Welcome

This is a record of the unfolding story of this conversion project and it is necessarily very pictorial. The menu topics down the left hand side will enable you to move around the site as you wish. I have subdivided this account to separate out the conversion work from the general repair work and the embellishments I have decided to add to the project. If you are a first-time visitor, I suggest you start with the introduction and then follow through each section to read the whole account. There is a link back to my cars index page at the bottom of the menu.

I started work on the project in October 1999 and started posting information about what I was doing in December that year. The main part of the work inevitably fell into two parts, the modification work and then the general repairs. The latter is inevitable on a vehicle of this age in a damp country like Britain!

Work went well for the first year as I was able to work on the car virtually every weekend and I had substantially finished the modification work in May 2000. But then in June 2000 I started a new job in Derby which meant relocating much further away from Kent where the car is stored. I then had an enforced rest because of a series of hospital visits for some treatment to my eyes ... I had to avoid any exertion (bending, lifting, etc) for a year and a half.

I started work on the project again in June 2003 on general repairs plus some improvements and have continued working mostly alternate weekends with breaks for holidays, work (including the best part of a year in Tunisia), family commitments, and so on. The car went to the paintshop in February 2005 and re-emerged in May 2007.

By the end of 2007 I had pretty much finished the majority of the wiring including the fitting of new electric window motors, central door locking motors, electric releases for the front hood and tailgate, and an alarm system. Work is on hold for various reasons, including allowing Bryan and Jane to lay a concrete floor to their new workshop. However, I have published a couple of pages on what I’m doing with the releases for the front hood and the tailgate and on the electrics in general. You can find them by clicking on Finishing Off and then Remote Releases or Electrics on the topic index on the left

I was told that VW had actually designed a Type 4 5-door Variant but had no real information about it. Then in March 2008 I heard from Fokko Haanstra who lives in The Netherlands with a lot of information on the development of the Type 4 and you can read about it here. The article is also accessible through the topic index, click on Background and then on VW EA 240 Project.