Fubar64 The rebuild of an ex show car

[vwhelmot]

Hi and welcome to my thread. This has taken me a long time to get together so stick with me as I will tell you the whole story of the car from when I first bought it over twenty years ago (christ has it been that long!). The car and I have lots of history, its been a big part of my life and its back now for good. All will be revealed. Its a UK RHD 1300 deluxe and is originally from Dorset area. I recently met the bloke who I bought it off all those years ago and he told me that he had spotted the car while on holiday in someone`s back garden and he remembers making an offer on the car there and then. He had to return to North Wales and then go back down on the train with his wife to pick it up only to remember that there was no windscreen. He drove it back all that way with no screen! They are still married too ;D
My first bug was a white 1303 which I ended up restoring to show condition way back in 1997 and while that was off the road I needed a run around. I knew about the 64 as it was local to me, I always liked it, and one day when I was passing, there was a for sale sign on the window, £600 later and it was mine. Happy days followed, I did many many miles in it, loads of memories, it was about the time when I first started going to the big shows like bug jam and vw action and the beetle bash. It was at Beetle Bash 96 when I first had my taste of serious Cal Lookers, the Americans turned up , the sight of those cars left an indelible mark in my brain and from then on I wanted to build a car like theirs.
Fast forward a couple of years , my white 1303 was finished and although it turned out nice, I never took it to a show, not one. It was featured in the now defunct Total VW magazine but that was all. I never drove it for fear of a stone chip etc. This was my first resto, I had no training in anything and I did 90% of the work.

These are a few shots of Fubar when I used to just have it as my daily driver, through the coldest of salt strewn winters and the warmest of summers.

It really was a fun car, it went through a few various engine combos, from a 1200 to a 1600 and then I built a 1641 and put two of the pistons in the wrong way around so the offset was wrong. It used to tick a bit but never failed! ;D

Plenty of updates to follow

[vwhelmot]

So after three or four years of use, the usual signs of serious decay were starting to show. The previous owner had 'restored' the car , and remember this is from a time before the internet and before there was a source of proper quality fit repair panels. Veng and such like were only available off the shelf and to be honest , they were crap. Rear quarter repair panels were a particular favourite and door pillar repair were also awful. These panels had been let in, so door fitment was shite, it used to leak too. So after a few winters, the car was suffering, soggy carpets and steamy windows :lol: I knew it was a matter of time before I had to do something about it.
I started the first restoration while I still owned my 03 and was lucky enough in that I was renting a double garage so I had the space to do the repairs. This was still before the internet and quality panels were available to me, so I had to make do with incorrect shape everything from heater channels to bumper mounts. I used to finish work, head on up to my garage , do a couple of hours and then cycle home as I was now without a car.
The first build wasn't really intended to be a show build and the quality showed, It never was anywhere near the standard it should have been, although I knew it had to look right. Like so many others, Mr Seume`s bible was out and I couldn't put it down, I love gassers and the whole seventies vibe and style of drag race cars so my car was sort of styled in that manor. Stripped out interior, diamond pattern headliner, IDA equipped motor, lightweight race rims and a tiny bit of flake added to jazz it up. I painted it myself in my fathers garage which I decked out with plastic to keep the dust down, I used to wet the floor and keep the door open , but those cellulose fumes used to really kick in! It took me a year to paint it because I had a load of trouble with my paint supplier giving me various shades of seabau so when it came to cutting the paint down I used to cut into a different shade of blue and create swirl patches all over. It was bloody awful.

Priming the deck lid on the floor like all good show cars should be painted!

[vwhelmot]

The engine has a bit of history too. I`m not too sure about the finer details but basically I bought it from Luke at Terry`s Beetle Services as a complete 2110 motor. It had been removed from another looker, a 67 owned by Riki Ryat but was originally a 2007cc. There had been issues with flat cams etc but that's all I know. Our very own Keith Seume had something to do with a rebuild, its still got his name stamped on the case but I don't know much about why. Anyway, its been a good motor, its got some nice parts although even today I don't know who made the 82mm crank but I`ve been told its a Berg wedgemated one and I hope it is. Its got Denham 040 42x37.5 heads, eagle rods and an FK8 cam with cb rockers, a pair of Italian IDAs on Skat trak manifolds. The motor looked scruffy as hell when I picked it up in my mates old Passat in London, back up the motorway in a twin engined family estate car ;)

[vwhelmot]

So after many hours making the scat tinware fit properly by cutting /welding etc I had a motor which looked nice but not before it had been for a check up at John Maher Racing when he was still located in Manchester. Lets just say he had it a while, a long while. It was leak tested and an inlet valve was recut and put on the dyno. I was a bit disappointed when it made about 150bhp as I was expecting more but hey ho, it wasn't too important then.

