With the chassis near completion, I thought I would add some finishing touches.....

I wanted disc brakes all round but could not afford to splash out on a set of CSP or Willwood ones so opted to go with the basic GSF kit for the front and EMPI at the rear...

This meant having some ugly looking casted calipers... The below are the ones I got from GSF...







So I got the Dremmel out and... a couple of hours of sanding all the grains out and smoothing off all the areas...a coat of etch primer then 5 coats of  Halfords and finally a clear coat of lacquer......

Ended up with this.....





Decals available to buy from EBay....













Here's a comparison of the left and right caliper....





Will tackle the rear ones next week.....

That is some serious cleaning up and painting, looks good and a damn site cheaper than after market ones. A job well done

Cool

 

you did a great job on those Nav,

Thanks guys,

As Snoopy said its a cost effective way of getting that eccentric look but involves a lot of elbow grease...worth the effort though.....

Hey folks its around that time when i post an update on the build along with pics....

Plans were to get the Buggy ready for Volksworld but due to a few setbacks and the timescale left, it just doesn't seem possible now. Abit disappointed as this was the 50th anniversary but there's always next year other events throughout the year.

On a positive note i had the pleasure of meeting Mike aka Beelzedub just before Xmas and discussed an Exhaust and Rollcage design to suit the buggy. A couple of weeks ago i went to pickup the exhaust and true to his quality of work i walked away with what Mike described as a custom one off
system. Going to hang onto the pics until the engine is fully built ans customised.

At present the engine is totally stripped and parts seperated for paint and polishing. Theme is to have the engine in different shades of grey/black mixed in with the polished and chromed parts.

Over summer plans are to give the tub and sidepods a facelift and a custom leather interior.

That is a shame  but like they say good things come to those that wait 

as long as it is progressing time slippage does happen.

Sounds Cool I look foword to seeing the engine

good work there,thats the kinda stuff we all had to do back in the day before fffff computers and internet lol

Hey all,

I know i have become notoriously bad at updating posts after lengthy periods, but i promise i
have been busy working on the Buggy and always try my best to give you a good read. Since
my last update where i repositioned both the handbrake and gear lever, there is no more work
left to do on the chassis apart from repainting the top side.















I have decided to leave the paint work to a later stage and start work on other bits. So the
engine finally comes out of the shed after collecting dust for several years. It's currently a
standard 1600 TP.











Stripped it down totally and it has been sent to a machine shop for line boring, Headwork
and have it tapped for full flow.

Plans are not to go too extreme power wise, for me looks are more important as i just wanna cruise!!!....
so a reliable 1641 with a pair of twin 40 IDF's all colour coded and then complimented with the fabulous
exhaust Mike (Beelezedub) fabricated for me.... talking of exhausts here a sneaky peek when i went to
collect it from Mike's place just before xmas.
















I already had a cage built for me several years ago but it was an extremely bad job, the angles
were incorrect and just would not fit, so i got the angle grinder out, cut it all up, added more
material and tacked it all back up so that it could be used as a template to fabricate a new one.

Once i was happy with it, i dropped it off to Mike and asked him to re-create it in polished
stainless steel. In the mean time i picked up a second hand pair of Weber 40 IDF's and
manifolds, luckily the manifolds turned out to be for a type 1. I stripped the carbs down, got
new rebuild kits and new jets, repainted them and polished up the manifolds.








I also bought a new set of Jaycee silver adjustable pushrod tubes, but they were very dull in
colour so i got my bench grinder and polishing kit out and gave them a good shine.....



















For several months i had been planning an idea for a keyless start... how do i do it?,
where do i locate it?, something different from fitting a push button on the dashboard.
I have no electronics knowledge at all and didn't know how to wire it up or add some
security behind it. So many late nights were spent reading up on wireless technology,
immobilisers, keyfobs, relays......

Now i could bring my idea to reality and make it work...

A couple of years ago i bought this Black Mamba gear shifter....







The round ball head is held to the shaft via a headless bolt and unscrews off like this.....







I also had a new Momo Sphere gear knob, bought for my wife's car but never got used.....

So i unscrewed the hex head bolts off the cap of the Momo gear knob and dismantled the whole thing apart.







As the base of the gear knob was shaped like a light bulb, it would not look right on the Mamba
shifter and it needed to be contoured off to look more like a ball, so i put together a homemade
lathe using my bench grinder, a couple of blocks of wood, a sharpened wood cutting chisel and
some sandpaper. I knew the wood chisel would work as aluminium is a soft and easy metal to
work with.

Once reshaped and smoothed off i notched a recess at the bottom of the knob so that it would
sit perfectly onto the gear stalk.














With the bottom side of the Momo knob finished, i needed to bore a large enough hole on
the top to get this Richbrook Pro start ignition button in....











With a pillar drill i managed to bore a hole using a thin cone cutting bit....












Installed the starter in.... a good tight fit....