Revolution Alloy Wheels and a small Corsa

30th June 2005.
My Ebay luck was holding out I had won my tyres and wheels for £205.00 for the complete set. I rang Ben in the morning and arranged to pick him up on the way as we where going to head into central London and with the cash I was carrying I wanted to be sure I was not going to be robbed. The journey into London was quite good and we arrived outside the seller’s block of flats and rang the door entry system corresponding to the flat. A young man came down and said he had the wheels in his garage loaded in the car and would bring them round. The car came around and he unloaded them off the Car.

They where perfect! I new the minute I saw them they were just what I had visualized and asked him about them. He said that he was once going to build a Beach buggy for his partner but had decided to build her something different so he was selling them. I agreed to purchase them and with Bens help we squeezed them into the back of my Vauxhall Corsa. They only just fitted. We soon where on the way home and made good progress returning home at around 9:00pm.

I wanted to try them so we off loaded the car and I went out for beer and Ben started to fit the new wheels onto the Chassis. They had come with some rear spacers to space the rear wheels further out by 1 1/2".

The wheels bolted on with the bolts he had given us, but we had already known one of the front bolts was missing. This was to turn into a long search to find a replacement that eventually ended in me having to have one made out of stainless steel at a local engineering company. The pictures where taken on a mobile phone so are not very high quality.

Wheels Technical:
Revolution 14 3A Red HR - 5 spoke painted.
tyres : front : BF Goodrich all-terrain, 215/75x14.
rear : BF Goodrich all-terrain, 265/50x15.

Front disk conversion.

29th June 2005.
I had decided much earlier in the chassis rebuild that I wanted to change the braking system on the buggy as the improved engine and the lighter chassis would enable the buggy to perform at higher speeds. The benefits of fitting disk braking to the front of the car are well known and it is fairly common in the world of motoring to fit this combination in commercial vehicles. It has been proven that disk braking systems provide better continuous braking as they dissipate heat better than drums and they are also less likely to have brake fade than drums.

Changing the braking system was going to be an expensive option as the conversion kits that are advertised vary in price and in quality. I decided to try and locate 2nd hand camper van front spindles, disk and callipers as one whole unit one for each side. I located these in a beetle/camper van repair workshop and paid around £20.00 for the pair.

The braking assemblies where taken apart and it was apparent immediately that the disks needed replacing and the likelihood was that the callipers where seized as well. This meant that I would only be able to salvage the spindles and the backing plates from the setups. I cleaned the spindles up and repainted them and sent the backing plates away to be zinc plated by the hot flame spray process provided by AC Blasting in Flimwell, East Sussex. When they returned I was able to bolt them on to the clean painted spindles.

I bought the Disks and new bearings from Ajay car components. They provided them on a next day delivery service. The callipers I found were advertised on eBay and had been sitting on a garage shelf for the past 5 years on eBay Item No 4578950519 for £67.00. They where in very good condition and just needed painting with calliper paint and they where ready to go.

With the new disk spindles kits made up, it was time to remove the front brake drums and spindles. These are connected by ball joints to the front suspension arms. Fortunately I new these bearings had been renewed recently so the old spindles could be unbolted and the old component replaced with the disk version. The spindles where bolted in at the bottom first and the lower suspension arm was jacked up with a small trolley jack until it met the top suspension arm and the top ball joint fell into the top hole of the spindle. It is important when doing this conversion to remember to leave the brake fluid cables attached to the old drums. This prevents spillage of brake fluid. Once the new disk spindles where in place the brake fluid lines could be unscrewed from the drums and screwed into the disk calipers. This was repeated for each side.

Once the disk spindles where in place the whole brake system was bled to remove any air that had entered the braking system. The brake fluid level was checked and topped up.

Brake Technical:
FDB732 Premier Brake Pads TAR732
*826911 Brake Discs
*FPSFBK041 WHEEL BEARINGS
4578950619 VW Beetle new brake callipers

New engine parts and fitting to the chassis.

