Dave's la(te)st buggy build...

Nice. Another gv owner!

Well... three weeks have passed, and we’ve finished decorating inside, outside window frames painted, brick set drive cleaned and re-sanded, decking cleaned and re-stained, hot tub drained, huge wedges made to level it out, cleaned and refilled, shelving made for the bar, youngest daughter home from Malta dance contract AGAIN But... I think SWMBO is now content, so I can now slip back into the garage to spend the winter finishing the buggy...

So, where were we...?



Meanwhile, the buggy is covered with sawdust, and surrounded by tools and paint, so I’ll have to start with a tidy up!

The snorkel is back from zinc plating

The NGV is awaiting a lift kit and wheel spacers, I’ll start a bit of a mod thread in the Vitara section soon...

So restart on Sunday! :woohoo:

:woohoo: Back to the buggy today!

I started nice and early, 9.30am, tidying the garage... and then the Post Office alarm went off?! Stopped the bells ringing and rang for an engineer... we had breakfast and the engineer sorted the alarm out, so then back out to the garage..



Hours of grinding, sanding, welding some bits up better, grinding, sanding, welded all the little holes up in the door where the trim panels used to fit... final sand by hand...



Yup, happy with that!

Painted with red oxide as an undercoat...





Looking from the other way...

Back to the passenger side front wing and battery and bottle mounts, and bonnet struts next Sunday then?

Wednesday I'm hoping to lift the GeeVee, more on that in another thread soon...

Shame the BigJimny Meet has had to be cancelled, or rather postponed? for now due to Covid... but that does give me time, and the winter, to get the buggy finished, ready - hopefully - for the rescheduled meet next year...

I wasn't going to work on the buggy today, I was going to fit the lift kit to the New GeeVee, but it spat with rain, so I retreated into the garage...

But the tyres and wheel spacers arrived for the GeeVee, so there's an update here .

So, having finished the passenger door on Sunday, I turned my attention to the bonnet / engine bay, and particularly the passenger side front wong...



Starting with the bonnet struts...

As the inner (and outer!) wings have been cut away, I wasn't sure...



Where the bonnet should sit when it was open..? So I stuck a post on Brett's "Jimny Jaunts" groups' WhatsApp general thread and asked the lads if anyone was near their Jimny and coould measure from the lip of the underside of the bonnet down to the slam panel... Dave "Camo Jimny" State(y) answered quickly with a couple of photos indicating 31"



So two (OffRoad Armoury panel) tabs welded in place, and I was chuffed to find the two struts were strong enough to keep the bonnet safely up even with the added weight of the bonnet mods, and as Brett pointed out, that's without the weight of the pie warmer pot and a couple of heavy meaty pasties :lol:



I then welded up the array of offcuts of steel I'd shaped to make the battery bracket... quite chuffed with that... hard to tell it's made from some cut up offcuts of rectangular box section and some flat bar, and 1" box section...



With the bonnet strut tab in place, I was then able to rearrange the battery holder and windscreen washer bottle to fit around the position of the strut mounting tab... so that'll all work well?...



Looking from underneath... they all line up nicely, leaving enough room for upward articulation before the axle hits the bump stop... and will be hidden by the plastic mudguard when that gets re-fitted...

Blimey! :blink: Just reading back through this build thread and wondering what's next...?



Ummm... finishing off details then?

I can add to that list -

Ground Anchor 'arm' and 'spade' mounts
Bolt in the jerry can storage for the tree strop

But mostly, next, getting ready for the yellow paint then?...

Got the GeeVee to lift on Sunday, and then I'll get cracking again! :woohoo:

Not really Buggy-build related, but for continuity of what I'm up to ...

Last Sunday was spent lifting the NGV - <link click here>

And today, yes, it's a Tuesday... my day-off in the week this week was moved by order of the management, so I retreated into the garage with Mr. Angry the Angle Grinder and Mr. Miggy the welder... but not to work on the buggy



Hmmm, a few rollcage seamless tube offcuts, a circular profile cut disk, and some offset angle iron edging?... what's he up to now?

(The 3mm think steel disk was for an idea I had to make some spare wheel spacers up, but after costing it - time and materials - it didn't seem worth it...)



