Lenny... The Poppadom Beige VW Beetle

Nice - what are your plans? 2135cc for 12sec 1/4's?

You're not wrong there. I've got 2 young boys and, although I'm sure they'd of loved going out in it (the eldest had a couple of times) it was just far to antisocial to be honest. It had a full bridge engine which, with a 4" exhaust system, was very loud on W.O.T and it drank so much fuel that if it was an alcoholic it would be Oliver Read, George Best and Ernest Hemingway... combined! Great fun on a night out but you just couldn't keep up.  

I would love to do this and have asked about on another forum how getting into the 12s again could be done. The response was to sink about £20k into it. So I pass on that lol. This is going to be more about style, driving it lots and taking it to shows. 

Where did I get Overhauling from then?
To be fair, you've only had to push him the once so far, Lewis had to do it a few times... some of those in Belgium. Not that that makes it any different but it helps to build this story 

Adam

cracking stance on the beetle i love standard ride height

Well I'm sorry but you're gonna be a little disappointed. 

Adam

As I've already said I have 2 young boys and I want them to enjoy Lenny as much as I do. With that in mind I fitted some rear seatbelts so as to hold them and their car seats in place. Parcel shelf also put in place too.

DSC_7432 by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

The rear blind is fiddly but simple to fit. Getting the struts aliened is the hardest bit, having to get in and out of the car to adjust them and get them straight and looking right. Then its just a matter of slotting in the other pieces and its done.

DSC_7435 by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

Around this time Lenny got into his first street race. Originally he would of come with a 1500cc single port engine but at some point this was taken out and replaced with a 1300cc twin port. This has really effect on power but I thought I mention it and hope you'll understand why I the end we let this guy win the race...

DSC_7479 by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

That's just a million pound Koenigsegg Agera R! Honestly, we let him win!

Your head was broken years before that

Also around this time Lenny acquired his first battle scar. No idea when this happened but to me it looks like someone sat on the wing and creased it slightly. Its not as bad as it looks in the picture but still annoying nonetheless.


DSC_7480 by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

Still, as they say, every scar tells a story and chicks love them

Moving on, we (me and luckyseven ) managed to arrange a day that we were both off and Lewis (dex66 ) took a day off work to join us and make it the first meet of the new MWVW club. Lenny was all loaded up and ready to go. I'd already had the rear tyres fitted on the wider 5.5 rear wheels but at some point during the day we had to swap over the fronts from the old wheels to the new ones. Obviously this did mean we were going to have a few points of no return along the day, if the discs go on then the wheels had to go on with the tyres swapped over because of the change from 4 to 5 stud pattern. 

DSC_7487 by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

DSC_7490 by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

DSC_7492 by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

The plan was that we'd make sure I had all the bits needed to fit my new discs, drums, drop spindles and then wheels and tyres. This was all after breakfast at McD's and a trip to VW Heritage to get some ball joins and wheel bearings.

DSC_7496 by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

So first up was the front discs and spindles. Out with the old

DSC_7499 by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

and on with the new

DSC_7500 by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

To fit the spindles you have to change the ball end joints to different ones and this proved to be the biggest ball ache at the front of the car. Lewis had brought some ball joint tools with him so they popped off the spindles easily enough but they were well and truly stuck on to the tie rods and it took a lot of heat, brute strength (with ever increasing sized hammers) and harsh language to get the old ones off. The new ones then just wound on easily and so everything else went back into place as it should of. I thought fitting that lot was going to be the hardest part of the day so it was good to get them all on and tightened up. 
The next difficulty we had was putting the new wheel bearing in to the new discs. None of us had done this before and the bearings just didn't look like they should fit at all. Luckily Nik's garage is right next door to a proper working garage as it were and I had a quick chat to the guy in there and he was really helpful and should me how to tap them in. With those done the discs where all good to go, fitted and callipers back on.

When we knew we'd got to the point of getting it all back to one piece again Nik popped out and had the tyres changed over from old to new wheels and so these were quickly fitted and the front lowered down to see how Lenny now stood. Looking good so far.

DSC_7505 by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

Whilst Nik and myself wrestled with the front end, Lewis was busying himself with a new steering wheel for his bug Dexter. Looks really good in there and makes me want to change mine now.

DSC_7498 by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

So that was the front end all done. By this time Lewis had had to leave us to it as he had dinner plans back home.

Next up we had to tackle the rear end. (snigger ) To be honest we could of left it there but it would of looked very odd having different wheels front to back, plus I/we thought it should of been a lot easier to sort out the rear as it was just swapping over the drums. No spindles, bearings, tie rods.... simples. 

Wrong again! Nik had been going on for a few days about the big nuts. Now I thought he was just showing off but once I removed the hub caps I realised what he was on about. 

DSC_7504 by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

Not only are these castle nuts huge and Nik didn't have a socket big enough to fit them, they are also done up so tight that they could hold down the Eiffel tower if need be. Luckily Nik mate Rich had been over earlier in the day and lent us what I can describe as a scaffolding pole, just in case. That that would give us the leverage to get them off, what was needed was a big socket. A quick trip to the local Halfords was all that was needed there and after a quick double check on Google to find out the correct size it was back to it to loosen them nuts. 

