Panel Van - Day 1

If you're in the UK and reading this within a short time the date on which I'm writing, then you will be well aware of how unhelpful the weather has been recently, and given that I have no garage, you will understand why I've made little progress with the Beetle. My server and MacBook are doing nicely, hence the recent lack of blog entries, however another factor with the Beetle is that I still haven't managed to get my hands on a replacement heater channel for the right hand side. VWHeritage have been telling me that "we should have some in a week or two" for a couple of months now however I'm inclined to stick with them a) because they've given me good service on all the other stuff I've needed and b) that if they have none I reckon my chances of finding one anywhere else are probably so low as to make it hardly worth looking.

The relevance of the right hand heater channel, given that it's the left hand side of the car that failed the MOT, is that the one on the car has been welded to the floorpan by a previous owner. Thus I cannot lift the body to sort out the left hand side without also replacing the right hand side. The Beetle is therefore off the road until I get that heater channel and although there are things that I could have been getting on with, on the odd days when it hasn't been raining, I've been more inspired to work on erecting a summer house Dee and I can now sit 'in the garden' enjoy the English summer without getting wet.

However, faced with the prospect of being grounded for an as yet unknown length of time I began to look for alternative solutions, and when my dear old dad announced that a savings policy had matured and that he'd like to by me a prezzy, like another car maybe?

Now while I wouldn't really want another car, even as a stop gap, it is a fact that when I was reading through all those back issues of VolksWorld magazine as part of my research for buying the Beetle, I also found myself looking at vans and wondering about the advantages of such a vehicle. I'll post more about it later but the bottom line is this:



i.e. I now own a 1971 Bay Panel Van as well as a 1969 Beetle.