New Bumper

New Bumper

After driving into a low wall in a Tesco Express car park a year or so ago it bent and damaged by rear bumper on the right hand side.

Bumper Vs Wall - 1-0 to Bumper.

As you can see the wall came off worst!

Anyway the bumper needed replacement as it was starting to rust and look terrible.

Found a e-bay discounted one from Status VW who sell Just Kamper returns for £91 Bargain!

It arrived and sent it off to local Powder coaters for a 2 coats of white powder coat for £40.

Went to fit it - Oh dear! - Brackets are correct but in completely the wrong place!

So new bumpers brackets are about 100mm in the wrong place!

So cut through old spot welds. Fitted Brackets to the van and tacked welded the brackets to the bumper once alignment was checked.

The spot weld did blister the power coat but only visible as 3 spots on top on both sides.

Should have trial fitted BEFORE PAINTING! but I just thought it was advertised as a direct swap stock Brazilian bumper!

Here is the end result:

I am not going to buy any more parts other than stock!

Thanks to Matt for the use of his welding & grinding expertise.

Gearbox Replacement Procedure

Brazilian Bay - Gearbox Replacement

This is a summary guide of my Gearbox replacement.

The Brazilian Bay Kombi gearbox is made in Brazil and is known to have reliability / poor quality manufacture and is best replaced by a German Gearbox.

Here is the progress summary of my Gearbox replacement. Basically its a Late IRS Beetle Gearbox from a 1300-1600cc Late Beetle (1302/1303s Models with the 1600s being the best)

In this case I swapped the RP code Brazilian Bay Gearbox with a 1302s 1600 AH code gearbox

Firstly find and select a suitable gearbox here is my AH code gearbox (new CV joints or Beetle CV joints are required as beetle Gearboxes have a 94mm Diameter CV joint and Bus / Brazilian Bays use a 100mm so you will need to have Bus Outer & Drive shafts and Beetle Inner CV joints)

You need to clean the gearbox and remove old CV joints.

Remove rear bumper & Valance:

Remove Engine:

Remove Old Gearbox:

Swap Over Nose Cone & Hockey stick from Old to new:

Install Beetle CV Joints on van:

Install new gearbox & connect up:

Refit engine. Test gearbox while still on axle stands to ensure all gears work.

Once satisfied away you go with a German Quality Gearbox.

Full comprehensive write up of each phase of my install is on my T2bay bay blog.

http://t2bay.blogspot.co.uk/

I will include this in a full step by step guide in the next version of the service manual also found on my blog.