This is were I might of 'accidently' broken some of Nik's favourite tools, and also nearly beheaded myself in the process. The nuts are tightened up to something like 250ft/lbs and so don't come off easily, which when you think of it, is a good thing. Using the scaffolding pole and an extension bar I managed to loosen the nuts off one at a time but sadly I did snap off two of Nik's extension bars for his socket set doing so. Sorry mate What made him feel a little better though was watching me nearly take my head off and end up rolling around on the floor when they did snap, such was the force needed to do it.

DSC_7507 by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

Anyway, they cam off, and then, with the use of a soft hammer, off came the old drums. It was then just the simple (nothing seemed simple to be honest) task of pushing the new drums on and adjusting the brakes and then on with the new wheels

DSC_7506 by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

We had succeeded in doing everything I wanted and the only bit we couldn't do annoyingly was fit the centre caps to the rear wheels as the axles poked out a little to far. Oh well, not the worst thing that could of happened and easily sorted out at a later date.

DSC_7509 by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

It had been a long day and we were at it for nearly 9 hours in the end and by the time we'd finished it was getting dark and we were both knackered and broken but Lenny was looking great with his slightly lower front and new wheels. Happy days.

DSC_7513 by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

DSC_7518 by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

There was a little rubbing from the front wheels on the aches whilst driving home but this seemed to be just it settling in because when I drove him the next day all was good. 


Adam

It takes quite a bit of ooomph to bend a scaffolding pole... enough torque to also move an entire Beetle against the handbrake


Ada vs hubnut by Nick Liassides, on Flickr


.....and shear off two King Dick extensions


Extension murder by Nick Liassides, on Flickr

250 goddamned pound feet . Who says ze Germans have no sense of humour?

Its so annoying when you're half way through writing a post and your computer decides you don't really need it and shuts it off! Grrr!!

Anyway, onwards.

The reason for wanting the wheels all sorted out in one day like we had done was a couple of days later the MWVW were all due to show off at a show. BTW, MWVW is the Milford and Worthing VW club. now you know and yes we are that sad Jumpers and t-shirts available at the gift shop.
Dubs in the Park is organised by the London and Thames Valley VW club and is held just outside Braknell at the Easthampstead Park Estate.  We managed to park up together and this time in the right colour order This was a really lovely chilled day out with all things VW on show, 2 stages of music being played around the grounds and a huge row of BBQs providing good reasonably priced food to the masses. What more could you ask for? Nik's Dolly got a good bit of attention too, with a note being left on it asking if he could let a guy know what the blue colour is as he wanted to paint his van the same. Nice

DSC_7548 by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

DSC_7550 by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

If you'd like to read more about the show then have a look at Nik's thread here


To sort out the rear wheel centre cap issue I ordered some slip on 5mm spacers. As wheel spacers go these are quite possibly the nicest and most expensive (thanks to needing to be Porsche pattern) I've ever seen. Shame they'll never be seen but they'll do the job.

DSC_7721 by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

Next up was the Retro Rides weekender show. We, the MWVW, made it for one day and again got our Red Arrows style parking sorted out. 

Untitled by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

I'm not going to put loads of pictures up or even a link this time as there's plenty of thread on here all about the weekend if you'd like to read them.

This was a big day for Lenny and the furthest I'd driven him in one day. Godalming to Goodwood, back to Nik's at the end of the show in Worthing and then back home at the end of the day. He never let me down but what came up with this was that he seemed to be becoming more and more under powered at times. As if there was a big flat spot in acceleration. What was even more worrying was the next day I found out he had a big oil leak coming from somewhere. This was all very worrying as me and Lewis had booked to go to Spa in Belgium for Le Bug Show at the beginning of August. 

After a bit of research I found out that the lack of power was probably due to a clogged up inlet manifold. This was causing carb icing, something I'd never heard of before and the easiest way to cure it for good was to get a new manifold. So that's what I did, along with a couple of new wiper arms and door card bungs and clips. I've just realised that I've hardly any pictures of the interior so that i'll have to sort out. 

Untitled by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

Luckly for me I have a garage with a tame aircooled specialist called Paul only a few miles from my flat. I used to take my cabrio there many years ago and it was good to go back and see Paul again. He remembered me and even had an old photograph of my car when it was there having some work done years ago. He had a look at the engine and found it was leaking oil from the main bearing and rocker cover on the right side. Not a major problem in itself but does require getting the engine out to fix it. So Lenny was booked in and Paul was going to have a good look over the engine whilst it was out, fit the new manifold and stop the leaks. 

DSC_7912 by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

DSC_7915 by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

Lenny was back up and running within a couple of days and Paul had sorted out all the engine issues. He did suggest the engine that's in him might of been put in in a hurry as there was quite a few little issues here and there but its fine now. At some point I'd like to have him take out the engine again so that it can be tidied up and made to look a lot nicer. I do love a tidy show looking engine bay.

There's more to come but I'll leave it there for now. Its great fun to have a car like this again that you can just get in a drive and not have to worry about something breaking all the time or even having to put fuel in it after every journey. Also, my boys love him and now call him Lenny Car and always want to go out in him. Winner

 Untitled by Adam Blackshaw, on Flickr

Adam