Preparing for the new pet

This weekend I had a little spare time to clean and prepare the premises for the arrival of the new project. The plans for next weekend is to bring home the restoration project I always dreamed about. I have waited over a year for this now, and the restoration prosess has been circulating in my head over and over again. Knowing little or nothing about T2's, I had a year to prepare my self and read a lot of good litterature on the subject. Just barely seeing the car with a torchlight, I know there will be some surprises when this baby is brought out into daylight. I have a little gut-feeling of what to expect, but can't help beeing very exited indeed. I started to work on the jig/trolley/rottisserie for the car, as it needs some heavy surgery and rustrepairs. In a week or so I will be back with some more information and pictures...

Collecting new pieces

As the winter is closing in on us, I'm preparing to take on a new project in the Sechs Volt garage. This is in true Sechs Volt style a typical forest-wreck-object that needs to be put back to life. I have already done two Type 1 rescues, and therefore know a little about buying projects in cardboard boxes. There are always a lot of bits missing, so you need to have spare parts at hand. Of course this time the bar is raised further more, as the bits and pieces for this car is hard to get. This weekend was a swap market in Oslo, and by a strike of luck I found a matching pair of headlamps for the new project. They were maybe a year to new, estimated to be 1954 lamps.

They may give you a clue of what's about to roll into Knechtens Vintage Barn in the near future...

And the search for further parts continue =)

Average norwegian forest beetle

Just as every other weekend in Norway, this weekend was no exeption, and another interesting object was pulled out of "storage". In this case a 1950 standard beetle with mecanichal brakes. If this beetle turnes out to be a real norwegian car, it's quite rare. Norway did unfornately not receive a lot of beetles in 1950. As you see from the pictures the wreck had some visitors over the years, but a lot of cool stuff still intact. How about the patina star-coil? There is more out there, so keep looking =) The Sechs Volt have a sweet spot for cars like these... We wish the owner good luck, and hope to see it on the road some day. You will find more on the VW Norge forum (in norwegian).

Oslo - Hessisch roundtrip

I had heard about this meeting in a long time. Beeing to Bad Camberg once, I had an idea of what it could be like. But everyone claimed that these two meetings could not be compared. There were something special about Hessisch, and it just had to be experienced to understand. And for me it was essential to drive an aircooled car all the way down. Oval 57 and Splitboy had been here in the 56 porsche engined car 4 years earlier, so I knew it could be done. I tried to pick out some pictures to explain the trip here. This was a milstone in the VW hobby for me, and things will never be the same. One thing is the beautiful cars, but it is really all about the people...

We had a little Sechs volt meeting prior to the trip to plan some details. For me this was the first time driving a old VW outside scandinavia, and I must admit that I was a little nervous at times. The Abarth carburators had not played very well the last week before take off, and some small things showed up at the 12 th hour. But setting the goal for Hessisch Oldendorf 3 years ago, I was determined that it was the only way to go. And it would be a huge set back not running the Abarths down. As always, it all fell into place the night before. We had enough spareparts among us to build a new car if something broke, and even Oval 57 brought more than the OG tool kit this time.

Then the day was finally there, and everyone showed up at the ferry terminal in Oslo. Øystein of the screwdrivers had just got the coachbuild together, and the crowd was hard to keep away. We were 10 cars leaving for Germany, a very decent group of old VW's. Oval 57 was in charge of booking, and as always everything was according to plan.

We loaded the cars on the ferry and set for Copenhagen. It was without doubt worth the money for the ferry ticket. It was nice to kick back with a few beers and share some old Vw stories. Life can be forgiving sometimes =)

As we passed Hamburg on the way south, we stopped by the Prototyp Museum. And was it all worth it? We were drooling around for an hour and a half, until the museum locked up and kicked us out. It was also good with a little stretch of the legs here. We had a crazy rainweather from Puttgarden, and the Zwitter had about 5 cm of water on the floor as we reached Hamburg. Someone had forgotten to block of the heater inlets under the rear seat.... At this point it was good to have a "race" car without carpets.

Fianlly ready for registration at the HO headquarter. It felt good to be here, and the car parked in the streets of the famous Hessisch Oldendorf.

After lunch friday we had a oportunity to visist the Grundmann collection, a massive VW collection owned by the organizers of HO treffen. Hard to describe in words, as every car in there could easily have a full "feature". Hope to be back here some day... amazing!

Obviosly the town had been hit by vikings at some time in history, and they had put out a warning sign in the shop windows. I'm not sure what they did, but they sure had a decent ride.

Friday evening we took a walk around the camping ground, in a park area just some minutes from the main street. Here we found a lot of friends and cool cars. Among these, Peter Nielsen of the VW Bluehats.

There were lots of cars to see, and some interestng swaps to be found as well. Also had the oportunity to see the kempes barndoor for the first time, the star of the show. The coolest car in a long time...

Saturday was showday no 1, and the streets were filled with cars. Not any kind, pre 57 cars ONLY. I was parked in the split-street, a whole street trough most of the town centre with splits only. Then there were a street or a square for every kind from KDF's to Type 34 Ghias.

I rounded of the saturdays show with a photoshoot together with Igor of vau-max.de. This was a new experience for me, and quite cool to learn some new techniques. He was impressed by the comfort level of the car travelling over 1000 km... NOT =)

Finally we had the oportunity to see the car that everyone have heard about for some time. Paul Rui was on a trip in Germany, and took the effort of stopping by HO with his mindblowing 1950 Porsche. It really give you gossebumps, as it's to good to be true...

The swap market is toghether with Bad Camberg probably the best VW market in the world(?), and maybe also the priciest. But as always there are bargains to be found. The other good thing is that if you really WANT something, you will find it here, even things you didn't know existed.

This is how it looked from above, before the crowd set in. I'm not quite familiar with the numbers, but numbers of 10 thousands were mentioned. Beuatiful surroundings everywhere.

Almost a week after we left the motherland, we had to pack up and head north again. We were so impressed with the meeting and atmosphere in HO, that it was a hard time saying goobye. Poor Fürsten had to take a nap in the Zwitter recliners... Outlavw style =)

After a trouble free trip from Grömitz, were we took a sleepover, we finally reached the ferry in Copenhagen and it was time to lower the shoulders and kick back in the bar. From the ferry and back to my garage it's only a 30 min drive. Somehow it was good to be back with everything intact =)