And now from the back of the workshop Ben’s gets to work on those beats and breaks….

The south coast based drivers met up today for a beer in Fareham near my old stomping ground. It was good to meet a few of the drivers for this years rally and put faces to names but straight after we raced back to lay a coat of paint on the top of the pan.

Hard to believe this is what we started with a week ago!

Another late night last night but we’ve got the floorpan restored and now it’s full of fresh solid metal.

We’ll let it dry then tomorrow after the Scally meet in the pub we’ll lay on paint to the top side of the pan.

After we’d stripped the bits from the Beetle and its floorpan for our needs this is what we left in the barn. It looks worse than it is although it is pretty bad!

Cut out all the bad metal…

Tidy up the seams…

..a little splash of acid.

Weld on the lovely new floorpan halves..

..and it’s already looking a lot better.

Next week we’ll attack the frame head then clean and paint the floorpan.

We’ve just found out that the DVLA and Vehicle Inspectorate have amended the rules regarding kit and special one off vehicles. Previously the ruling read “where the vehicle retains the donor vehicle’s chassis or monocoque body.”. Recently they have added the word “unmodified” to the ruling “where the vehicle retains the donor vehicle’s complete, unmodified chassis or monocoque body.” which completely shafts our idea for the car in it’s existing form.

True to a scally being resourceful we can still make good with our plans. Remember the original donor car and it’s poor old chassis….

Well it means we’ve got to restore that and use it as our chassis in an unmodified state.

So disc cutters and welders at the ready!

Registration for the rally took place this evening at 7pm and we’ve received a confirmation email that we are in and registered as team number 23!

Time to reveal what we intend to turn the Fugitive in to. We’ll admit its a bit ambitious especially as we are doing this seriously on the cheap and with Ben running a successful business and me a family man but we believe we can do it.

Not long after the route was announced for Scally Rally 2007 we visited a guy called John Lee who runs/owns Lynx AE near in Milton Keynes and who has made the fantastic LR1. Given the guy had no idea who we were his openess at showing the design and build of the LR1 including the bare chassis was amazing. These days most would want to hide away the design of their creation for commercial reasons.

On seeing this car and the chassis we knew that we had to just try and do it. No one is suggesting it’s going to be in the same league as the LR1 but more an inspiration to aim at.

Good progress last night. We acquired a new front beam on Sunday complete with disc brake setup. Picking it up meant a 6am start on Sunday for me with a round trip to Kidderminster and back home before lunch.

Fabricated new mounts for the front beam dropping the front end nice and low, fixed up the steering and completed the rear frame. Got a coat of Hammerite on the new tubing to keep the rust away.