So Pepper’s sitting on the drive in pieces, and I’m a student with very limited funds….
– I had planned to leave Pepper on the drive until the summer, until I’ve got a “proper” job after finishing uni (I’m in my 3rd and final year by the way) but even then it would be unlikely that I would be able to save quick enough to get her fixed in 2010, and that’s assuming I walk straight into a job out of uni!
My intentions were to split the body and chassis, remove all the dodgy repairs and have her alkali dipped (circa £1000) and then pay my local welder/fabricator Paul Coleman (www.coltechclassics.co.uk) to fit new heater channels, repair the a and b posts and tackle the horrible mess around the springplates. But a few calculations brought up figures in the thousands, and I just don’t have that kind of money, nor anywhere to dry store Pepper until I can afford the repairs. No dry storage = Everything gets worse.
Then a tax rebate of £600 came in from working in my gap year and I started to think about how I could spend it… Perhaps I could buy a welder to repair Pepper myself? but then again I don’t have anywhere to store a welder and limited experience. Maybe I should pay someone to make a start as-is? but how far will they get realistically? without splitting the body/chassis I wouldn’t be happy to start repairs, and having no garage to keep her dry in makes that kinda hard, especially as I’m at uni with no time to go home and split the bug. Eventually I came to the conclusion that there’s nothing I could do about it for the time being, so she’d just have to sit on the drive until the summer, and I’d decide then. I knew I was just hiding from the truth, that I don’t have the facilities, abilities or money to repair her and inevitably she’d get so bad that I’d have to scrap her…
Then whilst browsing Ebay one evening I noticed that a local girl had her ’69 beetle, one I’ve often admired, up for sale – and watched as the bids racked up and up, way out of my price range.
Fast forward a month or so and I see that the ’69 is up for sale again, this time with a seized engine. I spoke to her through a friend of a friend to see how much she’d want to sell it for cash-in-hand out of eBay but she said she needed to try to recover her costs so she’d leave it to run through eBay. She asked if I’d like to come view it, but I had to decline as coming home from uni to look at a bug with absolutely no idea if I could afford it seemed pointless. Towards the end of the auction the bids started mounting up and soon it had sold for almost £800.
That’s that I thought, keep dreaming! But a couple of days later my girlfriend got a text from Nikita asking if I was still interested as the guy who turned up to buy it had found a puddle of water in the passenger foot-well (one piece windows with incorrect seals) and so didn’t want it anymore. As I was home that weekend for my sister’s birthday anyway I said yes and popped round to have a look. The window seal seemed like an easy fix, but talking to her mum made it clear that Nikita really didn’t want to sell, but desperately needed to fund her uni course. Not wanting to offend her I didn’t ask about movement on the price, and said I’d have another look if it was still for sale come my Xmas holidays – Dec 17th.
A week or two later I txt’d Nikita to see if the bug was gone, and confirm I’d still be interested come the 17th, but she told me her mum’s boyfriend had sourced a new buyer – for £550!! Bollocks I thought, and told her that if for any reason he didn’t come through I would definitely buy it for £550. She said OK, but told me the guy was coming to pick it up at the weekend and was unlikely to pull out as he does them up for a living.
I asked her to let me know, but by the middle of the following week I still hadn’t heard anything. Assuming it had been collected I txt’d her a final time to confirm but she said he was messing her around, and kept delaying the pick-up so if I wanted it, it was mine for £550. I think she was a bit surprised when I called her back straight away, and within an hour I was on my way home to collect it!!
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