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

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'?