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  #31  
Old September 27th 2006, 12:55
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Chris Percival Chris Percival is offline
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I have these seats in my bug. Similar to yours, but narrower..



http://www.cobraseats.com/offroad/aqua.php
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  #32  
Old September 28th 2006, 02:26
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Steve,
I don't want to modify the header before the collector if I can help it. With the tranny and engine raised I don't think I'll have to but I have to drop the car off the jack stands to see how it sits. Maybe something to do before the weekend. I didn't want the stock header because it's really restrictive and I'm converting from a twin turbo to a single turbo setup.

Chris,
Those seats are almost exactly the same size as my new seats. the Corbeau fx1 didn't fit so I swapped them for fx1 pro seats which are very close to the dimentions on your seat. Have you had much track time with your seats? How do they feel in day to day use?
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  #33  
Old September 28th 2006, 02:44
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Humble View Post
Chris,
Those seats are almost exactly the same size as my new seats. the Corbeau fx1 didn't fit so I swapped them for fx1 pro seats which are very close to the dimentions on your seat. Have you had much track time with your seats? How do they feel in day to day use?
They are excelent. Had probobly an hour or so track time, but many hours on the road. They are a perfect fit for me, hugging my arse well. Considering they are lightweight seats, with not much padding compared to normal seats, they are very comfortable. I can sit in them for hours without getting a numb bum. They are also very rigid.
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  #34  
Old September 28th 2006, 04:35
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Hi

If you can use the headers you have, it will get rid of the WRX rumble for sure, everything looks different when the car is jacked up.

One of the quickest WRX tuners down here only uses the stock single turbo header after he does a port job on them.

I temporarily put some Recaros in my daily driver when I went up the coast to VW show a few weeks ago, its amazing how much better a car is to drive when your not slipping around on the seats.

Steve
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  #35  
Old September 29th 2006, 02:03
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Chris,
Its good to hear the seats aren't too rough for the street. I want to drive the bug to work a few times to hit a dyno on my lunches. I'd also like to make a couple longer drives to hit a few bug shows here in Cali With your seats did you get the lumbar pillow or did you go without it?

Steve,
I really hope this header gets rid of the subaru "blat blat blat blat" exhaust note, I really don't like it. I have heard a couple of EJ25s with 4-1 exhausts and they have that big vw flat 4 sound to them. I know what you mean about the stock seats, I raced for a couple seasons of hillclimb and autox on stock seats. I usually took a passenger if I could to help keep me in place
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  #36  
Old September 29th 2006, 02:37
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Quote:
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With your seats did you get the lumbar pillow or did you go without it?
No, no lumbar pillow. The seats are quite deep though so support my legs well. I bought mine second hand, already attached to modified beetle seat bases. They are pretty much at the right angle, but you would need to get that angle right yourself also.
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  #37  
Old October 2nd 2006, 01:13
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Update... kinda

Got a little work done on the beetle with an emphasis on little. I got the car off the jack stands and I can already tell there's more weight in the back end. With the jack stands under the rear jack point (right behing the door sill) I was able to pick up the front of the beetle and it weighed a little bit more than a bus tranny. With the car on the ground I jumped around on the engine brace to settle the suspension and there is now about 5" of clearance on the oil pan and 3.5" on the exhaust. There's also no preload in the torsion bars and only about 2.5" of compression in the suspension left. So next time it's in the air I'll add a spline each side and that should help out the backend.

With the impending bay area rainy season looming, I decided to get the windows in the car before pools start forming in the pans. Got the glass front windshield in fine and the plexi rear quarter windows in with their seals but for the life of me I could not get the rear plexi window to fit with seals. I tried with 3 people pressing on all the corners and trying to get it to bend right but it popped out or the seal wouldn't catch the interior lip. I ended up riveting the rear window in and I'll lay down a bead of caulk to seal it up.

Cleaned out the interior and took care of some surface rust in a couple spots. Mounted the seat brakets and one of the new fx1 pro seats on the passenger side to check for fitment. The fx1 pro fits a lot better in the car but I'm gonna need to trim up my waistline to fit in a bit easier Replaced both outside door handles since I managed to break them both a few winters ago.

Not as much real work as I wanted but at least its water proof-ish. I'll get pictures of the car on the ground tomorrow when there's better light.
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  #38  
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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  #39  
Old October 8th 2006, 23:09
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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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  #40  
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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  #41  
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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  #42  
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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  #43  
Old November 15th 2006, 02:01
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Not much has been happening these past few weeks for a few reasons, some good some bad. One of the better ones is I finally got a tow rig for the beetle so I won't have to worry about getting home from the track anymore! I picked up a 2002 dodge ram 2500HD quad cab diesel for a steal. It's in great shape only had 60k on the odo and is already wired for towing. Unfortunately having a truck means doing things only trucks can do, so I made a run to the dump with it already. With the upcoming holidays spare time is really coming up short and I don't have as much time for the bug as I'd like.
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  #44  
Old November 20th 2006, 00:43
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Update with pics! though it's not much to look at....

Spent some much needed time on the bug again this weekend to take care of a few things and mark off others as done.

Spent most of the day saturday tearing down the rear suspention to add a slpine to the rear torsion bars. Should help clearance and add a bit of rake to the stance. It's been a while since the last time I did this and I forgot what a PITA is was. I can't wait to get a rear coilover setup.



Speaking of a pain to work on...
While I had the rear end apart I decided to button up the ebrakes since I finally had all the springs I needed. Installed the cables, ebrake handle, shoes, swans, springs, adjusters... and remembered why I hate drum brakes so much.

With the ebrakes done I could now put the rear calipers on and finish plumbing the rear brakes. They look great throught the phone dials.



Another shot of the phone dials during the day before I put the rear brakes together. These are the '86 944 turbo low offset (23.3mm vs 52mm) phone dials and I love the dish on these wheels!

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  #45  
Old November 20th 2006, 01:08
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But wait there's more!

Today I finally changed the timing belt on the EJ20 and for anyone who hasn't seen one of these timing belts they are long! Like 6ft.+ if you roll it all out. New belt went in without any problems thanks to markings on the pulleys, cams and crank. I wish all timing belts were this easy. The reason I decided to change it was because I'd heard to many stories about jdm motors grenading because the timing belts failed due to the motors sitting in warehouses for too long letting the rubber dry rot. I'm sure driving the piss out of them doesn't hurt either.

While I was working on the motor I decided to start installing sensors for the megasquirt and all the gauges.

For the oil temp sender I pulled the subie oil pressure sender right at the front of the block by the EJ20 stamp and the sender threaded nicely right into the hole. The water temp sender for the gauge replaced the old subie part in the water cross-over pipe.



For the oil pressure sender, I removed a plug next to the inspection cover and used one of the adpaters that came with the gauge kit to thread the pressure sender into the hole.



Here's a couple more shots of progress at the front of the bug showing wiring so far, brake resivoirs, and low pressure lines to the MCs.



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