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He's been going on about getting some new carpet for his Beetle since he first drove it in to show it off, and finally that day has come.. 5 months later!
James arrived at work to see Noel, our postie, sitting at his desk talking about how he thinks 3D TV is the only thing we would ever need in the near future. Now, as much as this topic would normally draw us into a comedy debate, James was more interested in the huge parcel Noel had dragged up 10 flights of stairs to deliver to him.
The parcel was of course a nice new narrow weave carpet, in grey, from the guys at Newton Commercial.
It is a very good quality carpet and comes complete with the sound deadening already attached to the backs of each carpet panel.
We reckon it might take James a few months before he gets around to fitting the carpet, but at least it's here now and he can start to drivel on about something else he needs for his ride. A new set of wheels perhaps, to go with the narrowed beam you haven't fitted yet James?
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Newton Commercial
Jan 29
- 16:09
- Posted by Neil Singleton
- Comments (7)
Vote on your favourite VolksWorld official T-shirt
VOLKSWORLD - SHOCK TACTIC (BLUE)
VOLKSWORLD - SHOCK TACTIC (RED)
CAMPER&BUS - POP TART (WINE)
CAMPER&BUS - POP TART (RED/BUFF)
CAMPER&BUS - POP TART (RED/BLACK)
VOLKSWORLD - TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER (BLACK)
...So VOTE NOW by clicking beneath this blog to let us know the T-shirt you would most want to wear and we'll make sure we have your size ready for our March 27th at our Sandown Show. It's going to be Bonkers!!!
You may remember the fateful trip to Cornwall last summer. Well, in addition to the shock mount coming off, another casualty of that was the cargo door exterior handle. Sadly my friend Jamal doesn't know his own strength.
Repeated attempts have been made to fix the handle, most involving Araldite metal glue. Even with the help of my good friend Pete, who repeatedly reminds us all that he is, in fact, a Chartered Engineer, no amount fettling was going to fix that snapped spindle. In fact, it was Pete, more often than not, who proceeded to break it again soon after it was fixed.
As a result, entry to the rear of the van was preceeded by leaning through from the cab, and opening the door from the inside. I sort of got used to this, but then, in a cruel twist, the mechanism decided to break on the other cargo door! This necessitated me fixing it in the locked shut position, and meant I could only open it by unscrewing the whole mechanism.
I had intended to have a go at fixing it, but then, when I had it in the garage on the bench no amount of screw drivers, WD40 and elbow grease seemed to have any impact. It looked to me like this had been taken apart before as there were a number of suspicious looking spot welds on the back. Given that at this point I didn't have a welder yet, this certainly wasn't something I wanted to tackle now.
Fast forward a few months to the Slough Swap Meet in November, and I had decided it was time to fix them, so I purchased an original used interior mechanism and reproduction exterior handle (in the naive hope that whatever the flaw was in the old one, that a new version would have that fixed).
Once I got home, I eagerly attempted to replace the broken parts. First the interior mechanism. This went on very quickly and worked first time. Some post attachment WD40 down the lock bar guides seemed to sort out the stiffness and now it works like a lock mechanism based dream!
Nice and old used lock mechanism from the swap meet
In it goes, nice and smoothly
Second up was the exterior handle. Oh dear. I'm sad to report it wasn't even close to being the right size. It was an oversize square peg for a slightly smaller square hole. Not only that, the screw thread in the spindle was wrong, although somewhat fortuitously, the metal was so soft that the screw was able to cut it's own thread. I wasn't impressed. Cold and tired, I resolved to take it back and get one that did fit.
Shiney new reproduction exterior handle - Looks promising here
I forgot about it for a while, and then when I found it again I was sparked into action, phoning up the company. Sadly it appears they don't answer the phone on a Saturday, and the same can be said for their premises. Due to my incredibly short attention span, I forgot about this yet again.
Finally, this weekend, I decided that I was going to take matters into my own hands and make it fit! Wow, I'm such a man! So with that in mind I strapped the handle to the work bench and whipped out the angle grinder. With a fresh grinding disc attached I carefully ground down each side of the spindle until it fitted into the mechanism hole. Fifteen minutes of angle grinding later I had a nice fitting handle, meaning I could now enter the rear of the van from the outside without having to go through the cab first!
In the bench, ready for modification
Time for the angle grinder to do it's work
Narrowed spindle
Test fitting
Handle all in and working!
So all this has resulted in me being very happy as it now fits. I'm not really sure how I should feel about the fact that I had to make the handle fit myself. I do remember getting some patent replacement front arches on one of my Nova's and I had to chop them around a fair amount to fit. That said, the front arch was a large panel surely this isn't something you can get that wrong with a handle spindle. It either fits or it doesn't, it's a small object that just has to be a specific size, how hard can it be? May be it's something I should expect in the future? I hope not, and I can't see me going back to the place that sold it to me in a hurry....
Split Screen Desire - The road to true love is never easy
Vans in the News and 19 Windows
My 27th Birthday and an AA Recovery "Low" Loader
Pushing the button...
