cotswoldiver said:
I'm certain The Councillor will be able to put this totally into perspective with pearls of logical wisdom to bring either smiles of joy to our faces or nods of agreement all round .. or something so off the wall, but so right
crikey; nothing like a bit of pressure
i have
tried to avoid this topic, but that's like a red rag to a bull isn't it :wink:
strangely enough the first volksworld i ever bought (may '97) had matt keene's bus on the cover. one of the modifications he'd undertaken (according to the article) was to fit a bay window ball joint beam to it (an £1800 samba - yes you read that right) nowadays he's fitting splitty K&L beams to bays... funny how perceptions and indeed fashions change.
now, when i was an adolescent i did a lot of tinkering with cars... i had a mate with similar interests, but whereas he was more into the driving side of things, i was more into the engineering, and although what we cobbled together on his drive out of what would nowadays be prime resto material (i remember one beautiful brown MKI escort estate that we, er, ruined :roll: ) was basically a load of ****, it all worked, it was legal, and we went on rallies and time trials and all that and i'm still around to tell the tale.
he eventually got into minis, i can't stand the damn things, blah blah blah and then i left the area to go to college and although i studied engineering, most of what i was doing was either in the classroom or in well-equipped factories with safety legislation coming out of every nook & cranny, and i thought my days of arc-eye and split fingernails were behind me, especially after an almost exactly 10 year period of what i guess would be termed 'mild depression' bookended by the illness and subsequent death of my mum and the birth of my son.
why am i on about this ?
well, it was that article, and just a paragraph or two about matt building his own turbo system, and the later article about his oval, along with other things obviously, which inspired me once again to pick up my spanners and start building (well, not technically *building*; more like talking about building :roll: ) my own interpretation of the perfect bus.
my life has changed beyond all recognition even from say three years ago, so it's a somewhat lengthy process, but i've always kept half an eye on matt keene and what he's building because of that original article... a bit of a hero of mine if you will; not in a film-star kind of way but just that i have an admiration of him and the things he builds.
which brings us to the grey bus.
it's dead good obviously 8)
in fact to avoid any
possible misunderstandings it's one of the 'best' buses i've ever seen although worrying about him thinking that i was a mentalist stopped me having a good crawl about underneath it when we were camped within touching distance of it in belgium
but is (was) it really
exactly what you want(ed) ? have you really researched it thoroughly ?
i'm glad the bus has sold in a way because then this can't be misconstrued as jeopardising a potential sale, but it's a hell of a lot of money for something so *niche* oriented isn't it ?
things that fetch big money in this 'scene' seem to me to be very low mileage original unrestored buses, which it can't be because it's not in OG paint... perfect 'matching numbers' restos; well, it's not that 'cos it hasn't been restored... very rare models; well by the amount of imported '67 LHD westys you see just on these pages it's hardly a KDF wagen in terms of scarcity... or just beautifully engineered 'custom' works.
well, it'll certainly be that, but in terms of the individual parts there are buses out there with bigger engines, brakes aren't really my thing so i can't comment there, but there are lower buses and there are buses not rolling on replica wheels and so on and so on.
stick everything it has got TOGETHER though and you've got a wonderful package, but as clem says (and he knows a bit about these things) there's NOTHING on it that can't be recreated and i'm betting with a couple of weeks to think it through you'd probably have designed something in your head that was very similar, but not
exactly the same because as was said on the other thread that bus was designed and built BY matt keene FOR matt keene and you're not him.
windsurfer said:
I am bohemian and turn heads wherever I go (ho ho ho)!
I want something that's a bit different and original.
looks like it's up to you to create something special then, and if you've got £13500 to play with you're halfway there already :twisted:
*good luck*
8)
