Bella - 1958 Australian Beetle

Bugger. Next month it is then.

fingers crossed for ya love this ride!

cheers - might need it!

New positive cable is now fitted. I also fitted a battery cut off switch for piece of mind as I don't trust her not to spontaniously combust!

Then I adjusted the valves after the Volksworld fiasco...


Due to the badly hacked up rear valance by a previous owner, there's always been a bit of a gap at the back of the rear tinware to the valance in some places, and no gaps in others. I couldn't fit a normal seal, so I cut down a bay one and shoe horned that in:







Not ideal, but without fitting a new rear valance, I can't see another way round it.

So then on Thursday, off we trundled to the MOT station. The brakes only seemed to work when you pumped the pedal once, so I asked the garage to give them a quick bleed, hoping that would solve it, and then MOT her. On the way there she ran fine and drove much better than previous times - new beam and new steering box have helped a lot! I also managed to get to 4th gear - something I've never done before in her! I'm pleased to say, that it exists and worked! Woo!

Here she is sat plotting outside the MOT station...


A couple of hours later, the garage rang to say there was a split in the main brake line which goes from the front of the car to the master cylinder, and back though the interior to the back brakes.... that explains the brake pumping thing then.... so back she came, and we set about the daunting task of replacing the main line....

Which actually wasn't half as hard as I'd feared! The old one was removed and the new line was fitted..


Front:


Middle:


Back:



Just need to bleed the brakes again and refit the interior. MOT rebooked for a week on Tues.

Good result if that was your only problem. Good luck anyway for this week.

Nah, she didn't even get as far as being tested! I asked them to check the brakes first, and that was as far as she went. No point spending extra money on a test she was deffo going to fail on the brakes.

you should sell her too me

you'd soon send her back!

A few weeks ago I officially admitted defeat with Bella. I'm sick of her failing MOTs and taking stuff apart over and over again - so I've booked her into the garage for them to do it instead.

In the meantime, I've been messing about with the pedals. The problems were the brake pedal - it failed the MOT on insufficient reserve movement - so I wanted to remove it and set the rush rod to factory length as the pedals have been removed in the past and I couldn't be sure if it was the right length still.

The next problem was that 'Bodger Bruce' had been working his magic on the accelerator pedal. At some point, it appears that the hinge has broken at some point, so Bruce decided to pop rivet another one on - infront of the original one. He also decided to pop rivet in a brackety thing, and a giant plate to hold that down.... he popped the bolts which hold the other end of the accelerator linkage from the passenger side tunnel in the glove box and forgot about them it seems.

So here's how it was:


You can just see the brackety thing. All this meant that you could only press the pedal down 1cm - which left you with the choice of leaving the cable normally at the carb and only getting to 1/2 throttle when you put your foot down, or pulling the cable through the carb and having 1/2 throttle at idle, and full throttle when you put your foot down. As you can imagine - not ideal.

So with the pedals removed, you can see the new hinge plate, brackety thing and plate...




Removed:


Thankfully no hidden nasties:


Painted - shiny shiny!


So new hinge fitted, new pedal, spring, everything bolted in this time, and volia:


One working accelerator pedal - got lots of lovely movement so I can get full throttle when I want to, then go down to idle at traffic lights etc.

Just got to fix the semaphores - think it's just a fuse, but haven't checked yet as the battery is on charge, before she goes up to the garage again. Hopefully this time she will come back with a shiny pass certificate!

Not getting my hopes up though, cos I know what she's like....

Semaphores fixed - it was indeed the fuse.

I've also got a new driver's seat base for Bella. The old one had dodgy runners, which meant the only place it locked into place was too far from the pedals for me to reach them, so I had to sit on the edge of the seat and hold onto the wheel for balance, or risk the seat flying backwards when I accelerated (keeping in mind she only has a 1200!), which isn't a great experiance..... plus the padding was worn so that I ended up leaning against the door all the time...

So I got a base from VW Garden in good condition. Today I set about swapping the covers over.

Before:


During - guess which is which!


And finished:



Much more comfortable - I can reach all the pedals easily and I'm not leaning on the door.

Connected her battery and started her up. New accelerator pedal is working lovely - I now have use of the choke and full range of the throttle. Much better!

cool .....dudess where did you get the accellerator pedal and bracket from? .....I need one too

Got the bracket from Cool Air and the pedal from Heritage. I had to modify the pedal to fit (only needed to drill a hole) because you can't get pre Dec 65 ones it appears. Still, it was easy enough to modify it.

cheers

Looking awesome as always, as ive said before you and Bella rock big time, fooking lovin it!

You deserve every compliment and amount of praise for this car, this is my absolute favourite bug from an awesome dubbing family Keep at it! Fantastic job, just brilliant

Have you had it MOT'd yet?

ARCANE wrote:

Looking awesome as always, as ive said before you and Bella rock big time, fooking lovin it!

Rock ás in:

Bella
Rock
Hard Place
Me ?

Sir.Swish wrote:

You deserve every compliment and amount of praise for this car, this is my absolute favourite bug from an awesome dubbing family Keep at it! Fantastic job, just brilliant

Glad you like her

Cleverchap wrote:

Have you had it MOT'd yet?

