Found a few spots in the body that need to be taken care of...plus I snapped off three fender bolts on the left-front corner.
Bob came over and welded in the turn signal holes. Going to go with the Mexi-bumper setup.
Still a lot of work to be done here...
But it's at about this point that I got a bit of a crazy idea, which is probably going to be a little controversial. I'm pulling a fair bit of budget out of the Family Heirloom project to repaint and rewire the Rally Bug, and with the transmission sitting on the floor I started to think about something. The one thing I
really want in the Family Heirloom is a five speed Porsche transmission. It's a no-go due to two reasons: a) budget. I'm just not prepared to buy and rebuild a Porsche trans for the car. b) it requires cutting out the torsion bar splines on the inside to mount it where I want it. Thus negating the "can always go back to stock" ethos. Well, I've decided that it probably doesn't matter. Let's be honest, it's never going back to stock while I'm the owner of it! If I were to pull the 901 gearbox and the rally bug, fuel injected, motor for the '75 Heirloom project, it would be the perfect setup for that car. But what about the Rally Bug?
In some ways, I kind of feel like the Salzburg replica has served its purpose. I've had a good 11-12 years of enjoyment of it, it's had all its magazine features, but it's not doing anything more than just being stagnant. Swapping over the Subaru wheels pretty much ended the "replica" part, so can I experiment further?? I was shuffling cars in the storage area of my property, and scrapping some parts cars that have fulfilled their purpose and overstayed their welcome...when it hit me. I have a complete Subaru setup waiting to go in a Beetle. I bought the kit necessary to do either a 2.5 naturally aspirated setup, OR the twin cam WRX setup. As part of the car shuffling, I had the scrapper yank out the engine and transmission of one so I have a 2.5 RS core motor (to go with everything else I pulled from an earlier car). I recently traded my EZ30 six-cylinder to a buddy for his WRX motor...so I've got a turbo option as well.
So, yeah, going to go Subaru in the Rally Bug, thus giving me the aircooled engine/trans setup for the Family Heirloom. Settles the budget issues for me, but totally sets me back timewise! Ha.
