Hi

I do run E85 but I have a flex fuel sensor so I can run 98 RON if I have to but I have two E85 servos about 5 ks from my house and a few up and down the highways.

My son Dave AKA Cave loves his bug, have you seen this video of him? https://www.facebook.com/NittoTyres/...2012700536507/ He works in marketing with Toyo and Nitto tyres, he convinced me to fit Toyo R888Rs to my bug, hes running Nitto Invos on his bug and Im also running them on my 180SX.

I also fitted an eBay intake temp sensor, seems to be accurate.

Steve

Project Builds > My other 1303 GL
 

Great to see your back at it Steve

Hi

I had a little mishap with the motor but it was fixed under warranty, it picked up a big end bearing.

I'm going to do a 1/2 mile run in September at Gunnedah in rural NSW Australia on the 1st of September, I cant wait.

Steve

Hi

Just got back from running the 1/2 mile at Gunnedah, I won my class and finished 37 out of 80 cars, ran at 231 kph

the runway at Gunnedah is very bumpy near the end, I think Im going to look at some front aero, it was getting a bit hairy at about the 700 metre mark and the car squatted the rear the whole length of the track

not sure if this video will play https://www.facebook.com/davejcarter...811864908/?t=0 I ran over some cement dust in this run and I thought it was clutch smoke so lifted off

I put a new radiator in the week before the event, it worked perfectly, I used one from a 944 Porsche, really nice fit, thanks to boys at Westside for helping out again with fan mounts.

with my intercooler temp gauge I was able to keep an eye intake temps, we used the Frozen Boost ice box and I again short circuited it to cut out the front mounted radiator, at the finish line intake temps were 90c after the turbo and 22c after the inter cooler, I was leaving the line with after cooler temps of around 18c

We setup the launch control and on the first run I fried the clutch, I nearly put it on the trailer but I let cool down and then I granny shifted it from then on.

So Im going to get hold of a front air dam, put a larger ear housing on my GTX3076 turbo as I went from a .82 to .63 trying get some better response when it was a 2 litre motor so I will go back to a .82 rear and go for some more kWs and of course I will see what I can do about a clutch, the Aussie dollar has gone south against the greenback so I will try something local if not I will see what Kennedy can do

Great result Steve! The bigger motor should be able to use the bigger turbine A/R without too much - if at all- added lag, me thinks.
GL with the clutch.

Thanks Wally, going to give the 1/4 mile a go tomorrow night if the weather holds. I still have the 15 inch cookies on with the ET streets

Hi

The 1/4 mile go trained out, I will try again to have run in few weeks.

I wrote an article for club magazine about the event

½ Mile racing at Gunnedah Airport
On the 1st of September I ran my Beetle at the Race Revolution ½ mile at Gunnedah Airport , I had previously run a similar event at Cooma Airport over 1000 metres in 2014 and 2015. Cooma Airport didn’t want to have the event held there anymore so the organisers had to find a new venue. The new ½ mile distance was chosen as it’s an international distance used by other land speed racing bodies and Gunnedah Airport didn’t have the required slow down area at the end of the racing surface for 1000 metre racing.

I’ve had a few issues with my Beetle like running into walls and breaking motors but I managed to get it running in time to run at Gunnedah. While it was off the road the Subaru WRX STI (EJ207) motor was bored and stroked to 2165cc and made 305 kW at the wheels when tuned by DVS on the Central Coast at Somersby. Because the motor is turbo charged it had to run in the classic class 2D for vehicles between 3000cc and 5000cc.

Gunnedah like the rest of NSW is in severe drought so it was good to travel there and spend some money in local businesses; some businesses that sell alcohol received a fair bit of my money. The event organisers nominated a local charity “drought relief for kid’s fundraiser”, many racers including myself donated to this cause.

So after spending lots of time putting my Beetle back together I also had to finish putting my car trailer back together which I had taken off the road to refurbish. We left Friday morning for the drive up to Gunnedah towing an untested car trailer, good planning and workmanship prevailed and we arrived to a very wet Gunnedah airport, a friend of mine Andrew who is also a heretic and drives a Subaru powered 71 Fastback travelled up with us, we met up with another VW racer Glenn Torrens in his salt racing L bug (1303S). After having the car scrutineered we went and checked into our accommodation and then went into town for some refreshments.

