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Old August 21st 2006, 14:23
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Post Time attack beetle

Hey everyone, thought I'd share my project with you guys and maybe get a build log going here. I'm resurrecting my poor race beetle that's been dormant for nearly 2 years waiting for me to complete this project but was always put on hold because life got in the way. Now that life has been taken care of the beetle's time has come again. Since it's been so long, I want this project to move fast and I'll try to update accordingly.

My goals for this project are:
A wet weight w/ driver of less than 1900lbs.
350-375hp at the wheels
1+ lateral G cornering
Out perform a C6 Z06 on the racetrack
street legal-ish

So far I've already done a '86 944 N/A suspension and brake conversion and raced on it for a couple seasons. Since then I've upgraded to an '87 944 Turbo suspention and brakes (4pots) though it hasn't run since the swap. I'm currently working on a subaru swap (ej20 twin turbo) and bus tranny conversion.

Some test fitting with the stock tranny




New bus tranny, 3.78, 2.06, 1.26, .82, 4.57 R&P, superdiff, HD covers, and TO bearing for now


Gotta do this in multiple parts...
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  #2  
Old August 21st 2006, 14:26
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First load of parts from Summit and Aircooled.net, I meant it when I said moving fast






Already found a problem with the new parts. Put the Corbeau FX1 seat in the car, centered on the seat mount... it barely clears the window, but unfortunately you can't but 2 of these seats side by sidesince they cross the centerline of the car. I'll have to get another picture that shows this. the FX1 Pro looks to be a bit narrower on paper so hopefully I can trade for those.



Can you guess what the final colors will be?
Also the seat brackets need to be modified to put the seat back a bit farther. I pulled the seat tracks back to their rear-most setting and this is what I get.



That's about it for now, I'm waiting on my tranny adapter to mount new tranny and motor to get final ground clearance. Once that's done I can modify the oil pan and rework the megan racing exhaust (it hangs lower than the oil pan)
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Old August 21st 2006, 14:51
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Nice seats!! :righton:
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Old August 21st 2006, 15:05
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keep us posted , i am running 275-300 bhp on the road from a type 1 engine so would be interested to find out what you think running 350 turboed bhps on the track if it is anything like mine a right handfull
all the best
jon
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  #5  
Old August 21st 2006, 16:20
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very nice but that oilpans abit low eh ya I'm canadian
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Old August 21st 2006, 17:44
junkyard oval junkyard oval is offline
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Keep us posted on this one. I have a 56 Oval with the same engine, but with a Porsche trans. Not on the road yet.

Ernie
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  #7  
Old October 8th 2006, 22:11
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Not much done on the beetle this weekend. It seems that compared to the engine and tranny it's all little stuff now and it doesn't seem like i'm making progress.

I got the pedals in and some sheet metal backing bent up behind it. Started plumbing the brake system and finished up the front. Got the slave cylinder in place along with a few other small things.

Wasted a lot of time trying to get the decklid hinge pins out and they won't budge. Shot them with pb blaster and still nothing. Is there a trick to driving out the pins? I wanted to get my quick release pins in because it'll save me time when I'm fitting everything.
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Old October 8th 2006, 23:09
super vw super vw is offline
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Try using an Air hammer on those hinge pins (carefully, keep pressure on at all times under the trigger)

Not to be an A hole, but some of those trans mount welds look poor. what kind of welder, materials thinkness and set up are you running?
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  #9  
Old October 23rd 2006, 03:31
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long overdue update....
Our connection on the hill is finally starting to cooperate, appearantly there was a lot of radio interference where we get our signal from and everything went dead. We're back up and working again so the updates can continue...

super vw,

no offence taken, I'll take advice from anyone that knows more than me on anything. I did all the welding and I started about a month to 6 weeks ago. We also had friend over who taught welding, and he pointed out that the settings we were using were "not optimal" to put it lightly. I also learned how to weld from a book, no one really taught me until this weekend. The welds look pretty bad for the most part but according the the master welder they'll hold for what I'm going to put them through. All of the metals used for mounts are at least 1/8" thick, in some places doubled up for 1/4". As far as the welder it a little 110v miller.


As far as the car goes I got the radiator mounts finished after scrapping what I previously made and re-designing (which seemed to be a theme this weekend). Made a mount for the remote resivoirs and bolted/plumbed them in. Fabbed up a raised shifter base and shiftrod locator but I'll probably srap that as well because it looks hideous :P I realized after finishing about 90% of it that I can get a shifter for a sandrail that will look and probably work better. Started wiring, got the main harness in front to rear and got about halfway done in the front. If anyone knows where I can find the pig tails that plug into the ignition switch and the wiper assy. please let me know. I've asked a few people locally and they seem to be junkyard parts.

Picked up a once in a lifetime deal on eaby this week. Found a local guy selling some 86 944 turbo phone dials with a buy it now of 300. Ironically I had just lost on another auction for some fuch wheel fans and I told my co-worker I could get a set of wheels for less than the wheel fans went for, $480, (highly unlikely). Out of curiosity I did a quick search and found this set of wheels. When I picked up the wheels I found they were 7x16 et 23.3 and 8x16 et 23.3 deep dish phone dials! Score!

