GP Beach Buggies in Isleworth were a lovely small company manufacturing the GP Beach buggy shells and preparing chassis to ensure they would fit the bodywork. GP Buggies have sadly moved on and the moulds and associated company assets have all now moved on else where. The Chassis preparation work took a week to do and cost £287.50 back then and the invoice was hand written on a lined pad. Mr G Bradley performed the preparation . The anticipation of bringing it home was amazing. The chassis was returned home on my girlfriends Nova 1.2 and my fathers boat roof bars. It took four men to lift it back up and 4pm one summer evening in 1985 the chassis was returned to the garage.
I spent the next few months in the garage with my father and small B&D dremel removing the rust from the parts that where rusty. This soon became a chore and I realized that something larger was required to do the cleaning. I located some sand blasting equipment for hire from a company in Heathfield, Kent called strangely Heathfield Hire. I arranged to have the equipment one weekend and bought two large bags of blasting grit. All systems where go! The blaster had power from the mains and water from a hose and a bag of course grit attached to its feed. The blaster was turned on and we braced ourselves for the blaster to leap into life. NOTHING Hmm typical for hire machinery. Two fuses and a trip into the workshop later the sandblaster was eventually cleaning down the rusty metal. One thing we had not anticipated was that we would be finding this grit everywhere for the next five years.
Several tins of boat paint top coat primer and red oxide later my chassis was looking very colourful and hopefully the expensive paint would keep the majority of the rust away.
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