what did I talk about.

Ok two blog posts in one night.

This one is more as a place to jot down some more 36hp tuning ideas. Some of these are older and others new or at least new to me.

Ok another installment.

The valve train or the 36hp has come under a lot of consideration. The first area I was looking at is the lifters.

Ok, here we go again. A bit of a ramble on accessories.

i didn't get out to pick up a tow bar today as i went to the markets and spent my play money. (a spoke shave plane thingy... been wanting one for ages. + an old sidchrome 14-17mm open-open. i thought it was too good a combo for a 50's vw to miss for $5.

i mixed up a batch of molassas 2:5 and dumped some stuff in it, so in a few days i'll post on how it went.

i started cleaning up my shed, i have been avoiding doing it for ages. it is a total pigsty. so trashed. you really don't realize just how much junk you have until you have to try and clean it all up. at the moment a chunk of it is spread over the back patio. yes i'm procrastinating putting it back in tonight, it's still damn cold at night up here. i think i'll just pack up the tools and do the rest tomorrow... still more to come out if i want to do it properly.

i have to make a few decisions i think. there are a few things in there that i don't know what to do with. a 100+ yo kitchen dresser that i started cleaning up a while back (errr maybe 3 or 4 years ago), i realy don't see it getting finished in the next few years, even if i did i don't know where we would put it now. to be honest it will never be much good as it is missing the top half and is very very worn. there are 2 chairs also that i picked up about the same time with the intention of doing them up. i haven't even started them, they are just things to sit boxes of car stuff on. to be honest i should flog them off to someone who will appreciate them. it would clear a lot of space in my shed and make sure they don't deteriorate (aka get bashed or grotty). still i'm a horder and it takes a lot for me to get rid of stuff that i might do something with/has intrinsic value. so frustrating.

i also need to sort out some more storage in there. i think some more filing cabinets if i can pick some up cheap. they are decent for putting smallish boxes in and keep everything neat. some more card files would be great. i have carbs (well 28PCI's) in one double draw set. early distributors in another, well space for early distributors, most are spread about the shed. the card filing cabinets are great for that sort of thing. i could do with a few more for the later stock carbs, distribrutors plus fuel pumps etc. i'm sure i could find stuff to put in a 6' stack of them if i had them. lets see. knobs, handles, switches, globes, gauges etc. rods, rockers, nuts and bolts... they would take a few draws by themselves,  a big stack would be so useful.

no i didn't score a droptank. i wish. i did however get a potential source for all those who want one.

as posted before, on sunday i went to the local markets (i can't believe i forgot to post this then). the usual small town stuff, not much of interest really. there was one ride, i took no notice of it as i think those things are a total crock. of course my wife had other ideas and paid for my son to have a go. as he got on i had a look at it. it was a little carossel (spelling?) thing, that had obviously been dragged about the countryside for years, it had plane/rocket type things hanging off it. my eldest took harry in there for his go, about this time i did a major double take. not one or two but 5 F'N DROPTANKS! i was stunned. it made perfect sense as it looked like an old peice of kit and back in the day military surplus was everywere + if you something to look aerodynamic get something from an aeroplane...  they were well disguised with big holes cut in the tops, plywood seats, plywood wing/fin stubs and lots of coats of bright paint, but they still had the telltale rib around the outside and a filler cap at the top. they were only about 5-6" long so were way to small to make a lakester out of. i chatted to the owner and he was surprised that i recognised what they were. he didn't know what they were off but knew they were worth $ to aircraft restorers in the US.

seeing these reminded that they used to be fairly common when i was younger.

one thing i know for sure, i'll be keeping a look out for any old fair rides just in case. if i'm feeling rich i might ever go hunting. i'm sure i remember bigger ones from when i was a kid (more seats per plane/rocket). yes they had a big hole in one half, but 2 bottom halves put together (and a fair amount of panelbeating) would give you a full tank.

just a quick one.

not all that much has happened really. very little progress on the shed. i did get al little done for my distribrutors. last week i went to one of the local auto electricions to try and find some of the brown sheet stuff that all of the insulating bits in the cast iron dist's.

i took a bit of a proken plate that the dist advance weights slide on as a sample.

he pulled out some thin white sheet he called "insulating paper". i ended up getting about 10 by 50cm of the stuff.

last night i got bored and dug out my modelmaking kit + a good points plate i had loose.

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.

Welcome to the new vdubber site blog.

We've set the blog up to provide a dedicated channel of communication for site related news, events, shows, and any other stuff related to vdubber, and the website in general. This is mostly as we are having a bit of a rethink about how the site works. Some changes have already been made, such as the addition of the Wall, and the opening up of permissions to promote more site activity, which so far seems to be working quite well, but there is still quite a way to go before we get the site to where we would like to be.

We feel that a segregation between the stuff that happens for the site, and the stuff that happens elsewhere, is better, so we have chopped around the old automatic male and female friend accounts created on joining, and merged them into one account, (This one). And we will now post all site related, and administrative stuff via this account. If you do not have vdubber in your friends list, we will get around to adding it to all accounts, this means that you will always have a direct line of communication to an admin, should you need it, and we will always be able to keep in touch with you to let you know about critical issues should they arise.

There's still plenty of stuff planned with the site including another major update, which will be started over the coming weeks. Most of the changes will be under the decklid, but there will also be some more noticeable changes too.