Finally, dropped off my front wheel spacers last week to have the inner bore machined out 3/16" to clear the 944 dust caps, and picked them up on friday. Put them on the car to find out that they still didn't clear the dust caps... that's odd. Took some dial calipers to my "machined" spacers and to the rears that hadn't been touched, only to find out there was no difference! Why do people think they can get away with doing this?! So I'll be headed back to that shop on my lunch tomorrow to get my money back.

Last edited by Humble; October 23rd 2006 at 03:47.
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  #10  
Old October 30th 2006, 03:53
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Update time again...

Took a break from the beetle on sat. and just had a lazy day. Long days at work and long build days on the weekends is really taking a toll on me. Worked on the beetle a little bit today going from one project to another because any progress gets me that much closer to driving it.

Started with the steering colomn, it never sat right since i pulled it out of the car and I needed to swap out the turn signal switch anyway. It took me a while to get everything back together and working smoothly but the new switch is in.

Finished up the front brake system with new braided stainless lines and installed the brake clips. After turning the wheel through it motions I discovered that the tie rod was crushing the brake line against the strut body at full lock and the tire was rubbing on the inside fender well. I readjusted the steering stops to give about 1" clearance on the body and that was enough to solve the brake line problem as well.

Installed the wiper assembly to check for clearance problems behind the dash and continued with wiring. I put some wiring on hold while I get the megasquirt wiring ready and check to see if the subie sensors can drive dash idiot lights. I'm considering hooking up the oil and alternator warning lights to the subie parts but I need to check for compatability. Also if I can drive said warning lights from the autometer gauges that frees up a couples of wires that go back to the engine.

started connecting the rear brake system and got the long center hard line in place only to realize I forgot to swap out the vw flared end for the 3/8 inverted flare end to connect it to the master cylinder. it was a bit of a pain but I got the new end on with the line in place.
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  #11  
Old October 30th 2006, 15:45
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Took the day off from work today to take care of a few things and hopefully I'll be back home in time to get some good pics. I finally decided to get my custom plates while they're still available and I can't believe they were. 1,000,000 bonus points to anyone that guesses correctly! I think it's very fitting especially on the track

In other news I've started a final checklist of things to do before the beetle is done and it's not as big as I thought.
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  #12  
Old April 3rd 2007, 22:39
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Long weekend and nice weather bring updates!

Spent a few days working on the bug, trying in vain to make a race at the end of April. Got my intercooler radiator mounted and intercooler water lines run through the tunnel (that took a day by itself :P) Finished the exhaust so all it needs is a support at the muffler exit so the whole thing isn't hanging from the turbo. Spent another day cutting the existing metal dash out of the bug, and putting the new aluminum dash panel together. After getting the gauges in place I started the gauge wiring which will have it's own loom to the back of the car. I've always liked the idea of center mounted tach/speedo in the dash. The idea here is to make them easily readable at a glance and high visibility for the roll cage mounted camera. I was hoping to have my brake system bled but the pads that showed up were for the wrong car. I ordered the EBC yellow brake pads for an 89 turbo 944 from thepartsbin.com but non-turbo pads showed up (1/2" difference in width). When looking up the correct part#'s I discovered that I need pads for a porsche 930 turbo (same size all around) whereas the late model 944 turbo had larger front pads. (oops) So I ordered the correct parts in hawk pads this time, and I'm still waiting for an RMA# for $250 in brake pads I can't use. The joys of frankenstein cars....



Now for the pics!


2 pass intercooler radiator from a Ford Lightning in front, Koyo rx7 turbo radiator behind it



same thing from the top, not much room in there...




Finished exhaust from the side, 36" or so turbo back 3" diameter. I'll probably cut some sheet aluminum to make a small heat shield for the fender and protect it from flames/fire of the exhaust.




And finally the new dash panel, all the gauges are electric due to engine location. The gauges are oil press, oil temp, water temp, boost, and fuel level, with speedo and tach in the middle. The speedo is a gamble, I'm going to try and use the signal from a vr sensor on the front hub that used to be for abs. I have to check with autometer to see if this is a viable solution otherwise I need to find a different sensor and mount it elsewhere. The notches cut into the dash panel are for the stock grab handle, I think the passenger will need it.
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  #13  
Old April 4th 2007, 00:32
jrinlv jrinlv is offline
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Looks great, Do you think you will be able to see the tack? lol
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  #14  
Old April 5th 2007, 00:17
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yeah, I made sure to check each step of the way before making things final. The edge of my hand on the steering wheel blocks part of the 1-2k range but the rest of the tach is very readable. who needs to see 1-2k anyway
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  #15  
Old April 7th 2007, 21:38
brujo65 brujo65 is offline
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Any pictures off your turbo intercooler
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