The offcuts of seamless rollcage tube weren't long enough for I what I wanted so I had to cut them to equal lengths and use a smaller diameter piece inside to sleeve them together...



Taking shape... the disk has become two feet that have been hole-sawed to take the seamless tube and also drilled and countersunk for screwing down...



All welded up, mounts added to hold a sheet of perspex, everything ground and sanded nice, and the paint is currently drying on them...

It's another pair of poles for a virus screen for the shop! Wales implemented mandatory face coverings in shops (etc) from last Monday, so last week I shut the second "spare" till (it's between the main shop till and the Post Office counter so that my wife and I can move from the PO to help out in the shop if it's busy, etc) so we haven't been using that till without also wearing a face covering, i.e. not being behind the two anti-virus screens I've already made for the main shop counter and the PO...

A day lost on the buggy But a useful day protecting myself, my family and my lovely staff from Covid-19

Meanwhile, a couple of parcels arrived -



But they're for the NGV little project... folow <this link> if you want to know what they are :woohoo:

Right! Where were we...? Oh yes, building a buggy! :woohoo:

Finished the NGV mini-build and done all the jobs the wife wanted before winter hits and I retreat into the garage to finish the buggy...

So today...





I pushed it out of the garage and had a bit of a tinker with a few bits, trimming the front wing to fit around the completed snorkel, and then reattaching it and bits around it, and then...



Gave the garage a good tidy and swept the floor, before pushing the buggy back in again and putting it back on the dollies, all ready for the final round of buggy building over the winter months, hiding away from the Corona-Virus :ohmy:

I posted the above photos on Facebook and got quite a lot of responses, one of which was from my Dad (a steel fabricator / metal wizard before he retired) saying it was coming on well, to which I replied that there was just finishing jobs to do over the winter, including "painting it JCB Yellow", to which Brett reminded me that I had mentioned painting it BLUE as the V5 colour is blue, and that would make registration of it much easier, so a quick history catch-up of why I'm apprenesive...



This was "Stumpy" the bobed GeeVee I finished around 2012, here he as parked up on a (legal) local beach... taxed. MOT'ed insured and on the road... and then the DVLA called me in to a local branch (they had them at the time :laugh: ) for a VIC (Vehicle Identity Checl), as it had been SORN.ed for a couple of years when I was building it, and then it was re-registered, the seating changed from four to two, and the registration changed to "H19H GV" (you know hoe I lake my personal plates!) During the VIC (I presume they normally just check engine and chassis numbers match with their records? the inspector said "You've shortened that?!", and then battle commenced, VOSA became involved, they wanted an SVA on it (this was back before the IVA we have these days), they wanted a letter from Suzuki saying that after I had removed a "crumble zone" from the rear, that the vehicle was still safe to be on the road... I retorted about the number of bobbed Land Rovers and Discoverys that were out there at the time, but basically got nowhere... so Stumpy was sold off as off-road use only, and I vowed never to alter a chassis again... hence why the Boogie is a completely standard chassis, with a "sligthly" (!) modified body so it looks like a buggy, but is still obviously a Jimny at heart...

SO. after that quick history lesson, the upshot is... if I were to register the buggy as now a two seater, change the colour from blue to yellow, and also put the "X 8GGY" registration on it, it might set off alarm bells at DVLA HQ (again)...

So, it would be much easier to un-Sorn it, MOT it, and insure it still as a BLUE Jimny, and let the insurance company know of the modifications (also sending photos in) and then just change the registration number...

So... today, a test patch...



Cheap, easy, hard-wearing and easy to patch up... Hammerite Smooth BLUE... :woohoo:

And it'll go well with it's blue stable mate the NGV I've recently bought and lifted...

So I think BLUE is the new Yellow...?

I believe but could be wrong that you don't have to notify a change of colour if it is a vinyl wrap so you could go yellow later?

the law has been changed now you will need to inform the DVLA and the insurance company

Perhaps just get it back on the road in blue, then change to yellow at a later date, less changes in one go for the easily confused muppets of the ministry.

Anon.

Daniel30 wrote: the law has been changed now you will need to inform the DVLA and the insurance company

Inform them of what Dan'?