Dave Hord

My buddy Gord, who builds the Subaru Canada rally cars, came over to discuss the roll bar options with me. Neither of us were fans of the rear-stays that came with my bolt-in roll bar, so we’ve agreed that he’ll need to make some new ones for me. He also figured out a way to move it back another few inches to give me some more room. We’ll add a cross bar and a harness bar into the main hoop. Fortunately, though, the main hoop in my kit is quite tight and will be useable.

I’ve started to mock up the Accusump, Dry-Sump Tank and Oil Cooler. I think I’m going to set the car up with a “summer mount” and a “winter mount” for the oil-cooler. The winter mount will actually double as a heater for the inside of the bug. Packaging space for everything, as always, is a problem. Originally the drysump tank was going to go on the passenger side, but it needs to be sunk into the luggage floor. You can’t do that, as the starter is in the way…so now it goes on the left. Then, since it’s on the left, there is no longer any room for the Oil Cooler under the car…which means moving it into the car. Now the space where the Accusump was going is taken, so the musical chairs continue. Hopefully I don’t get kicked out of the car before everything finds a space!

And with that, I had an incredibly productive day today out in the garage. I finally managed to get the ’69 out of the shop, which meant I could pull the new ’71 into the shop. I started on the rear, pulling each fender, the running boards, glass and finally the front fenders. This particular car has a pretty heavy (for a Bug) application of undercoating, and I spent much of today scraping it away to see what surprises lay underneath. Let me tell you, this was a TREAT compared to doing the same thing to an Audi. May I never have to scrape one down again!

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Remember that ultra-valuable wheel from a few posts back? Yeah, not so valuable anymore.

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The front suspension on this project is relatively simple, factory arms and likely a modified coil-over setup custom built in my garage. I finally got around to cleaning up a set of front arms for painting.

On the rear I’m ditching the torsion bars and going with a rod-end for the pivot. Currently working with some steel to put them into double-shear, figuring it out as I go along. It has to all fit under the fender and clear the main body, but at the same time be easily removed for swapping out the Rod end. The Audi Rally car taught me that rod-ends are not necessarily a long-life solution to suspension applications! I haven’t yet decided if the second plate will bolt on, or be welded to the first plate for the double-shear. Need to go back to the books and do some reading before I make a decision. The rear shock mounts will get braced with a Kafer-Bar to take the increased load of coil-overs, and that will give me a suspension setup which allows for easy rear-end ride height adjustment. Much easier then rotating torsion bars at least. The downside is losing a relatively simple suspension setup with naturally progressive action.

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The new racing parts have started arriving for the project. First up is the dry-sump tank for my oiling system. A traditional style engine has the oil collect in a pan bolted the the bottom of the engine. In extreme cornering the oil can slosh around and cause air to be picked up by the pump instead of oil. I intend to do a whole lot of extreme corning rallying, so solving an oil-starvation problem before it happens is key. Enter the dry-sump system. Once installed, the oil no longer hangs out in the bottom of the engine sloshing around. Instead, it’s stored in this aluminum tank which is narrow and tall, thus always ensuring there is oil while cornering. By the time all the lines are run, it’s a slightly complex, but elegant, solution to a very real problem.

I did also pickup a rather rare addition to the project…details after you click more.

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Finally found a suitable donor for the ’71 beetle project. I ended up having to drive over 6 hours south to find a “rust free” version, but I think I’ve done pretty well. Truthfully, I don’t think you can really find a completely rust-free shell, so it will be interesting to see what surprises lie underneath. For the most part, though, this bug is solid and doesn’t show any rust in the usual places.

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The black paint I laid down earlier was actually semi-gloss black. With the semi-gloss paint dry, I was able to seam seal the bottom of the pan.
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My original plan was to do a big section of the frame head, leaving me lots of mounting bolts and measuring points to work from. I assumed that I could just separate the halves at the spot welds, and weld in a nut from the back for the mount…but once I ground off the sway bar mount on my donor front-end, I discovered it was already hacked up pretty badly. Onto plan B!

Well, truthfully I didn’t really have a plan for how to get around it, and probably started cutting with the angle grinder far earlier then I should have. But sometimes you get lucky, or I’m just improving. It took me one big cut and two fine adjustments to get it to where I was happy.

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Grinding and Sandblasting on the spine are now complete. I’ve started welding up the various holes and spots that require attention, but in doing so discovered a more significant problem. I knew the tow-hook area was rough when I started on the pan, but blasting and grinding revealed that the problem is deeper then I first thought. To the right of the tow hook you can see two nut inserts, with a channel between them. For non Super people, those nut inserts are for the sway-bar brace, the channel for the sway bar. Simply patching the holes isn’t enough, not to mention the channel should look straight. I’ll need to source a second frame head to repair this section, or replace it with new sheetmetal. In the meantime, though, I couldn’t resist doing some test fitting…

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