Trash or treasure...

Haven't been doing heaps of driving this week due to a torn calf muscle (while skateboarding) still healing. No it wasn't anything crazy. Turns out I'm just old. *sigh*

However, with us heading for my old stomping ground it was a perfect excuse to drop into my old digs and see if I had some stuff (read junk) stored under the house. The tenants are good friends of mine and they were pleased to see me and my 7yo son.

So with a few screws undone, Mr 7 was sent under the house to retrieve a few things. Sadly, he's not all that strong and I had to climb under as well. I was really there looking for a seat and a few stock rims.

I was in for a surprise!

A pair of 7" oldschool rims and some old rally tyres I forgot I left behind. STOKED!

This is really cool. The rims are a bit crusty, but after looking up the tyre size and model it seems they'll go straight on the rim without any dramas. I am a little concerned about the width of the rims, but I think it should be ok. If not, I'll throw them on some stock rims instead. They're only 195s anyway.

The two stock rims will get some rally steer tyres. I used these on my old beach buggy and they transformed the car on dirt.

At this point a few of you will twig to the fact that I'm strapping rally tyres on a classic VW. A classic, original paint, VW from 1956. Yep, well spotted.

Cars are made to be driven.

I should say, these tyres don't represent a huge outlay in cost. The 4 of these tyres cost me 1/4 tank of fuel and a case of beer. The steer tyres will owe me about $50. Sure, they're all old and hard, however, they're miles ahead of any road tyre on the dirt. And they'll probably last up to 10 years of dirt khanas.

Next up is the seat. This actually came out of a J&S buggy I bought and rebuilt over a decade ago. It's vintage is probably the late 1960's. I know, but the car is a 56'. Yeah, true.

I've actually been researching sports seats from the 1950's. Geez, I'm such a nerd sometimes.

The current trend is bomber seats or similar. Bare, seats made from flat sheet or hand beaten aluminium. Thing is, they were only really common in the early 50's. And they were a dry lake/hot rod thing. Some race cars used them, but by the mid to late 50's you had much different looking seats.

This interior is from a 1956' Ferrari race car. Now it's hard to know exactly what's underneath the red leather, but I'm guessing it looks kind of like the fibreglass bucket above. It might be sheet ali or a frame, but the effect is pretty similar. Besides all that, fibreglass was being used on whole car bodies by 53' (Chevy Corvette), so I figured why not.

Also, why bother re-inventing the wheel?

In truth, the bucket is in pretty bad condition. It was the worse of the two that came with the car way back when. I need to decide whether to fix it or use it as a mould for a new seat. I've got plenty of fibreglass matt from my dunebuggy days. I'll just have to see how lazy I'm feeling.

BTW, I mentioned the whole "period club racer" aim. Sure, the motor doesn't fit this, but I want the rest of the car to in terms of look. The interesting thing is that in the late 50's/early 60's, there wasn't a lot on offer for VWs locally. Gene Berg and Empi were just getting grips with the cars. All you could buy until about 66' were some engine upgrades (now outdated) and a camber compensator.

The wheels, webers and speed accessories at the time were all hand made and hard to get outside the US.

In Australia, these parts were VERY expensive. Most early club racers and enthusiasts made their own. My mechanic tells me stories of his father over-boring barrels and finding pistons to build his own 1500 big bore kit in the early 60's. Unfortunately, the barrels tended to be a bit thin and warp when they got too hot.

So while the trend these days is to buy repros of the old parts and throw cubic dollars at their cars, I won't be doing that. I'd prefer ol' Aussie ingenuity.

VWs won big racing events in 1950's in Australia. The pic above is the finish of the 1955 REDeX trial. They finished 1-2 against much more powerful cars.

Hoarding junk in the hope of glory

Quick update. Been off to my fave mechanics today to drop these in...

If you're thinking, "that looks like engine parts", then you're correct. In fact that's exactly what they are. Coz it's time to build a new engine!

The good news is, everything in that pile was free. Yep. Free.

The case you can see with the oilcooler sticking up I found on the side of the road about a year back. Seriously. Someone had thrown out a stack of 1600 parts, including the case with a seized bottom. I know the crank is useless, but the case appears to be ok.

The rest of the parts came from a mate who was rebuilding a stock engine... until his daughter came down with leukemia.

So while the engine case sat in a degreasing solution, some of the magnesium alloy oxidized and that was the end of it. He was happy enough to get the remainder of the parts out of his garage and help me build a new motor.

Specs? Well that's sort of the interesting bit. You see I also have these bits sitting in my garage...

If you don't know what you're looking at, here's the list...
 - AMR 500 supercharger
 - Intercooler
 - Serpentine belt system
That setup allows for about 9psi of boost which is conservative but dependable. As Hans my engine builder said, "what you want is torque".

So the motor will be a regular 1600, only balanced, fully oiled and cooled. I also have a Microsquirt EFI computer to fit to the motor.

So it begins.

The test subject...

As I mentioned before, my current car is a 1956' beetle. It has the "Oval" rear window and is deluxe TKD (total knock down) model. In other words, they made it in part in Germany then it was shipped to Oz and assembled down here. When I got it last year it looked like this...

It's a great looking car with a stack of period accessories. However, there was a problem. It was just too low to drive properly.