Too low?
Welding woes
A Very Tight Squeeze
Fuel Crisis
Winter Plans
A Very Tight Squeeze Part II
Spot the Differences
My Big (Roof) Rack
Johnson Autoworks are giving the Frid some TLC in the form of some body work, a full re-spray and are ready to lay on the paint.
We asked you lot to come up with some cool ideas for the new look and we've had some great entries. We have a favourite picked BUT there is still 1 week left for you to get your entries in.
Below is the Fridolin Template. Click on it to open the full size image in a new window and then save that image to your computer.
Now you can either edit the image on your PC or print it out and colour it in with your desired designs. Be as original as you like, cut it about if you want to, roof chop it, lower it, put some cool wheels on... whatever you wish!
Then all you have to do is send it to us and we'll pick our favourite which will be put to life and ready to see at this years VolksWorld Show
All entries must be sent to:
The Fridolin Redesign
VolksWorld Magazine - IPC Media
Leon House
233 Highstreet
Croydon
CR9 1HZ
or emailed to: neil.singleton@ipcmedia.com
Entries MUST be in by Friday 29 January 2010.
The great unveiling will be done at the show, and to mark the occasion you can have your photo taken in the Frid and then feature as the cover car on your very own VolksWorld magazine cover! This very cool momento is yours for a small donation to our chosen charity, the Mental Health Foundation www.mentalhealth.org.uk/
Ok, first off an apology as I haven't blogged for 2 and a half months, and to be honest, it's because I haven't really touched the camper for a while, because, whilst the Splitty is now in the garage, that garage is both freezing and too small to do any exterior work on. What I did do though, just before I took it off the road for the winter, is use it to move a sofa bed from my parents house to my house. This necessitated the use of my roof rack...
When I used to be into hot hatches and I had all my little stripped out Nova's, the last thing on my mind would ever have been to buy a roof rack. In my mind they looked really uncool, it was something old people had on their car and I certainly didn't want one on mine. Oh how things change...
Skip forward a few more years and I've now got the campervan, and having taken the trip to Cornwall I'd realised that I didn't have nearly enough storage space, especially after I'd gone out and bought a surf board. With a trip to Croyde planned in a month, and now two surf boards to get down there, the hunt was on.
When I started, I really wanted a period/period style 3 bow rack. These seemed to vary in price, but Just Kampers had a nice one at £150 which I was very tempted by. I kept putting it off and off until whilst I kept an eye out on ebay and various forums for a cheaper/period one. I was becoming extremely bored and frustrated with this, and considered giving up, when fortunately, my patience paid off and one came up on ebay.
With a winning bid of £81 I secured the roof rack. Now to be fair, this rack did not fulfill any of my criteria as far as I could see, it wasn't three bow, it wasn't period or period style, but it was 8ft long, which was far bigger than any of the other's I'd been looking at, and I was sure I had a bargain.
So the next weekend 4 of us set up to collect it from Hertfordshire from a very nice guy called Matt. He had an OG 11 window, with a very nice interior! He told me that the rack had come with his Splitty when shipped it over from the US, but was now surplus to requirements.
By the looks of it the rack is made of aluminium and is extremely light (I can pick it up by myself and get it on top of the bus), it's a little disfigured and bent but still looks nice.
Anyhow, we bolted it on, surprisingly quickly with just eight Allen key bolts, using some windscreen wiper rubber under the fixings to prevent the paint from getting damaged.
The full length
The full width
So move on a couple of weeks and it's now time for Croyde and the roof racks first usage. Having bought and borrowed a load of bungee cables, I also purchased a couple of tie down straps for the surf boards. This is when things started to get a bit weird. I really enjoyed strapping all the items to the roof rack, it seemed to give me a tremendous sense of manliness. A sort of "look at me, and what I have safely attached to my roof rack, yes, I can tie things down well, Grrr!!!"
I also got some strange pleasure from exactly what I could strap to it, none more so than the attachment of the BBQ we were taking, for some reason I really liked the thought of people seeing the BBQ up there when they (inevitably) overtook the van on the road!
The confused pleasure didn't end there, when we got to Croyde I got yet more excited about having to climb up onto the rack itself, and untie things! Apparently when Matt owned the rack, two of his friends slept on it, just with plywood on top! One day, one day...
The Rack's first journey
Since then the rack has only really been used twice more, once when Vanessa and I went surfing in Wittering and then finally a few weeks ago with the sofa bed. However I have to say that getting what must have been about 70kg sofa bed onto, and off of a roof rack that's six foot off the ground is no easy task! Back pain anybody???
Thinking forward to this summer, I'm already wondering what other marvelous things I can strap onto it during trips away...
Split Screen Desire - The road to true love is never easy
Vans in the News and 19 Windows
My 27th Birthday and an AA Recovery "Low" Loader
Pushing the button...
Too low?
Welding woes
A Very Tight Squeeze
Fuel Crisis
Winter Plans
A Very Tight Squeeze Part II
Spot the Differences
