Next stage was to get some form of decent instrumentation in there. Originally, I had fitted an electronic speedo out of a Lorry that I had kicking around - worked brilliantly, but by god, that was an ugly dash. I liked the look of the combined instrument clusters by Acewell, and as I never do things by halves, I got in touch with them and became an Authorised Dealer.

I quickly knocked up a very sophisticated dashboard from 2"x1" and fitted the tax disc, mirror and an Acewell ACE3973 cluster.




Just to quickly mention, that there are several ways to get a speed pulse to an electronic speedo, some will use a magnet attatched to a rotating part that passes by a sensor fitted to a bracket, whilst I opted for a slight modifiaction to the existing cable drive from the front wheel. Instead of the cable going into the back of a VW speedo, mine screws into one of these instead.

I had decided that I wanted to mount a stereo into the dash, along with the kill switch, start button and lighter sockets. So I fabricated a stainless panel and welded it to the crossbar with the intention of the dash itself being removeable, but leaving behind the essentials. I have used a Clarion Marine stereo here, because I wanted everything inside the car to be not only jetwashable when it gets dirty, but also to use a stereo of a non-standard shape and size that would not be of much interest to anyone else bearing in mind its an open top car.




It was then about how to fabricate a dash panel to go around it. By this stage, I was getting quite good at laying up bits of fibreglass, but knew nothing of making moulds etc, so this was really a bit of trial and error. In looking for something "straight" that I could use, I spotted that the gutter of my garage had quite a good profile, so I layed up a few strips, prised them out and even managed to get the gutter back in place before Liz found out. I then glassed a couple of them together, one inside the other and set about with a cutter to trim and get them to fit in place. This would then make the basis of my dash.

good to see progress there Dave as summers coming.

Not that much progress I`m afraid, I`m still trying to wade through bits of the original build thread to bring it back up to present day in the right order. Hadn`t realised just how much we had lost !

The next stage of dash building was to now fill in the gaps with various shapes and bits that I had made, lay a few layers of glassfibre over them and then smother the lot in Gel coat, as I didn`t really want to use filler anywhere. It takes time to sand it back to a smooth shape, but at least the Buggy can be used in the interim. The speakers in the dash are Fusion Marine ones, and are actually easier to hear, (being forward facing) than the Clarion Marine ones down in the sidepods. The gauge in the dash is for Oil Pressure.

look real sweet maty

I like that dash!

Do you find that when you turn right you loose whatever was on it tho?

Its now the spring of 2010. After a few visits from Sawmill Jim via some ebay purchases, he told me about the Buggy Club, and all the help and advice that is on there - so I joined instantly, (and wish I had known about the place whilst building the car in the first place). There was a thread about the upcoming Swanage Carnival, and it seemed a great chance to go and make some friends. However, it did pose a bit of a problem for me, as I had no roof whatsoever - so a quick call to Guy down at West Country Trimmers in Bovey Tracey, Devon, saw my car booked in with him - and a week later I collected my Buggy with a nice new roof. Tucks in at the front lip of the screen, and has some pop fasteners along the rear edge.






I must admit that I am very pleased with the overall shape, and the roof can be put on and taken off again in a matter of seconds - Liz and I have even done this at traffic lights between red and green its that quick.

Good work on the dash Dave looks ace

Driving down to Swanage in 2010, the roof proved itself to be excellent and a worthy addition to the car. However, when camping in the rain for VeeDubbin 2010 I`m glad that I went back for some side panels.






They are really watertight, even at speed - but it feels like driving in a goldfish bowl, so I may keep them for useage when the Buggy is parked up.

But what certainly has not been watertight, are those back lights. I even drilled some drain holes in the back of them - but the plastic is such a bad fit that they do tend to fill up. Problem is that when they do, and the car is laid up in the garage for a while, the bulb holders corrode and nead cleaning every time I want to take it out.

I decided to therefore change over to LED lighting at the rear and made up some panels to fit inside the existing lenses.





and they seem to work very well.

Good idea

With the Summer of 2010 drawing to a close, I thought I would finish off the dash.

Held in with four bolts and three plugs for the wiring, it can pop out in a matter of minutes.



A quick blast over with some rattle cans and - et Viola !!

I`m not too worried about any paint imperfections, which is just as well, as there are millions - I just wanted it one colour, until such day as I decide what colour I actually want to paint it, and I`ll worry about it then




Acewell ACE-3974 sits in there pretty well, don`t you think?

Lucky you found an Acewell to fit the hole in your dash.  Almost looks made to measure.   

After the trophy we received from Swanage 2010 for the size of our tent, I decided that maybe we should actually go for something a little bigger. I quite fancied a trailer tent, but of course, that would involve the fitting of a towbar - so thats exactly what I did.

Looking around on the net for VW towbars, there are a few diferent styles and types, and they also appear to attatch to the car in different ways. I managed to track down one from a Karmann Ghia that had two big U-Clamps that go around the rear torsion bars, and then bolted to the rear of the car just underneath the bumper. I knew I would have to fabricate something and this seemed a good place to start. What I hadn`t envisaged though was the sheer length of the bar - I know the backend of a Buggy is shorter than a Beetle / Ghia, but that really did stick out a long way.




With the U-Bolts clamped around the rear torsion bars, I wanted to find a way of bolting the bar to the frame horns, but also wanted to make it easily removeable should I ever want to take out the engine. An angled plate was welded to the gearbox bracket and a bar welded across the towbar frame so that it could slot into place and then be bolted up. To remove the towbar, the bolts are removed and the whole thing slides back an inch before it drops.




Next up was to chop off nearly 15 inches of overhanging bar, and reduce the length to something more aesthetically pleasing.




Here we can see my good mate Bill, from Powercraft Engineering cleaning up the towball before re welding it back on to the frame.




One refitted, we jumped up and down on the bar a bit, and I was a little concerned that the bar felt like it was flexing a little under my weight. Probably would never have been an issue for towing, but I soon saw the reason for it. The distance between the new rear gearbox mount and the towball was far greater than the original distance between the original towball and rear bumper mount, and put very simply, a long unsupported bar is going to flex. There was a very easy remedy to this, and it was to weld another mounting plate between the rear cage bars. This isn`t going anywhere now !!




And here it is, cleaned up, painted, electrics fitted and the obligatory tennis ball put there to drive peoples dogs into going "nuts" when they see it.