We left you last month having put the gas-axe to what has now become a collectors car. I must have cut up several hundred Beetles in my time. The original 'Beach B'stard was a very desirable 1964 model. That one, as were dozens of others, was in full running order! Anyway - back to the 'Bug* Cor should I say half-a-bug?). it's in the workshop with all the surplus tin trimmed away and all the rough edges sanded down. How shall we do this one? Here at Desperate Dan's we have a couple of ideas on customising. The first one is 'Over Engineer.' In other words, if a bracket or engine mount, for example, needs to be made from 1/4" steel, we will make it from 3/8". If a bolt should be 1/4", we'll use a 5/16" one. This is common-sense thinking. It won't break, and we don't get a comeback. I'm not saying it'll last forever, but it'll sure as hell take twice the abuse the original part would!
The second idea is that customising is about individuality. Whilst we offer several trike kits in our catalogue, 1 can say, without fear of contradiction, that no two are the same. Similar, maybe, but never identical.
So me 'n' Flavell are standing in the workshop wondering what to do to make this one different. On all the previous 'Beach Bastards' (or in DVLC-speak B'stard) we had retained the original transmission tunnel, using a 3" x 2" box section up to the steering neck, and triangulating more tubing down to the floorpan. We did this for two reasons. Ah shit! We did it for one reason! We're lazy! If you cut away the original chassis you have to remount the gearlever and shorten the gearshift rod, and, worst of all, reposition the handbrake. Let me tell you — that's a lot of work. First you have to mount the handbrake lever. Then you have to modify a pair of Austin Maxi handbrake cables, get on the lathe and make a pair of cable-end adapters, and finally strip down the rear brakes to fit the cables. Ever tried to get the drums off a Beetle? They're torqued up to 200lb/ft. And the half-shaft nut is usually rusted solid!
Keeping the original tunnel has one drawback, the drivers' seat position and height being dictated by the handbrake! On the old Bastards (I love writing that!) we did it to keep the price down. But as we know that everyone who works at BSH Towers are multi-millionaires, we decided to chop it off and give them a bill for thousands of pounds. Actually, I wanted a low seating position!
This trike had to look spot on. Alastair had given us a totally free hand on this one, and. let's face it, it's going to get a lot of exposure. It's an advert for Back Street Heroes, and an advert for our 'skills'? at Desperate Dan's. So it's gotta be spot-on.
Three paragraphs ago me 'n' Flav were stood trying to get it together. While I was still stood standing (try saying that after ten pints), Flav cut the transmission tunnel off. No messing about. Straight through the handbrake cables, gearchange shaft, wiring harness, brake pipes and anything else that got in the way. As they say, 'we were committed!' All we had to do now was fill in the four foot gap between the Beetle and the steering neck with an extremely strong chunk of tubing. And lo and behold, there it was, in the form of a pair of front frame rails from a 'Preying Mantis,' laid by the drill, all welded up and due to be grafted on to a customer's subframe that very same day. It was offered up to the 'half a Beetle' (I'll abbreviate that to 'half a Bee,1 in fact from now on it will be called 'Eric the half-a-bee' or just plain 'Eric'). Monty Python fans may now cringe! And it fitted - as it should have 'cause it was made to fit a Vee-Dub subframe!
We had to make another set for the customer, cause we pinched them, and before you could say Ferdinand Porsche, the Beetle was a B'stard, sitting there in all its glory, on three wheels. Those rather pretty, and quite well constructed, girder forks, of unknown parentage (rather appropriate, don't you think?) looked as if they had been made for this trike.
In reality, they were in the shop at the time, and just happened to look the business, with the added bonus of a total lack of ferrous oxide degradation (rust) and a nice dinky front wheel. Now before you comment about the pint-sized front brake, take into consideration the fact that all the stopping power is transmitted directly through the front tyre. Add to that the fact that rear-engined trikes are always fairly light on the front end, and you'll see the reasoning behind fitting this one. Even with a twin disc set-up and four pot callipers, the wheel will lock and the tyre skid at virtually the same point as this puny drum!
There - you've learnt something! We now have the basics of a 'Beach B'stard.' The rest of the work is to make it look nice. Mundane stuff like getting rid of the rot, and filling in the gaps. The bottom of the body, where it meets the floorpan is a notorious rot-spot. This was quite a good example, inasmuch as it actually possessed most of its' floorpan! However, the rot was present in the lower portion of the body, and some rather nifty covers were fabricated from 1 6 gauge sheet metal. Bearing in mind that VW steel is 22 gauge at its' best (about a quarter the thickness of the stuff we were using) and you can imagine the problems we had fusing the lot together. MIG welding was used throughout the construction, for several reasons, the main one being time, due to the immense amount of welding required to build a trike. TIG looks gorgeous, but we would probably have spent a month welding all the different parts together. Like a prat, I banged a few louvres into these panels, that meant the theme had to be carried through the rest of the tinwork.
