After a bit of swearing and near tears I realised that very little was damaged, if anything that I wasn’t going to replace anyway. So with renewed enthusiasm I ploughed into it.
I had a vision, the wizard would have a full moly cage, flip front, aluminium panelling inside, Ercos and still be able to be used on the street with the hood still fitting. I started by stripping the 1303 ready to get the frame head swapped, a job that will be done by Jon Rathbone Racing . I removed all the front suspension to sell and unbolted the body, just need to find a home for it. The car already had a line lock, rear disks, adjustable Koni shocks, 1303s gearbox with heavy-duty side plates and all new CV’s and drive shafts. The 1303 had never been driven since all this was fitted. I also got loads of bits including two Cobra bucket seats with custom made mounts. All of this kit I wanted to buy anyway and the rear disks and shocks would have cost me more than the whole car did, I got a bargain! Next I attacked the wizard I had to cut the front off in order to remove the front beam and the fuel tank. As the front was crushed against a half full tank of petrol I had to use hand tools until I could get the tank out. I had a load of CD jewel cases for the CD’s in the changer under the bonnet as well as a pair of trainers and a tool kit, all of this was squashed in the spare wheel well and needed to be cut free! The bonnet catch was embedded in the tool kit and all the cases were smashed to pieces, luckily they were empty. A friend of mine, Antoine (Wiltsteve on the volkszone) has given me a front beam free of charge, for which I will be eternally grateful. As I wrote this page this is how the car looked.

I chipped at a crack that had been where the rain gutter had been removed that had been there since I bought it. I soon found that maybe this wizard hadn’t been built as well as I first thought. To de-seam the gutter it had been hammered over and a ton of filler slapped on. It should have been ground down, welded and reground; this would have probably taken about as long as it did to mix all that filler. What was confusing was the fact that the whole of both front quarter panels were completely covered in filler up to an inch thick in places. However the metal underneath was like new. Why both with all that filler just to cover dents? Why not knock them out and do save the money on the fifty litres of filler and the cement mixer hire that must have been used. None of this really matters, as it was all to be chopped out when the flip front is fitted. I haven’t fully decided whether to try to fit the flip front my self or to have it done by Jon Rathbone. I think I’ll get it done by Jon, the amount of poorly fitting flip fronts I have seen prove it’s not easy to get right, I spoke to him at Bug Jam 2003 and he estimated a surprisingly low amount to do this. Check out this filler!

What are my plans now? I need to get the beam of Antoine and fit it so the car can be rolled out of the garage and then I can start to really strip it down. Every thing needs to be unbolted. Then I can take the body off (not going to be easy with a cabriolet) I expect that it will be welded on in a lot of places, I have welded patches that weld the body and pan together in a least two places, then there is the rest done before I owned it. I want to replace heater channels, at least one inner rear wing and maybe a bit around the windscreen. It depends on what Jon Rathbone says about how he will do the flip front, assuming he does it. This is where Eminem comes into the story; I bought six tickets for his concert in Milton Keynes. A mate of mine, Ollie (a1963vw on the Volkszone) said he would do any welding I needed doing on the Wizard if I sold him my two spare tickets at cost price that I was going to sell for mega bucks (Eminem sold over 250,000 tickets in under two hours and all the 140,000 tickets for the two Milton Keynes gigs sold out in 16 minutes so these tickets were in major demand). I agreed thinking it would be useful at MOT time nether of us knew how much welding I’ll need. He doesn’t know it yet but I will pay him some money for all the work I’ll be asking of him, I’ll feel guilty otherwise. I have just bought some 7” Ercos to go on the rear of the bug from Dave Ninian (Turbo_Monkey_Racer on the volkszone) they are brand new and were a bargain. Oh and I need to save about up £1500 to get all the work done by Jon Rathbone that I want. More updates as and when I get off my arse…

Back to Index Next page
Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

1