1958 Berkeley Special

wheels777 wrote: I want a Berkeley body

Sounds like time to join a gym!

TheDoctor wrote:

Toyman01 wrote: I have that exact same generator. It burns a little oil, but still runs like a champ. You need to do a build thread on it as well. I like the way the car is coming together. Very cool.

Great generator, quiet and low speed. Does your have the aux shaft on the generator end? I heard that this model was used on utility trucks. Sadly, I don't have a lot of pics of this build.

No aux shaft, but it did come off of a utility truck. A bucket truck to be specific. 1800 rpm generators are the best.

Pulled the car back out of the shed toward the end of April 2008, ready to get back to work.

I guess this baby picture is becoming somewhat of a spring tradition.

Took a road trip toward the end of May to visit my wife's sister in Philadelphia. Also happened to be a junk yard there with an '81 Toyota Corolla rear axle. Driving with the spool was getting old and I was going to have to do something about the rear brakes in order to have emergency brakes.

July 2008.

A bit of sad time. I'd decided to sell my (Super clean, one owner, little old lady driven, still had the window sticker) GSX. At the time it was the closest I'd ever come to owning something nice, and I had taken good care of it. This car predated my wife and kid; it was also a kind of link to freer days with less responsibility.

I had several reasons for selling:

1) I didn't drive it much anymore.

2) When I did drive it, I drove it like a jerk because I loved the sound of the big turbo, open exhaust, and blow off valve. I was starting to feel too old to be a boy racer.

3) I needed the money for a new roof on my crappy house that I was already underwater on.

It was time to sell, although I promised to write myself and IOU for a replacement (but maybe more grown-up) impractical car.

Obviously didn't get much done on the Berkeley at this time.

This project is super sweet.

So how exactly does one subscribe to a project thread. This is too cool.

akylekoz wrote: So how exactly does one subscribe to a project thread. This is too cool.

Click the heart icon under the Add Post button. You will receive e-mail notifications if there are posts made in the thread since your last visit. You may view your watched threads by clicking the Jump To... menu and selecting Your Watchlist.

aaaaaaaaand I'm spent.

I think you have everyone on this forum looking at dwarf chassis and Berkeley bodies.

Aug 2008

Most car projects end up going off the rails at some point. Some get back on track and many others end up on Craigslist. Thinking back, July of 2008 was probably the point where the Berkeley Project got off course. In a little less than 2 years I had made good progress. I had a running and driving car but cosmetically it probably looked worse than when I bought it. Family commitments and other projects around the house kept the Berkeley on the back burner, but what really stopped things was the roof. Our house was a poorly designed and hastily built ranch from the 50's and keeping with the theme, it was poorly and hastily maintained for 50 years. Cosmetically it looked pretty good, but scratching any surface was scary. When we bought the house it had a fairly recent set of shingles and they were covering one or in some places two layers of not so great shingles, which in turn were covering a patchwork of not so great decking. The contractor was having a hard time getting the shingles off without going through the roof. Needless to say the roof ended up costing way more than we planned once we replaced most of the decking and corrected a number of ventilation issues.

Skylights are a great way to add natural light to any room.

So, the Berkeley sat on the sidelines for 2008, while I focused on the house and some less demanding car projects.

Excellent little Berk. Also the 1G DSM is great. I've owned many DSM/GVR4's and I just can't bring myself to do it anymore with them. Love/hate for sure.

I like this. I like this a lot. Can you take a day off of work and just finish the whole story so I can binge read without being left wanting? That'd be great.

I had high hopes for 2009, my daughter was almost getting big enough to be helpful, I was caught up on house stuff and I'd sold off the TDI (which was starting to eat into my time with annoying repairs).

In June the company I worked for went bankrupt. We took a pay-cut and the layoffs started (they seemed almost random). I had a lead on a good job, but it was in Germany. By July, the economic downturn was looking prolonged and serious, and I had no assurances of continued employment. Germany was starting to look like an attractive option, so I pulled the trigger and started packing. We planned on shipping our main household stuff and storing what we didn't need with my in-laws in upstate NY. I'd have to store as many of my tools and projects as possible too but my in-laws didn't have room. Anything I couldn't store, I would need to get rid of.

We didn't know how long we would be in Germany, so I prepped the Berkeley for the long haul. I emptied the fuel system, changed the oil, and fogged the cylinders, then I sent it and most of my tools to live in exile at the family farm in Michigan. Sadly I had to get rid of many of my spares, workbenches, and my favorite beer fridge (the beer fridge found a good home with a friend in NY).

Over the course of the summer we cleared out, sold the house and the other cars. By fall we were living in Germany and the Berkeley was now more than 4000 miles away.

...my only consolation was this GTI Cabrio and the Autobahn

Germany was a great experience, but eventually we started looking to return home. By 2013, the US economy was improving and after the facility in upstate NY closed, a number of my former coworkers had relocated to South East Michigan. By fall of 2013, we had bought a house and moved to Michigan.

Most of the first year back was spent settling in and getting the house in order. By fall of 2014, I was ready to dust off the Berkeley and get back to work.

Barn Find?

I am loving this thread!!! Just checked your profile, and saw that you're in Detroit. Southeast MI and northern Ohio has a rather large GRM contingent. We may have to adopt you into the fold...

+1

So can we assume that you'll be driving this to the get together in a few weeks

I'm half expecting that you dropped the daughter's plastic car body onto a kart chassis. That may be the only way you can top this build!

grafmiata wrote: I am loving this thread!!! Just checked your profile, and saw that you're in Detroit. Southeast MI and northern Ohio has a rather large GRM contingent. We may have to adopt you into the fold...

Yes I see a lot of SE Michigan folks on here. I'm up in the Northern suburbs.

XLR99 wrote: I'm half expecting that you dropped the daughter's plastic car body onto a kart chassis. That may be the only way you can top this build!

Crossed my mind, but my daughter has already moved onto a new purple power wheels (she still lets me drive).

I'm really enjoying this, keep up the good work.

I'm a native Michigander myself (living in CO now), good to see there's a strong contingent in the area. Seeing all of these big shops makes it look more and more inviting to move back to the land of reasonably priced real estate.

By mid Nov 2014, the body was in the basement for some door fabrication and some electrical layout work.

10 feet of pegboard was a great way to get (and keep) everything lined up and level.

Seems we moved back to MI at the same time. 1) Great project, 2) that's the nicest basement in the entire state of Michigan, I'm bettin.

Acme Lab Rat wrote: ... that's the nicest basement in the entire state of Michigan, I'm bettin.

If I ever manage to clean all the junk out of it! Still have boxes I haven't opened since the move.

So ideally I would structurally join the 2 body sections and glass in the door section. However, I have 2 reasons not to do this:

1) The body is in the basement and I need to be able to move it on my own. Also need to test fit and remove a million times on the chassis, and it's easier for one person to do in 2 sections.

2) It would probably look like crap, since I don't have a lot of experience with fiberglass over such a large area. I could have used the original doors as a guide, but I didn't want to chop them up to add 5 inches since they are still good parts that a 'real' Berkeley owner could use.

Anyway I came across this desk at one of those really expensive home stores and I got to thinking...

Wing Desk

I thought the aluminum was a nice look. Lot of exposed rivet/screws, definitely right for a race car. Why not try my hand at building Aluminum skinned doors. The shape was simple enough, no compound curves, I figured I could make them just like airplane wings.

Fairly crude, but actually turned out pretty well. This is the backside of the first door I did.

By early spring of 2015, I had an aluminum set of elongated Berkeley doors.