I bought various bits for it , the ceramic coated exhaust, berg equaliser , berg linkage and a breather tower bought from Bernie and it looked nice with its black metalflaked paint.

[WayneMcCarthy]

Love it Lyndon ....... Great car & it's going to be one serious car when you finished !
_________________
Pog Mo Thoin

[vwhelmot]

Cheers Wayne
This is how the car turned out after I completed the first resto, at the time repro BRMs were getting popular and I bought a set of mws ones which for the price were ok, and only available in one width. After stretching a set of zx 135s on the front , the rim lips were sticking out half a mile so I sent them off to get narrowed by Martin Taylor. Happy days, but it didn't really stick out from the crowd and I had seen Bernie Newburys black 67 with a couple of gold ercos and I thought maybe that could work. With no photoshop to see if it would work I just used a gold pen in my photo album! Old School :)

[vwhelmot]

It made its debut at the Volksworld Show in 2003 and was parked in front of Ivans 67. It went down well and I scooped best engine which was nice but it didn't stand out with the copy brms. A call was made to Paul at vw speedshop and he supplied me with a set of race weight ercos which I had him send direct to Martin Taylor so he could anodise them. He said he loved that job and was a breeze to do ( I`m a lying bastard) but when they arrived and I fitted them I thought they looked great. The interior was pretty basic, I had a custom trimmed standard size headliner in alcantara fitted and a pair of glass buckets with alcantara covers, a set of autometer gauges and a flat 4 wheel. I took it to bug jam that same year and it scooped BOS , I was a happy boy. I took it down the strip that weekend and netted a 13.2 which wasn't bad considering it was only my third run.

[vwhelmot]

It was at Bug Jam that year that Ivan approached me to see if I wanted a feature in Volksworld, and having read the mag since the start I was very happy to do so. It was a nice feature, made the front cover too. I suppose its crowning glory was to get it on a plinth at the Volksworld show in 2004, situated right in the main hall, next to some amazing cars, Brian Burrows Squarerra wasn't far away .

Notice in the background my old 1303 at the same show

It was also featured in Street Vw , a Japanese mag

[vwhelmot]

So, after about three years of trailering it around all the shows, I got a bit bored to be honest, I had hardly driven the car on the road, having done only about 20 miles or so, and I had bought a 56 oval to play with so that was taking up my time. The 64 was just sitting in my garage doing nothing so I put it up for sale (which I would come to regret). At first I was optermistic with my asking price but I was in no rush to sell, so it took a while but it was sold to a bloke from Manchester for a fraction of what I spent on it, but I hadn't rebuilt it with the thought of making a profit. It was sold with the brms and I kept the ercos which I sold separately and ended up being fitted to John Walkets blue looker. I think he had a load of piss taking 'Lyndon ' jokes come his way!
Anyway, it wasn't long before it found a new owner it being sold shortly after to Ian (48ida on here) and he got in touch with me for any build pics etc. It wasn't long before he sent me some distressing pics. I will let the pics do the talking.

I was gutted to say the least, it hadn't been long since I found out that my old 1303 had been destroyed in a garage fire too.

[vwhelmot]

After its disagreement with a Nissan Micra :'(, it was taken up to Steve Gilberts One on One restorations for repairs, and if you know of Steve, he does proper work, his Fridolin is one of my all time favourites, just for the detail alone, so I was happy that my old bug would return. Ian sent me some repair pics and the damage was extensive but repairable. A full front offside quarter was needed.