We will be having a major rethink about the ads section, as this is very much underused. Compared to most classifieds systems, it's quite well featured, but something is causing it to be overlooked, and we will also look at better promotion of other areas of the site too.

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.

Just added a great new feature to the photos section - Photo tagging.

Photo tagging allows you to highlight areas in a photo, and associate a tag with it. The tags are visible when you hover over the photo, and also when you hover over the tag description at the bottom of the photo.

The tag can comprise of either a short text description, or you can pick someone from your friends list. If you are tagged in a photo, or have a photo tagged by someone else, you will automatically get an email letting you know.

Tags can be removed by the person who placed the tag, the photo owner, or in the case of being tagged by someone else, you can also remove the tag yourself.

We have also made an update to the groups photos capabilities. We've now added the ability, for each group to add dedicated photo albums, and also added the ability to include a title and description for each image. This is a massive improvement compared to the previous way of managing photos within groups, and one we feel will make the groups section a lot more useable.

The Holiday season is nearly here again, and to celebrate this we are offering a fantastic prize of a six months subscription to Volksworld magazine. The winner will be the member with the greatest amount of points amassed for December on our leaderboard.

Points can be earned from all site activities, but posting premium content, such as blogs, photos, videos and forum posts will get you the greatest number.

To check how many points each different site activity will earn you, you can view the Points Home Page. You can also check your points history there too, this will tell you where you have earned the points you already have.

Good luck with the competition, and happy posting. :)

vdubber

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.

Over the next few days we will be performing some scheduled maintenance tasks and updating the website. The website update is to address some performance issues, and some minor bugs. The update process should be relatively straightforward as we will be preparing a test run on our local servers prior to updating the live site.

If you do experience any disruption to the site over the following days, we ask that you simply try hitting the refresh button on your browser. We expect that disruptions should be minimal, and short of duration.

We thank you in advance for your patience.

Vdubber.

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.

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.

Another new year is with us, and it's once again time to make resolutions and see if we can stick with them. This March will see the second birthday for Vdubber, and it's good to see that we are still here. We are still chipping away at increasing our member base and site activity, but as usual with any new venture, these things take time to gain momentum.

A recent conversation with a new site user alerted me to the fact that the perception of the site was that of just another Volkswagen forum, which surprised me a little, as I had always considered that the site was geared more towards everything other than being a forum. Much though i would like to discount his observation. It's probably a valid one.

Promoting a site like this is difficult. There is no other site that provides the same feature-set as Vdubber. Which is largely aimed at being a social network, rather than being simply another forum. There is really no point in trying to compete with the established giants like VZI, TheSamba, Aussieveedubbers etc. These are long established forums, and there would be little success in trying to persuade anyone that Vdubber's forum offers anything better then they already get at their favourite site.

This is why the idea behind Vdubber was to provide the social networking features that the established forums did not. Things like Blogs, Photo and Video hosting, Groups and other social networking tools. We saw that there was a niche to make a site to provide these things. But whilst the niche is there, it is not really clearly defined.

So far Vdubber has been promoted as a 'community' site, an 'aircooled social network'. But both of these descriptions are too subtle. Neither really explain what Vdubber 'is', or what Vdubber is about. What we would really like to say is that Vdubber is 'Facebook for Volkswagens', but until now I have not wanted to make such blatant a statement.

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.

Project Jethro

As I have many projects my next one the top of my to do list is Jethro my 1970 lowlight camper.  I brought this camper with 2 other kombi's about 9 years ago.  I wrecked the other 2 kombis as i had no room for them and kept the best out of the lot.  I gave it a quick coat of paint when I first got it and never did much more.

here are some pictures of jethro

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.

Hi everyone, I thought I would start a post on What got you into VW's?

I'll start, well my uncle bought a really nice 58 beetle a few years back, that basically got me started, after that I started searching photos of VW's on the Internet, not long after that I realised I was hooked.
Rusty

We've mentioned in the past that there is an update to the site in progress. The update is a pretty major process and involves a complete rewrite of the code, in fact we are moving away from the current platform to a more stable and better supported platform from a different vendor.

Whilst there will be quite a few improvements in the operation of the site, one of the things we hope to acheive is to shift the focus of the site a little. In the past we have had forums, and then we disabled then, followed by re-enabling them and the bottom line is simply that they do not work. My guess is that there are simply too many other VW sites that people are used to using (VZI, TheSamba, Shoptalkforums etc) and getting people to use a forum that is low in traffic and interest is an impossible task at best. We originally tried to pique peoples interest by having a monthly competition and offering prizes to the biggest contributors in the hope that we could get half a dozen regulars to contribute, this would have hopefully kick started the site into action, but it was not to be.

So, for the update, several areas of the site will simply cease to exist, these include the forums, the directory, classifieds and groups sections. The focus will be shifted to blogs and the site focus will change.

As the site seems pretty slow at the moment, it is a perfect time to make the change. So if you see things dissappearing, or not working, it will no doubt be because of the update.

Fingers crossed.

Hi everyone, picked up this splitty monday, 3km from home. Unsure what year it is yet, haven’t been able to find VIN number as yet. Anyone got an idea what year it is? Solid around the roof and gutters. No running gear but good in the floor. This will be my project once the beetle is going.

Here is a picture as found…

[IMG]http://i1190.photobucket.com/albums/z446/erin_russell1/russells%20kombi%201976/P2190127.jpg[/IMG]

Here is a couple of pictures when I got it home…