Beach Buggy Restoration,

[BigRobCanUFixIt]

I thought I would share my car restoration project which has been ongoing for some years but will hopefully be back on the road this summer.

Its a 1972 GP Buggy built on a shorten VW beetle chassis

This is it befor restoration started.

It looks ok but there is a lot of rust under there and a lot of bodged fices over the years, and the engine only done another 900 miles before it went pop.

Stripping begins

Removed and refurbed front suspension and welded in adjustes for ride heights

Tin worm beware

chop chop weld

painted shiney shiney

next side, the pans were made by me in my dads sheet metal workshop

call in reinforcements

wiring starting to appear

low carb diet!!!

bright light

who needs ramps

welded, sikka flexed rust proofed and undesealed

top done

The Stig!!!

time for a brake

Put your foot down

shiney dram brakes

More wiring

Hopefull will have some pics on the road very soon

Rob

 

[HERTS P&D]

Looking good Rob.

Andy

 

[Burnerman]

A cracking bit of work Rob
I bet you're pretty hot with the MIG after that one.....some awkward corners there.
John

 

[Mursal]

Thanks for that, takes me back to when I first started fixing

 

[Graemevw]

Why didnt you use a new pair of floor pan halves?

Depending on how low you want to go, caster shims, long travel ball joints and bushes to drop the steering arms underneath help alot, not needed if you dont go super low though. Im guessing you probably know this anyway.

From my time mesing with old VW's, making them alot quicker, i found solid rear swing arm bushes and rear frame horn braces a good mod, really tightened up the back end and eliminated wheel hop on hard launches.

Do you know what happened to the engine? Are you re-building it or replacing?

 

[BigRobCanUFixIt]

Hello Graeme,

The pics of the front suspension was my first effort where i welded the adjusters in upsidedown lol.

I want a standard is ride height but as the car is lighter than the beetle and even though the torsion suspension has sagged slightly it wasnt low enough,

I have fabricated my onw pans as the bought ones are like tin foil to thin compared to the stock ones. And also I am going to checker plate inside so wanted something flat. I cross braced the underside to try to stiffen it all up a bit.

The old engine was knackered about 15mm of endfloat type 3 1600, So I bought a 1600 lump type 1 with none and rebuilt it new pistons barels rods, heads etc to 1641 and had twin carbs which were a bit shagged so now running it on a single dellorto I just need to get the wirng done, tyres and the MOT it.

The seat frames I got from hallford sale bin at 1.50 each modified them as they were for a fiat punto. hehe

roll on the warmer weather.