I think when Ian got the car back , he had fallen out of love with it and it was placed in the for sale section on various forums, wearing a set of Fuch alloys and a set of standard seats and different door cards etc , which I wasn't a fan of. It didn't look right to me on those wheels but everyone has different tastes. It sold pretty quick and then I lost touch with it for a while before a pic of it popped up on the net, now having changed owners again and living in Kent. Again it changed hands, each time something had changed, interior had been altered again with a set of Beard seats and aluminium panelling , the exhaust cut outs had been filled, a fire extinguisher had been screwed to the tunnel a set of centreline five spokes had been fitted too. All these differences but I felt it was still my car if you know what I mean.
It eventually got sold again and made its way up North in the hands of Mark Reynolds , remember , eight years had passed since I had sold it so I was expecting it to be in a bit of a state but when another pic turned up of the car in Europe wearing a cool set of rims and a nicely trimmed interior I was very pleased. I contacted Mark through the lounge just to ask him that if he ever wanted to sell it to give me first refusal. To be honest I wasn't expecting a reply and didn't even have any cash to spend, so when he replied with a " come and have a look at it " I couldn't refuse! Little over a month later, I was loading up BFJ999B on my trailer , I couldn't believe I had it back. This time its coming home for good.

[vwhelmot]

Anyone in their right mind would have got the car back home and used it as it was, a nice Cal look driver to have fun with on the weekends and maybe to drive to a few shows etc. It was July last year when it returned so there was plenty of summer left to do just that. Not me, it was a case of I`ve got to strip it to see what the other owners had done to it. I didn't drive it far, only about 20 miles or so before I reversed it into the workshop for a full investigation.
I`ve been wanting to do a full show restoration for quite some time, in the past eight years or so I`ve been heavily into fast bikes mainly Hondas and even did a resto on a lovely little v4 which was featured in a bike mag. Anyway, I have wanted to challenge myself to build the car that I should have done in the first place, yes it would have been a lot easier to start with something more correct ie , a Californian or Swedish base car but I felt that the only car to build was BFJ. Now, don`t get me wrong , I wasn't sold a dud, it was a solid base, but and here`s the big but, it wasn't correct in any shape or form. Almost the whole lower 6" of the shell was incorrect pressings and panels of which you will see later. Its been a pain in the arse trying to source good useable original 64 vw metal, from cross members to arches, but I want everything to be 100% right. The theme of this build is clean, no seam sealer, just nice smooth body seams, exposed and not hidden with layers of filler and gunk. I have the basic tools, and hve had to invest in a few new ones along the way, but anyone can do what I`ve done, I`m just lucky that I work in a Tool Hire and have the space to be able to do the work. Commitment and being able to stick to a plan also helps, I`ve put my life on hold for the past year, every night I`ve been working on the shell for approx three hours , weekends I will do more but not every weekend as it can get a bit much sometimes.
So here we go. Up on the lift for the first time and I was a bit :'( I don't know what I was expecting, it had been used after all ;D

There was some real suspect wiring going on. When ever I see earth coloured tape being used normally spells danger!

[vwhelmot]

This is how it looked by the way when I got it back. Looked nice.

This was when the previous owner had it.

[vwhelmot]

It wasn't long before the engine was out

It had been marking its territory!

[vwhelmot]

The interior looked like it had been hit by a Christmas tree.

Luckily the sound deadening was easy to remove

Sticky number plate found a new home

Body off

[vwhelmot]

Cheeky surprise. No wonder it drove like shite :o

[vwhelmot]

The only place I can use that out of the way is high up on a mezzanine floor, so I had to fork lift the shell really high to get it over the railings. My arse was puckering up at that moment.

[vwhelmot]

The first serious work was done on the chassis. The pans were shot , they were only the cheap shit thin ones and had split along the seat runners too, so they were cut off straight away.

The frame head was in good order with no holes as I had blasted that the first time around and had protected it with plenty of red lead

First bit of welding was to weld up the holes for the rear heater outlet cables and then the holes on the tunnel for the fire extinguisher etc

Then I blasted it myself. The perks of running a tool hire ;)

Notice my quality Stevie Wonder welding for the intermediate mount ;D

[vwhelmot]

Etch primed and a few coats of normal primer

Quality bit of VW welding, I think Helmut was having a shit day.

[WayneMcCarthy]

Looked So Nice Before You Took It Apart
_________________
Pog Mo Thoin

[vwhelmot]

Ha ha , beauty was only skin deep Wayne! You shall see what I mean. :D
The pans I have are WW ones (I think) and they needed modifying to remove the recesses for the LHD pedals , so I cut a section out and let in some fresh steel to make it flat.

Plenty of trial fitting before welding them in