Read; the back suspension bottomed out on the smallest bump.

The front suspension had adjusters to lower it... and they'd 'cut off' the bump stops. Yep, you read that right. So while it looked awesome, it was a symphony of thuds, rubs and bangs.

The next day, I raised it all up a bunch.

The good news is, the body has spent most of it's near 60 years in a garage. So there is little if any rust in the body. For that reason alone, it's a great car. It's also about 70% original paint.

Real, genuine patina.

The motor is pretty interesting too. I say interesting, not powerful...

It's a Judson supercharged, 1200 (40hp) engine. The original motor would have been about 25hp. The 40hp plus the supercharger adds up to a grand total of, wait for it 50hp. On a good day. Going down hill. With a tale wind. And lots of hotrod stickers. Course the bad news is it looses about half that power through the gearbox and you end up with roughly 25hp at the wheels.  So it's pretty unimpressive...

Just enough to pull the skin off a rice pudding, but not a jot more.

I knew this when I bought it. I needed a 'slow car' for 12 months due to some issues I had relating to traffic infringements. The motor is pretty tired too. One oily cylinder and lowish oil pressure. So now that year is over, it's time for upgrades and improvements.

The first thing I did was put seatbelts in it. Seriously. This was enough to incur the wrath of some forum trolls who informed me I'd "ruined" the car. Yeah right, whatever. Other than that, I've been fixing things previous owners did. Dodgy front gearbox mounts, non-working front brakes. *sigh.

After owning it for about a year, it got a go in a skidpan motorkhana the other day by accident. I was sposed to be driving a Datsun 1600, but it was having a few issues, and I was driving like crap. So I gave it up and rolled out the ol' 56'.

Here's a vid of the first run. Slow, cautious and well, slow. Still, no breakdowns and I gradually got the hang of it across the day. Taught me a lot of things. Which has given me a good list of things to sort and an order to do them in...

1. Camber compensator
2. Better seat
3. Better hand brake
4. More power

The camber compensator stops the car do odd rear wheel angle things which can result in a rollover. The seat, well let's just say the stock one is crap and I had to tighten the belt up to "can't breath" tension to stop falling out of it. Handbrake is not quite right, it's the same as I had on my buggy, but needs some love. More power, well, there are plans a foot. More on that next time.

The brief for all of these mods is as follows;
Legal, reliable, cheapish and vintage/factory looking.

In fact, I'm aiming for a "this is an old race car I found in a barn" effect. This is complicated because in 1956, there wasn't much about and most 'off the shelf stuff' comes from the 1970s US scene.

Anyhow, that's an intro to where I'm up to.

Get drivin'

The problem with polishing...

I've been into cars ever since I can remember. My mum tells me my first full sentence was...

"Look mum, a car"

Really ever since then I've been doomed. Course I follow in my grandfather's shoes in that regard too. He was a petrolhead as well, even though I never met him.

So I've been playing with cars on and off for about 20 years now along with keeping up with a number of cars forums and getting involved in club motorsport at a grassroots level.

I love cars.

For most of that time, I've been playing with or around VWs, specifically beetles. Yeah I know, hopeless eh? But beetles have lots of advantages;

1. There were millions made.
2. They're a cheap classic
3. Rear wheel drive
4. Light
5. Not particularly given to rusting
6. Easy to work on, like lego in fact
7. Parts are cheap and plentiful
8. They're German
9. People love em
10. The most modified car in history
11. Have a proud motorsport history in almost every type of racing
12. Look cool
13. They are the older, slower cousin of the 356 and 911 Porsches
14. A huge aftermarket industry

There are a few disadvantages too;

1. They're a cheap classic
2. Easy to work on, so everyone works on em
3. The most modified car in history
4. They still rust some
5. Swingaxle suspension
6. Limited factory power options
7. Old

So, picking up a straight, unmodded example is a bit of a challenge. Still, all is not bad and kits for all sorts of things can be bought off the shelf and installed with ease.

The other weird thing that has happened to aircooled VWs in the last 10 years or so is that they've gained this weird following that is both helpful, but kind of dumb too.

They're considered rarities...

Seriously. Every ebay add for an old part has the word "rare" in the title or description somewhere. I've not exactly figured out why this is. I'm sure it's a perception thing, but let's set it straight.

There were over 23 million beetles made. They are NOT rare.

The upshot of this misconception is that people stop using their cars for what they were designed for. So the most capable car of the 20th century becomes the most pampered show queens of the 21st century.

Pretty disappointing.

I've owned three early beetles. A 66', a 60' deluxe (which became a dune buggy) and now a 56' deluxe. All had the same chassis as it were (although I changed the 60' over to IRS). All of them were dailies to some extent. All of them also had goes at club motorsport. Here is the important thing... All of them were driven and driven properly.

None of the cars got a wash more than once or twice a year. Polishing, even rarer. I didn't thrash them, but I did give them a good go. So don't expect to see shiny stuff here.

What you'll find is real drivin'. Real upgrades. Race racing. Real usage and none of the fancy 'I went to this show and sat there' business... not that there's anything wrong with that, but you get the idea.

This blog is about drivin'.

Coz as they say in the classics, 'Chrome won't get you home'.