No - her new trick is not turning left

She'll go straight, turn right.... but when asked to go left, she does this:


Passenger side wheel goes to full lock, yet driver's side hardly moves. I've jacked her up and had a look - the box isn't centered and is causing the short rod to hit the shock which is limiting it's movement. Hopefully centering it will solve the problem... I hope...

A couple weeks ago she went off to the garage for tracking and MOT. They set up the brakes for me as they were unbalanced and the pedal had no reserve movement. Now her brakes feel pretty sharp and the pedal feels nice and firm. As usual in the world of Bella, she was naughty! This time she decided she didn't want to turn left. She didn't mind going right, or straight ahead, but when you turned the wheels left, one went to full lock and the other didn't:


So back home she came and I pulled the track rods apart again - the steering box wasn't quite centered, so the short rod was hitting the shock and hence not turning all the way. So a bit of fiddling later, and voila!


Much better!

I've had a couple of days off work this week, so I set about doing some 'nice' jobs on her. On Wednesday afternoon I decided to look at why she wasn't charging. The red light didn't come on, so that was the first thing I looked at. No bulb - that's why!

Now the red light is on constantly - perhaps why the bulb was missing So I looked at the wiring on the dynamo - wrong way round - oops! Once that was switched round the red light went out on starting another problem fixed!

Next I took her outside onto the drive to sit in the sun for a bit whilst I played with the carb tuning - she was idling nicely and then decided to cut out. I then decided to leave the engine for a while and look at the bonnet.

When I got her she had a random thing to hold down her bonnet:


But when I bought her back from the garage last time, I kinda forgot and it kinda got mangled! So I set about getting her bonnet to lock as it should do. I'd got some 2nd hand lock parts ages ago and they were fitted, but just needed adjustment. A few mins later the bonnet was locking properly and popping open as it should.

Ever since I've had her, the windows haven't gone up and down very well, or hardly at all. So I removed the door card off the passenger side and removed the winder mechanism:


Greased it all up and the runners and put it back together again - goes up and down nicely now! By this time I'd got bored of playing with her, so just greased the runners on the driver's side (which made that one go up and down nicely) and hopped in her to reverse her back in the garage.

Now, I should have been suspicious that everything had gone really well...... can you guess what happened next? Yep, she didn't want to start :rolleyes: I swapped the fuel tap over to the reserve and she still didn't want to know. So I had to wait for Steve to come home from work (she likes Steve!). He went to fetch more fuel. Still didn't start... so jumped her and she did - not suprising really considering she hasn't been charging herself.

This is a bit of a boring pic.... but here's the window wound down:



Fast forward to today. Her windscreen washer was always been a bit dodgy. One of the jets washed the screen, whilst the other washed the roof and the car behind It wouldn't click into the hole in the scuttle so the angle was all wrong, meaning you couldn't adjust it to get both jets on the screen. Today in Halfords I picked up some new washer tube and a new twin jet.

Old one:


New one:


Bolted it into the scuttle and connected the new water pipe I'd bought. Then set about getting it set up correctly so both jets hit the screen.

You can guess what's coming next, can't you? Yep - I put my arm through the window to press the button to wash the screen and got a rather wet face after a few minutes of faffing about with adjusting the jets and getting a wet face a few more times, I finally got them both pointing at the screen!

I was quite getting into these nice little fiddly jobs, so I thought I'd takle the under bonnet wiring. It's all a bit off a mess because my supposed RHD loom, was infact a LHD one... but I couldn't be bothered to remove it and send it back, besides I'd already altered a load of wires anyway.

So, before it looked like this:


and after:


I've still got a load of wires to shorted and tidy up, but it's getting there


So she's off again to the garage for tracking and yet another MOT attempt - fingers crossed please! Technically all the things she failed on last time have been fixed - but this is Bella!

Shamrockez wrote:

ARCANE wrote:

Looking awesome as always, as ive said before you and Bella rock big time, fooking lovin it!

Rock ás in:

Bella
Rock
Hard Place
Me ?

Sir.Swish wrote:

You deserve every compliment and amount of praise for this car, this is my absolute favourite bug from an awesome dubbing family Keep at it! Fantastic job, just brilliant

Glad you like her

Cleverchap wrote:

Have you had it MOT'd yet?

No - her new trick is not turning left

She'll go straight, turn right.... but when asked to go left, she does this:


Passenger side wheel goes to full lock, yet driver's side hardly moves. I've jacked her up and had a look - the box isn't centered and is causing the short rod to hit the shock which is limiting it's movement. Hopefully centering it will solve the problem... I hope...

She does seem to have alot of naughtyness about her but that does add to the charm, Bella da ball is beautiful regardless!

Yep she's very naughty! Have you read the bit about the washers? That sums her up well!

Yep just caught up with her shinnanigans! very funny...well for the outsider looking in anyway!

She will have an MOT whether she likes it or not!!

you try telling that to her!

Hmmmm, Good Point, you'd better sell her to me instead then!!!