1970 Bay (Outlaw-ish)

[murph2309]

Swiftly on then to the outside. And those biiiiiiig panels. Some might even say the T2 Early Bay is a bit 'slab-sided'. Of course I again offered Steve the sage advice about the necessity of using long-blocks to make sure it's ripple free. Once again he was most grateful for my seasoned experience in this field.

So a skim of filler....





Some primer



And on to a coat of epoxy which was then left to cure for a few weeks before sanding flat. Apparently this stuff is not fun to work with because it's so hard. Which sounds good from a protection perspective









And then on to the main event..... full colour. And this is when the whole build suddenly started to take shape for me. I think getting paint on the car is such a cool part of the build. The amount of work that goes in to getting a car to this stage is huge, and most of it won't ever see the light of day again. But the results of all that hard work really started to show.....











So there we were. Shell sorted for rust, painted top and bottom, and frankly looking fantastic - so pleased with how this turned out. And now about ready to go on its wheels, which means it must be time for.....

[jtparr]

Tyres...?

[Darren65]

Beautiful ...... the sides on so many Bay's look like pudding and full of filler whereas yours looks as fresh as it did when it left the factory. Great job

[murph2309]

Thanks Darren - it does look great, they've had to put so little filler on the bus that it really does look factory fresh - the lines are all crisp and the door gaps look very cool too.....

[murph2309]

So.... Wheels.... there are so many different options you can go with for a bus it's quite overwhelming.

I love this picture, it comes from a really cool free mag called Hayburner who did a great feature on all the wheels they've ever seen on aircooled VWs - this was one page of 3! Over 100 different types...



I love Fuchs, Gas-burners, Moon Discs, BBS.....But I really love the American Racing Torque Thrust and wanted a set of them.





Couple of problems.... I wanted to keep the wide 5 bolt pattern, and I learned about this thing called 'offset' Which basically means the spacing of the wheel from the hub to the outside rim. And American racing wheels are made for Yank cars...obvs, so they just werent going to fit under the arches. Bobbins....

So, much research and looking around at pictures of wheels on buses I found a set that I hadn't seen before, and looked pretty much the spec I wanted. Torque-thrust look with a 205 PCD 'Wide 5' bolt pattern.

And so the decision was made.... Enkei Flat-Fours - made in Japan.... Lovely wheels, great bronze-ish matt centres and shiny around the rim. Perfect for the theme of the bus; low key paint with chrome accent. So here you go...





So I went and bought some....



They're just lovely in real life. 5.5x15s. Should fit well under the bus and give it not too much 'look at me' but something different to Fuchs - which look great, but felt a bit of a 'lazy' choice. Wheels make such a difference to the whole thing, so it felt good to have made the choice - it kind of seals the overall look and guides the rest of the build.

Of course, to make them really work, you have to get the stance right.....

[murph2309]

Which means you have to get your suspension right. And I also wanted disc brakes all round too. And on Wide 5 bolt pattern, so it looked 'old on the outside' but with modern stopping power and hopefully to reduce the body-roll on cornering and that horrible tendency to drift across motorway lanes whenever there's anything more than a gentle breeze. And I didn't want it 'firm'. One of the lovely things about buses is the way they seem to float on the road. So quite a tough brief....

So:

Lowered somewhere between the two extremes of factory and slammed....
Wide 5 bolt pattern
Servo-assisted disk brakes all round
Reduced body-roll if possible - not sure yet about ARBs - they do add ground clearance issues, but can be fitted after the fact if needed
Not too firm - there's a family going in the back of this....

[murph2309]

To get disc brakes on the front of an early bay, you need a narrowed front beam - there are a few options out there and they can be 2" or 4" narrowed. I wanted the wheels to fill the arches, so we decided on a 2" narrowed beam - the additional space then used up by the disc brakes so that the wheels then come back to look stock.

We also wanted to alter the ride height, so we also needed dropped spindles. And we wanted discs, so we would have to use the late bay hubs / disc set-up with adapter plates to allow the wide 5 pattern.

There are a few people out there who do front beams, but the one that came out top for us was a great package from a company called French Slammer. Really lovely engineered piece of kit....



We got the 8cm narrowed, and comes complete with adjusters, steering arm, new steering pin, servo mount, trailing arms with new ball joints (modified lowers) and new adjustable tie rods.

They are ready to fit and all you need to decide is what dropped spindles to fit. We chose their dropped spindles that would give us 2.5 - 3.5" drop when combined with the adjustment available on the beam. Which we felt would be perfect...



For stopping power, we used a set of stock late bay hubs, but with upgraded calipers, discs, pads and braided steel lines. So we went for Black Diamond drilled and vented discs, brakes & lines. Indulgent.... but serious peace of mind...and who doesn't like black discs

[murph2309]

The rears posed a little more of an issue. We needed adjustable spring plates so that we could get the stance right at the rear (and we're going level, not raked ) French Slammer also do a great set of these.



The problem was how we were going to get disc brakes on the rear - nothing stock would fit. However, Steve knows a company called Creative Engineering, and they make a rear 205 PCD disc kit. It's really clever, and kind of has 'inboard' discs, so that you can fit them behind the wheels. Looks like this (and take forever to build.... this took nearly 4 months from order to arrival....) But very much worth waiting for. Beautifully engineered, hand-built, and a perfect solution for us.



And all four corners were going to go on standard shock absorbers - we can change them out later to trick adjustable if we want, but as we were trying not to be too firm, and keeping a standard-ish feel to it, we've decided to start on stock shocks.

So, there you go. That's the suspension plan. Now it's time to fit it all.....

[911hillclimber]

All that reads perfect imho, no rack n pinion then?
might be dreaming, but I think I've seen a rack substituted for the box and a drag link runs from the rack to the main link (on the axle in your picture).

Creative do a conversion, might expensive.
https://creative-engineering.com/wp-con ... 68x268.jpg

Looking forward now all has been revealed to the geo set up.

[murph2309]

Yeah - we looked for a rack - but tbh, all too much effort. The creative engineering option is only for upto 67 from memory, so Splitties only. No-one seems to do anything that's proven that I could find. So we're going with a re-built steering box. It's never going to be 'precise', but it should be better.

Anyway, that's the route we're going....

[murph2309]

A big pile of lovely suspension and braking bits.... ready to go.



And starting with the fronts







Nice to see the copper-slip

And the servo and new master cylinder



And.... I can't find any pictures of the rear set-up Will see if I can get one and maybe post it later...

[murph2309]

And here was another of those 'YEAH' moments....

[Bootsy]

Great updates

Any pics of the rear suspension?

[mycar]

Looks a bit high at the back.

[KS]

Love Enkei wheels - good choice!