So I thought I had posted on here about the buggy, but apparently not...
Lurking on ebay, looking occasionally for beach buggys to see what's out there, like you do, I tripped over this amazing looking orange buggy. Immediately fell in love, but applied willpower - decided that if nobody bid, then I'd contact the seller. Then someone bid, so I applied willpower and decided that if it didn't go over a certain price, then I'd try and win it. It sailed past that price, so I applied willpower and decided that I'd contact the seller and offer to take it for the winning bid if the sale fell through. See, how very disciplined I was there...
A week later, the seller got in contact, and told me it was mine if I still wanted it! So I got the money together and got the train to Dartford to collect it. Seeing it in the flesh was even more awesome! It looked (and still does look) amazing. That short wheelbase, those stupidly massive rear wheels, it just looked amazing... So the first drive I had was driving it home, round the M25, down the M3 to Farnborough. The seller just looked at me like I was insane - he also owned a ducati desmo, and said the buggy was the scariest thing he'd ever been in or on. I could see why on the drive home. The front wheels were not really aligned, there were no wing mirrors, and the harness meant you couldn't see behind you. At all. Changing lanes intentionally was scary, with lots of indicating, hand gestures, and slowly drifting into the next lane hoping to not get collected. And with the poor alignment, any bump caused it to veer badly. The most exhilarating drive on the M25 in history...
Anyhow, got home, and sorted out a few things - alignment, tune, and some aesthetic bits, so it looked more like this.
My two boys love it, and I used to take them to nursery in it - on their last day there, they decided to go in fancy dress. So I ended up driving them next to a mini storm trooper, with tiny darth vader behind me.
Accessories included a new 'roof rack' with BMX bike rack, which looks pretty fricken cool imho.
And a petrol can boombox. But still no windscreen...
2016 I decide to take it to Le Mans, so all stickered up, left to head to dover.
That year, it happened to coincide with the European Football competition thing, so loads of englishers were heading over as well, so the traffic was crazy. On the way down the M20, it ran out of petrol, so got the can to fill it up, and found part of the exhaust hanging off!
That lead to a very noisy, slow drive down, through France where a journey that should have taken about 9 hours ended up taking 14...
The drive back on Sunday afternoon after the race was amazing - warm afternoon, tootling along the motorway, people waving, all the way to Abbeville - one of the best memories ever...
Monday morning tho was torrential rain. Leaving heavily cobbled Abbeville was interesting - it was losing the rear end in a straight line with it's furious 40hp... And it didn't let up the entire 100km drive back to Calais. And water got into the ignition, so at times it seemed I only had 1 cylinder going, and French service stations sell perfume, breton tshirts, and croissants, but absolutely no Le WD40... It crept onto the chunnel, where I stripped the ignition, dried it under the handrier and put it back together as we arrived in Dover. Straight to the services, grabbed one of the VERY MANY cans of WD40, and drenched the ignition in it. Heading up the M20 back to home was intense... The rain was, if anything, harder than before, with heavy traffic the whole way. I was safely staying in the inside lane (where the lorries live), and the spray coming up was hitting me in the forehead and running down into the googles, so I had to keep emptying them every minute or so. By Clackett Lane services, I was soaked, freezing, and hungry, so filled up with fuel, grabbed some hot food and a flask of coffee which I stuffed up my jumper to warm up, then back out into the downpour. By the M23, it has stopped raining, and the traffic had slowed to a crawl, which was actually lovely! Mooching along, sipping coffee a'la BO, and by the time I got home, the whole, enormous adventure was over... It took about two weeks to recover, but such a brilliant adventure...
So that's kind of the buggy thing. Plans for the future - get the engine properly tuned, rewire and tidy, and redo the paint to get it up to scratch, but mainly maintain it and enjoy it.
Thanks for reading...
Lurking on ebay, looking occasionally for beach buggys to see what's out there, like you do, I tripped over this amazing looking orange buggy. Immediately fell in love, but applied willpower - decided that if nobody bid, then I'd contact the seller. Then someone bid, so I applied willpower and decided that if it didn't go over a certain price, then I'd try and win it. It sailed past that price, so I applied willpower and decided that I'd contact the seller and offer to take it for the winning bid if the sale fell through. See, how very disciplined I was there...
A week later, the seller got in contact, and told me it was mine if I still wanted it! So I got the money together and got the train to Dartford to collect it. Seeing it in the flesh was even more awesome! It looked (and still does look) amazing. That short wheelbase, those stupidly massive rear wheels, it just looked amazing... So the first drive I had was driving it home, round the M25, down the M3 to Farnborough. The seller just looked at me like I was insane - he also owned a ducati desmo, and said the buggy was the scariest thing he'd ever been in or on. I could see why on the drive home. The front wheels were not really aligned, there were no wing mirrors, and the harness meant you couldn't see behind you. At all. Changing lanes intentionally was scary, with lots of indicating, hand gestures, and slowly drifting into the next lane hoping to not get collected. And with the poor alignment, any bump caused it to veer badly. The most exhilarating drive on the M25 in history...
Anyhow, got home, and sorted out a few things - alignment, tune, and some aesthetic bits, so it looked more like this.
My two boys love it, and I used to take them to nursery in it - on their last day there, they decided to go in fancy dress. So I ended up driving them next to a mini storm trooper, with tiny darth vader behind me.
Accessories included a new 'roof rack' with BMX bike rack, which looks pretty fricken cool imho.
And a petrol can boombox. But still no windscreen...
2016 I decide to take it to Le Mans, so all stickered up, left to head to dover.
That year, it happened to coincide with the European Football competition thing, so loads of englishers were heading over as well, so the traffic was crazy. On the way down the M20, it ran out of petrol, so got the can to fill it up, and found part of the exhaust hanging off!
That lead to a very noisy, slow drive down, through France where a journey that should have taken about 9 hours ended up taking 14...
The drive back on Sunday afternoon after the race was amazing - warm afternoon, tootling along the motorway, people waving, all the way to Abbeville - one of the best memories ever...
Monday morning tho was torrential rain. Leaving heavily cobbled Abbeville was interesting - it was losing the rear end in a straight line with it's furious 40hp... And it didn't let up the entire 100km drive back to Calais. And water got into the ignition, so at times it seemed I only had 1 cylinder going, and French service stations sell perfume, breton tshirts, and croissants, but absolutely no Le WD40... It crept onto the chunnel, where I stripped the ignition, dried it under the handrier and put it back together as we arrived in Dover. Straight to the services, grabbed one of the VERY MANY cans of WD40, and drenched the ignition in it. Heading up the M20 back to home was intense... The rain was, if anything, harder than before, with heavy traffic the whole way. I was safely staying in the inside lane (where the lorries live), and the spray coming up was hitting me in the forehead and running down into the googles, so I had to keep emptying them every minute or so. By Clackett Lane services, I was soaked, freezing, and hungry, so filled up with fuel, grabbed some hot food and a flask of coffee which I stuffed up my jumper to warm up, then back out into the downpour. By the M23, it has stopped raining, and the traffic had slowed to a crawl, which was actually lovely! Mooching along, sipping coffee a'la BO, and by the time I got home, the whole, enormous adventure was over... It took about two weeks to recover, but such a brilliant adventure...
So that's kind of the buggy thing. Plans for the future - get the engine properly tuned, rewire and tidy, and redo the paint to get it up to scratch, but mainly maintain it and enjoy it.
Thanks for reading...
Rain, not so much... 
You killed it???