Several times in the past I have decided to build myself a Rat bike. I've always made the same mistake, and made a really nice job of one part. So it was withAI's B'stard. It may sound big-headed, but you just know when you're on to a winner. You look at the part you've just made, and you decide there and then that the rest of the bike must be just as good. I don't care what anyone else thinks. This is the best VW powered trike I've ever buiit. I am truly happy with it. All future B'stards will use the same chassis. No more being lazy. At this point I must give Flav a pat on the head, 'cause he carried out most of the major structural work. He must hate me, because he'd just finish welding something on, and I would walk up and say 'that doesn't look right - cut it off and move it back 1/8"
Whilst pats on the head are forthcoming, thanks to my son Matthew. He's responsible for all the lathe work. To get this done he broke his world record for attendance. His worst was two days in three weeks! Mind you, would you work for your dad? And thanks to Boots for keeping all our customers happy and making excuses for my inability to talk to them on the 'phone. Once you get involved in this sort of project, you cannot cope with interruptions. Ozzy the welder had to stop me cutting my ear off at one point. Maybe that makes me an artist! It could have been the whisky, in which case I must be a Piss-Artist!
And thanks to Ferret, the small black person who lives upstairs in the polishing shop. I went upstairs with a box of assorted forward control parts, brackets, levers and handlebars, and politely asked him to return them within 24 hours, but with one small condition. They had to be chrome plated. No cheating, no gluing bits of Bacofoil to them. They had to be triple chrome plated. The next dinner time, muttering curses and asking for 50p for petrol, he was off to the platers, to wait while they were dipped in the magic smelly baths of copper, nickel and chromium solutions. By 6pm, all the shiny bits were bolted on and Desperate Dan's extremely eccentric electrician, Steve, who also happens to be Boots's brother-in-law, was in the workshop, shovelling fresh camel dung into his pipe and talking about BSA B3 1s. By the morning it was wired.
At this point 1 must ask for a written apology from the staff of BSH to all the staff at Desperate Dan's. Retaining the full roof has left us ail looking like corner shop owners. Each time work progressed, we would all sit in the bucket seat and 'try it out.' Each time we tried to get out, we banged our heads on the corner of the roof. Every time we banged our heads, we shouted 'B'stard.' If ever a name was perfectly suited to a vehicle, this was it. The score so far: Boots, 5 Bastards. Oz, 7 Bastards. Mole, 3 Bastards. Matthew, 9 Bastards. Me, 43 Bastards. Interested customers, 12 Bastards. Flavell, 147 Bastards.
That magic hour has finally arrived. Will it fire up? All too often, I am tempted to run the motor before the vehicle is completely finished. This time I decided it would not be run up until every last part was finished. A sort of 'carrot on a stick' to not bodge anything, as once the engine has been run, the natural reaction is to say 'I'll just finish that bit once I've ridden it.'
The fuel tank was installed. Very trick, this one. It's a 5 gallon Evinrude outboard motor tank. Used mainly because we were cheesed-off with working day in and day out on one vehicle and couldn't be bothered to make a one-off item, but also because it fits extremely snugly into the gap between the rear seat and the engine bulkhead, and it also has a built-in fuel gauge. Maybe we're not so lazy. Maybe we're Wombles, using everyday things people leave behind.
After a short delay while the fuel pump filled the carburettor with the refined decomposed fossil fuel (4-star with the bones taken out) there was a splutter, a huge cloud of smoke, caused by oil deposited in the combustion chambers whilst the Bastard was on its side.
having its bottom welded up, followed by the roar of a healthy engine. A tentative dab on the clutch, which, to our amazement, despite having stood for God knows how long, wasn't stuck to the flywheel with superglue, and first gear was selected. Lift the clutch, and YEEEE-HAAAAAA it was moving under its own power. The final bonus was that it also selected the other three gears, and, to top it all, reverse. To anyone who has owned a VW based trike, you will know that modifying the original shift mechanism has the same effect as stripping the gearbox and throwing first, second and reverse gears in the bin. Another pat on the head for Flav, who carried out the modifications. To diversify, everyone's had a pat on the head except me. The last time I had a pat on the head, it was warm and smelly and came out of the back of a cow!
The B'stard is finished as far as Desperate Dan's are concerned. We are all standing in the workshop putting pats on each others heads. Maybe we'll put a pat on Alastair and Li'I Mark's heads when they come to collect it.
There are four more tasks to carry out before this b'stard hits the road. Firstly, it's got to be MoT tested. Secondly, it's got to be sprayed in it's base colour (I wonder what that will be?) answers on a £50 note to 'Chris Ireland's Comfy Chair Competition' Coops, wrong story!) and thirdly, it's off to some whizzo artist-type to lay some cool dude graphics on it to make it stand out when it's in a traffic jam with lots of other Beetles.
And the last and final absolute task is for us to give Alastair the bill...'Yes Alastair, the twelve bottles of whisky were essential if we were to correctly align the front suspension and the six bottles of Vodka were used to etch-prime the chassis prior to paint application. And the...No! No! We will not settle for a box of Black Jacks, a set of Mutant Turtle bubble gum cards, your favour blow-up doll and a signed photograph of Des O'Connor.
Next month, you Lucky Bastard, or as the DVLC will insist on saying, B'Stard. It's just passed it's MoT, We didn't just take the BSH one. We took two Beach B'stards. Boots rode one, I rode the other. On the way there we did quite a few peoples' heads in. on the way back, we showed off and did even more peoples' heads in. Imagine being in a car on your way to Hemel Hempstead, and being overtaken on a blind bend by half a Volkswagen. Once you've got over the shock, there's the sound of a high-revving exhaust, and another half-a-Volkswagen cuts sharply in front of you and cheekily 'wags' it's exhaust pipes before disappearing into the distance.