Having been a member of the forum for over six years, I often find that the Readers Rides section is where I browse most. I've never put up a build thread on here before due to time constraints, but I figured it might actually help me to differentiate between stages of build, plus it was about time I did at least one thread in this section.
I bought this as a pile of parts in 1996, sat in a pub, I got it on the road almost exactly thirteen years ago in 1998. Without wishing to get too morbid, my father died and I locked myself in the garage for a month getting it MOT ready.
This is what it looked like after maybe two or three different paint jobs, seats and cage bits were added. Originally it was rolling on wide banded steels, but I bought an old VW based kit car and cut it up for parts. The split rims here were from that.
I sold the 1600 TP motor out of it in 2002 and bought a hi-po Type 4 engine... And became distracted by BMWs, Volvos, houses, travel, hot rods. In short a whole load of cars and life came and went until last summer when I pulled it out of my storage unit in the southwest and towed it home to the Midlands.
This is how it was rolled in to the parlour where I do my work.
I stripped the rear suspension off years ago in prep for an IRS conversion, bagged and tagged everything I've removed is in boxes, greased and ready to be refitted.
These are the obligatory mock up shots to keep me going as I start to strip it down.
In the last nine years I've bought the following for the planned rebuild, a full tube chassis built for a SWB drag buggy but never completed, alloy tube front end, two sets of new seats, three different steering wheels, one set of harnesses, two complete sets of wheels plus a whole bunch of other stuff.
I sold the original Type 4 motor after I realised that it would need big money throwing at it to even get it in place. Picking up a short 1776cc motor, plus a 1300 complete Type 1 engine too.
Having spent my career writing about and photographing feature cars I know what goes into a project, so looking at the pile of bits I'd bought to update this I realised I was looking at a completely fresh project. Not a rebuild.
So I decided to put this back together and just use it, it's bad enough it'd been sat there all this time without cutting out all the bits I love and binning them.
In 2000 I started putting old bits of magazine and stickers all over it after rediscovering an article on Tony Thacker and Pete Chapouris (?) who took an A or B Phaeton out on a road trip after appying a few old pages of hot rod magazine to the body.
Today I guess people might think it's 'rat', but to me all these pages mark moments in life, rather than an overall effect I like reading each one and remembering why I stuck them on there. There are some favourite movie quotes or characters and stickers from lap dancing clubs in WA, it's all there. So it'll be staying, more because I can't be bothered to strip it all back and it's never going to be shiny.
To cut a long story very short, I commuted for a year in this from the Southwest to London and beyond, I've been to Europe in it, blown up too many engines and had some amazing experiences with it. I'm not easily emotionally attached to things and having had what many people would consider to be far better cars such as Mustangs, M-powered cars etc I've always looked at this and raised a smile.
Almost on the anniversary of the original last push on it's first build up, I started tearing it down last night after a weekend at Big Bang, so I'll update as I go along ;D
I bought this as a pile of parts in 1996, sat in a pub, I got it on the road almost exactly thirteen years ago in 1998. Without wishing to get too morbid, my father died and I locked myself in the garage for a month getting it MOT ready.
This is what it looked like after maybe two or three different paint jobs, seats and cage bits were added. Originally it was rolling on wide banded steels, but I bought an old VW based kit car and cut it up for parts. The split rims here were from that.
I sold the 1600 TP motor out of it in 2002 and bought a hi-po Type 4 engine... And became distracted by BMWs, Volvos, houses, travel, hot rods. In short a whole load of cars and life came and went until last summer when I pulled it out of my storage unit in the southwest and towed it home to the Midlands.
This is how it was rolled in to the parlour where I do my work.
I stripped the rear suspension off years ago in prep for an IRS conversion, bagged and tagged everything I've removed is in boxes, greased and ready to be refitted.
These are the obligatory mock up shots to keep me going as I start to strip it down.
In the last nine years I've bought the following for the planned rebuild, a full tube chassis built for a SWB drag buggy but never completed, alloy tube front end, two sets of new seats, three different steering wheels, one set of harnesses, two complete sets of wheels plus a whole bunch of other stuff.
I sold the original Type 4 motor after I realised that it would need big money throwing at it to even get it in place. Picking up a short 1776cc motor, plus a 1300 complete Type 1 engine too.
Having spent my career writing about and photographing feature cars I know what goes into a project, so looking at the pile of bits I'd bought to update this I realised I was looking at a completely fresh project. Not a rebuild.
So I decided to put this back together and just use it, it's bad enough it'd been sat there all this time without cutting out all the bits I love and binning them.
In 2000 I started putting old bits of magazine and stickers all over it after rediscovering an article on Tony Thacker and Pete Chapouris (?) who took an A or B Phaeton out on a road trip after appying a few old pages of hot rod magazine to the body.
Today I guess people might think it's 'rat', but to me all these pages mark moments in life, rather than an overall effect I like reading each one and remembering why I stuck them on there. There are some favourite movie quotes or characters and stickers from lap dancing clubs in WA, it's all there. So it'll be staying, more because I can't be bothered to strip it all back and it's never going to be shiny.
To cut a long story very short, I commuted for a year in this from the Southwest to London and beyond, I've been to Europe in it, blown up too many engines and had some amazing experiences with it. I'm not easily emotionally attached to things and having had what many people would consider to be far better cars such as Mustangs, M-powered cars etc I've always looked at this and raised a smile.
Almost on the anniversary of the original last push on it's first build up, I started tearing it down last night after a weekend at Big Bang, so I'll update as I go along ;D