27th April 1992

After several shopping trips to Limited Edition in London. Purchasing parts to finish the engine and parting with a fair amount of cash, my engine finally made its way back into the prepared chassis.

With the short block repaired and new connector rods , piston rings and clyinder heads all added. The finishing touches (The shiney stuff) were purchased and added as they each arrived by securicor post up until 24th March 1993.

My funds suddenly took a plummet along with a serious relationship (Well not so serious now) and my job. My chassis and engine slummed it in the garage, whilst i recomposed and rebuilt my self. You could say that this restoration has not only been about the beach buggy. It is quite possibly a rebuild of my life too.

Several birthdays past by with small additions being added and a wiring harness was purchased as a present from my parents and purchased from GP Beach buggies .

I was not to know it but this would be the place my dreams where to be put on hold: The wiring harness turned up on the 11th january 1993.

The complicated number of seemingly hundreds of wires with nothing to connect onto became I must a admit daunting and i started to lose confidence.

Luckly my parents garage was huge and my dream could sit patiantly waiting until another day when a huge personal choice had to be made.

Would this be the end of my dream or would I recover my life suffieciently to feel comfortable enough to re store faith in my dream and bring my restoration to a climax.

Two half's of an engine and a packet of shims

My two half’s of a short block sat in half on my work bench containing many gears rods , bearings and I could see even as a layman that there where some nasty marks on the crankshaft bearing shells.

Several Beers later and a few hundred phone calls revealed a company in Tonbridge Kent, Hodson Engineering, Gazza Trading Estate. My first visit to this place bought back heady memories of the lathes, milling machines and machinery that was in our technical block at Angley Cranbrook. Every wall was occupied and this was truly an old engineering company with many specialised skills.

I soon had the information i needed to obtain from them about the engine, that told me that it could be rebuilt.

The end float was approx .04 inch + or - inch in free play with three shims fitted, I was talking like an engineer even though I could not utilise the information myself. My crankshaft, seals, shims, gaskets and flywheel where all taken up to Hodsons and left for two weeks. During the two weeks the crankshaft was reground to fit the oversized shims and the flywheel was balanced. The whole process was completed and a telephone call was made asking me to collect it.

My parts arrived home in a brown cardboard box. The crankshaft was taped together and had been reground and the seals, gaskets and shells had been fitted. It was a lovely sight all clean and polished. I had bought new piston rods and bearings and these where soon greased and fitted onto the crankshaft. The whole lot was then inserted into one half of the engine casing and the hot cam and shells where replaced as where the tappet followers. I remembered to get some of the hematite case sealant and a couple of days later my short block was back together.

The transplant was a success. The crankshaft was rock solid in its bearings and the engineering company had done a wonderful job for £30.00.

Hodson Engineering unfortunatly never survived into modern times, unfortunatly the demand for real engineering skills disapeared in the early 90's.

Engine Meltdown

My engine that was looking so nice after the rebuild. It had lost the oil drain plug down the A21 in Kent. There was a little black line trailing off down the road a couple of 100 ft or so and it had stoped just before the flimwell traffic lights. It was a complete mess. It would turn over via the ignition key and starter but let out horrible grinding noises when it was turning and would not start.

The first thing to decide was whether to buy a replacement or rebuild the entire long block. After various discussions with GP Beach Buggies, it was made clear that keeping the same engine made getting the car through the DVLA and V5 issues much easier as more of the car still remained.

The engine was stripped down and was soon down to the short block , removing the fan housing Carburretor, heads and cylinder heads was much easier than I thought with the engine sitting on a work bench. My boxes of engine parts started to increase and I was slowley running out of coffee jars and plastic pots. The pistons and barrels appeared to have not suffered at all and the cylinder heads where leaded heads which I was going to replace any way with unleaded ones.

The short block on a VW engine is made of Aluminium and can just about be carried by a single man, I must confess this is possible but not advisable. I split the case in two revealing the problems that loosing oil from an engine at high speed can cause.

Would my short block repairable?

Chassis preperation

9th June 1990
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.