Hi all, new member and baja owner here. I do a yearly camping trip to north stradbroke island with my mates, we have taken a variety of 4wd's over the years but this yeah was my first time in the baja, i bought it at the start of december, so only really had 1 month to work on it before the 2nd of jan departure.

The first pic is when i first got it, it looked rough but we could see the potential. Its a 1961 i believe, 1600 twin port, not sure on the box but it seems very long geared so maybe a later model box? 31x 10's on the rear.



The beach conditions at main beach-straddie were the toughest ive seen in 5 years, im not a novice when it comes to off roading or beach driving (not an expert either) Almost everybody got stuck getting off the beach adn the cuttings to the campsite. Some unlucky buggers with very expensive camper trailers and really well kitted fourbies could not get up the cuttings at all, some had to winch the trailers up, some just gave up.

There were even a few gooses who got stuck going onto the beach, and thats downhill!! driver error there. The reason for the tough conditions was a very dry month up to christmas and far more people on the beach than previous years, the sand was like powder and some of the ruts were knee deep - No exaggeration.

Needless to say, the bug did struggle in the soft sand. I was trying to find the line between wheelspin when taking off or bogging down. By the end of the trip i figured out some of the baja driving techniques of letting it rollup on top of the soft sand when stopping rather than digging it in with the brakes.

Anyway the pics tell the story od what the beach was like











The pics dont really show how tough that cutting was. it is longer and steepr than it looks and was soft sand most of the way, very little run up opportunity. The rangie was in teh low box, diff lock on and the V8 opened right up. I took a run high rpms in 1st, made it about halfway but was able to back out. Then tried again in 2nd with alot of speed, but the soft stuff just washed soo much speed off i ended up bogged in some really soft powdery sand. The bug was fully loaded adn quite heavy, also i still had about 15psi in the tyres.

Welcome!

Looks a nice baja and a great trip

Great photos.
Top looking Baja!

Great pics mate. Straddie is well worth it. Great it's still dog friendly.

You need to run lower pressures, fully loaded 12-14 PSI and 8-10 (or even less) empty for very soft conditions like you had there, esp with a smaller engine.

good to see Vdubs on the beach. I've lived on Bribie most of my life (25+ years) and brother in law had a buggie and it was just trail and era for us getting the right set up and adapting to drive a 2 wheel drive on the beach. Once he got it sorted he went anywhere my hilux did and alot quicker as well.

thanks guys. re the tyre pressures once i had emptied it out i did drop the rears to 8psi, that helped alot with traction, but the motor would struggle when you had full traction on both wheels and sand halfway up the wheels.

Definately going to do a bigger motor or lower gearing this year. or both !!

Great pics niall. You should also let your front tyres down (about 12psi) as this also makes a difference. If its powder go 6psi in rear but no drifts or donuts ! Maybe you should come up to teewah for a day of testing,( I like to call it)

Great pics, looks like you had a great time, and the Baja looks great too.
We camped up at Teewah last week and had 16 Buggies/Bajas there.

If you want to catch up with more Buggy/Baja guys then check out the Manx Forum
http://www.manxclub.org 

welcome aboard!
great pics n story
Sweet!!

A good no-nonsense looking baja there, love the colour and great pics as well

Awesome pics, thanks for sharing. hope to see more!

Again thanks all for the positive responses, the pics really show the baja in its natural environment.

Quote:

Originally posted by ancientbugger A good no-nonsense looking baja there, love the colour and great pics as well

Amazing looking Baja!
No frills is a good approach, "Chrome won't get you home"

Looks like you've had a great beach trip and now there's plenty of learning to be done! Cause offroading in a VW can be a lot different to offroading in a 4WD.

Looks like your car is King and Link pin front and swingaxle on the rear.
Is the car 6V, 12V or a combination of both?
And more pictures of the engine and inside! We all love pictures!


Smiley

TRue, a simple baja is a reliable baja.
Great looking vw and great looking trip (cute dog too)

Matt has a point, might want to check your tyre pressure gauge, it doesn't look like you are getting much bag in those tyres at all

Hi Smiley, good to hear a comment from you since i have read hours worth of your posts in the past

you are right , it is a king pin front end and swing axel rear, 1600tp stock, 12v electrics which are mostly non standard. gearbox unknown but cruises at 2450rpm in top gear with the 31 inch rear tyres

the engine looks good after the work so ill get some pics of that soon, but the interior is horrible so i wont be showing that off any time soon

Just a quick replay to say that more updates are coming soon, the bug has sat idle for 4 months but ive got back onto it, gave it a really good clean up , rust proofing, lubrication and now making new seat mounting brackets.

I wasnt a big fan of the seats that were in it, some sort of 80's japanese luxury seats from what i could see, very wide with over sized headrests, really reduced visibility from the headrests and they were so wide that access to teh handbrake and seatbelt stalks was limited.

I really wanted to get some cool seats like the corbeau
baja or something along those lines but the budget just doesnt cover it. I just want to get this thing rego'd again and daily it. So we opted for some early Jaguar XJS seats that have been done in vinyl at some point, they are comfy but designed for a small cabin so they are thin in the back with small headrests and a good folding mechanism etc.

The oil bath air filter proved to be a failure for off road so im fitting a different style this week.

After sitting around for months we had a few problems, The coil had fallen over, voltage regulator too., all the carbie linkages were seized and the exhaust was completely stuffed.

We dipped into our jaguar spare parts department again and got a really good quality second hand all stainless middle silencer off a 4.2 E type which happened to be the perfect size for the mounting location on the bug, (pics coming soon of all this stuff.) I found an old 180 bend from another exhaust system and gave it a decent salami cut for the tailpipe

The good news with the muffler is that it sounds great, its quite a few years old so its really made well, all stainless and the E type has 2 of these so ive got an identical one spare.

You guys are gonna think im crazy when you see how high these seat mounts are, but ive always felt i was sitting too low in the bug, not great vis over the bonnet when off roading and my smaller mates look like a 10 year old kid when they are driving , so i really raised the seats up, im not a small guy, around 6'5 but even now i have probably 8 inches of headroom. so heaps even if wearing a helmet.

Thats it for now, as i said ill take some pics of all this stuff because i know nobody likes pictureless updates. Be patient !!