Any way I went to have a look, much to my wife's disgust, The time of the year that I went to have a look at this buggy was coming into winter, so not a good time to sell a Buggy. After having a look at this 4 seater Buggy, I thought it was pretty good. The guy that had built it had got it from his neighbour as scrap and basically built a new buggy. It had never been an the beach, but the guy was asking $5500 for it, which was a lot.

I went back up north and didn't do anything about it far a month, then I decided that I would go back and have another look at this 4 seater buggy again and take my wife to have a look. I was lucky that no one else had bought it and the guy said he had only had a couple of calls about it.

Well a bit of bargaining was done and a new 4 seater buggy was ours. I managed to drop the price by $1000.00. I think the guys wife was keen for him to sell it. A friend put the buggy on a trailer and towed it back up north for me, from there I spent a month rust proofing the chassis.

Now you are probably wandering what happened to the first buggy, well it went back to Auckland with my friend, who was going to do some work on it. That never happened, so it ended being brought back up to Whangarei, to the VW guy who had done all the work an it to start with. After about six months he sold it far about half what it owed me. A lot of money dawn the drain; but at least now I had a 4 seat buggy, which was really what I was after to start with.

From there I used the new buggy for about three years as daily transport around the area. You should know that this buggy only had a little 1200cc VW engine, which was really cheap to run, and was super reliable, but had nearly no power.

Remember that 13B six part engine I said I had, well after ( had had the adapter plate made far it, the engine had been put back in the shed and not touched, not even turned over by hand. In fact that 13B six part engine had not run far about eight years.

It was time, I had been waiting nearly three and a half years and the VW engine had still not died an me and I was getting tied of having so little amount of power. Winter was coming again, and I was keen to put that 13B six part engine into this buggy. It would give me a winter project I said to my wife, she really new the truth, it was just another thing to spend money on.

So finally the VW engine was pulled out and the process of fitting the l3B was started. First thing was to get the 13B off the floor where it had been sitting far the past three years or so, I must admit, it looked pretty awful, it was really dirty and rusty looking. So it was pulled down to a bare black, then cleaned and eventually repainted, along with all the other bolt on bits. Now the engine looked like a new one.

Now the fun bit started, The 13B engine had been set up for the first buggies gearbox, which was the VW Bus box, the gearbox an this buggy was a standard 1200 box, the difference be-ing that the bell housing is quiet a bit smaller. The flywheel ring gear touched on the bell housing ( when I mean touch I meant jammed solid ), a bit of grinding to the bell housing was required to get it all to fit, so after taking the engine an and off the gearbox about a dozen times, I finally got it to fit so the ring gear wasn't jamming. Next was to see if the clutch was going to work, I fitted a new Trust bearing and mounted the engine back an the gearbox only to find that the new Trust bearing was binding with the fingers an the pressure plate, so off with the engine again, a bit more modifying and try again. After about another three or so times the new Trust bearing was now nearly stuffed, so I went back to the origi-nal bearing and found at worked fine. Only I found out later that the original bearing was noisy, so at same stage I will have to replace it again.

Then after that I found that the starter motor I had would not work as the flywheel ring gear was not the same as original ring gear an the VW engine, so another starter motor had to be found.

Eventually after a bit more ( lot more ) mucking around I finally got the engine bolted on the back of the gearbox, so that A didn't have to come off again, at least for a while.
The Buggy was then sent off to the panel beaters to have a strengthening frame made up for it to hold up the back -( front ) of the engine and support for a Radiator.

Once I got it back again, all the new frame work was removed and painted, then it was time to start putting everything together, nearly ever nut and bolt has been replaced with stainless steel items.
Next thing on the list to do was wiring it all up, this took a bit to do, as I wanted to make sure as much of the wiring and electronic his were protected 6am the weather.

The electronic bits include using 3 Bosch ignitors mounted in an aluminium heat sink box, 3 Bosch coils, relays to controls the electric fans, ignition power and fuel pump power, Also two extra gauges have been added, one for water temperature and one for oil pressure. The throttle set up was another interesting part to do, I ended up using a Throttle cable from a old Toyota Corona and adapting it tto match up with the original VW system. After a bit of sorting, this now works really well,

Next was fitting up the Radiator which is from a S4 Turbo ( I thought this would take the heat of the engine sitting at the back of the buggy ) and the twin Davis Craig electric fans which are thermostatically controlled. Also fitted were Torque Master spark plugs and Magnecor Ignition cable which I import and make up myself. The oil cooler was then mounted on the buggy's body above the engine. Next thing was to lake the buggy to town and get an exhaust and oil cooler lines made up. The exhaust I thought was going to be a problem, because of lack of room to fit a W11 length system. I didn't want the exhaust to run underneath the chassis, as the buggy sits quite low to start with, and I didn't want it to be, noisy, so what ended tip was a very short system with only one S4 muffler being used and it is very quiet as well, just what I wanted. In fact it is even quieter then the exhaust on the VW engine it used to have.

So you see by now I was getting pretty close to starting the 13B six port for the first time in years, only things left were to hook up the battery, as big a battery as I could fit in the space available -(to get the battery out, you have to remove the right rear shock, and do a fair bit of manipulating ) - then fill the engine with oil, make sure the fuel pump was flowing clean fuel, and give it a start. I had also mixed up the fuel as two stroke mix to start the engine on. The surprising thing was that it basically started straight away. That I was not expecting, es-pecially from an engine that had been sitting so long,

Well now it was time for the first test drive, I had been looking forward to this for quite a time, so up the drive and on to the main road we go ( at this stage the engine timing had only been basically set, and the cad) had not been touched ) took it carefully at first, just to make sure everything was working ok, after a couple of Vs, I thought it was worth giving it a bit of a trashing. Wow this thing can really accelerate well, couldn't wait to set up the timing property and adjust the carb.

Since then I have; replaced the ignition setup with something better, raised the rear suspension, as the sump bad hit the ground a couple of times going up out drive, made up an alloy sump guard, made up a small bull bar for the front, converted the engine to run a two stroke system with an adapter I imported from the US, in the last month I have fitted new high back bucket seats from a Mazda 323, at the same time I also fitted 3 point seat belts instead of the lap belts it had.

Next on the wish list is to fit a set of 17 inch mags and low profile tyres, but that may he a little way off yet, the first thing I'm going to do next is fit a set (if Disc brakes to the front, as all this new power is great, but it certainly takes a bit to bring it to a halt.

Well I guess that about it from me for this story, I hope you enjoy the photos of the Buggy, arid if anyone is interested in any info about the build up, then feel free to contact me.

Regards
Roger Jones
miura@ihug.co.nz

Dellorto 48 DHLA side draft carburetor on Racing

Custom short extractors, into single loop over left drive shaft into single S4 muffler with twin 3in exhaust tips - (Nice and quiet)

S4 Turbo radiator fitted at rear with twin 10in Davis Craig cooling fans, controlled thermo-statically.

Factory drums all round ( next thing that needs upgrading)