Saturday, race day was fine and was ideal for racing with light winds all day. I have an Adaptronic Modular ECU in my car which not only controls fuel, reads and adjusts tune according to E85 concentration and ignition but can be used to operate launch control. On my first run with launch control activated I rolled up to the start line, put my foot down flat and the car went to 5,000 rpm and made 2 psi boost, as the car moved forward the launch control disengages via signal from a speed sensor in the transmission and full RPM can be achieved which on this day was set at 7,300 RPM. I got a bit exited and fried my clutch, I came back into the pits and was going to put the car on the trailer but my son convinced me to let it cool off and give it another run without launch control.

After everything cooled off I was able to do 4 more runs taking it easy and win my class and finished 37 out of 80 cars, best run was at 231 kph and 19.5407 seconds.

The runway at Gunnedah is very bumpy near the end, I think I’m going to look at some front aero, it was getting a bit hairy at about the 700 metre mark and the car squatted the rear the whole length of the track even with short 30 mm torsion bars. I ran the car on 15 inch Porsche Cookie cutter wheels with street tyres on the front but Mickey Thompson ET Street drag tyres on the rear, I normally run on 18 inch Porsche wheels so the car sat a lot lower than normal, I also fitted a V Force whale tail to the car for the event.

I put a new radiator in the week before the event after it got a little warm driving back from the VW Spectacular, it worked perfectly, I used one from a 944 Porsche, really nice fit, thanks to the boys at Westside Mufflers, a VW Nationals sponsor for helping out again with welding fan mounts to the radiator and turning my stupid ideas into metal once again.

I have an intercooler temp gauge in the car which shows in and out temperatures, I was able to keep an eye on intake temps, I use a Frozen Boost ice box which I fill with ice and I short circuited it to cut out the front mounted radiator which I run on the street to cool the PWR water to air intercooler, at the finish line my intake temps were 90c after the turbo and 22c after the inter cooler, I was leaving the line with after inter cooler temps of around 18c and there was still ice in the system after the run.

So I’m going to get hold of a front air dam, put a larger rear housing on my GTX3076 turbo as I went from a .82 to .63 rear housing trying get some better response when it was a 2 litre motor so I will go back to a .82 rear housing and go for some more killer wasps and of course I will see what I can do about a clutch, the Aussie dollar has gone south against the greenback so I will try something local if not I will see what Kennedy Engineering who supplied my current clutch can do.

So as far as I’m aware I hold the ½ mile land speed record for an under 5000cc Beetle in Australia

Steve

I just uploaded a video of my best run on the 1/2 mile, you can see Im granny shifting and without launch control it didnt make any boost off the line, its making full boost when you hear the screamer https://youtu.be/ZM1qHUNbBw4

Nice! So, an even better speed would be very possible? :cool:
You are indeed granny shifting! Short shifter kit would help also I think?

BTW, what RPM are you at the timed 231 km/h?

Thanks Wally

I was taking it easy I didnt want to harm the clutch by getting into too early after shifting.

Do you know anywhere I can buy a short shifter at reasonable price

According to a gear ratio calculator I would have been doing 6187 rpm, I was shifting at around 7,000. The gearing was short because of the 15 inch wheels I was running

The rev limiter was turned down to 7300 rpm because of the small turbo

I can't remember the exact name of the short shift kit I got for it many years ago, but it sounded like J-West or s/th. At Pelican parts in the US you can find it in their webshop. Its the only one at reasonable price afaik.

6100 over the line and 7300 limit seems like there is room for a much, much higher speed :D

Hi

I had my car corner weighted and 4 wheel aligned few months ago, it was all over the place, it took them a few hours to do it, they asked me when adjusting height if I wanted to higher or lower, I said lower. I think it looks better.

Steve

Hi

I've been having fun driving the Beetle around, I'm going to do Powercruise at Sydney Motorsport Park next month, after that I will pull the motor out and get a new clutch made.

I also just bought a Tial .82 rear housing, I'm getting GCG a local turbo place to do some magic on the cool side of the turbo and then I will go looking for some more kWs.

The Aussie dollar has really dropped so I bought the housing for a pretty good price from a local seller for $585 Aud

The smaller .63 rear housing was restricting it a bit.

Steve

Looks awesome!

Jason

Hi

I took my bug out to do a Supersprint at Eastern Creek before I removed the motor to do the clutch, I took it easy first run out only to find that my tyre gobbled up my mudguard air intake and that the motor started leaking oil from the right cam cover, I stopped running then and took it home as I didn't want drop oil on the track. I had a good look at the track to find the leak with no luck, I've since found that it was a leaky inlet cam actuator.

So I pulled the motor and found a rather scorched clutch plate. I sent the whole clutch and flywheel assembly to a very good place in Queensland about 1000 ks away. My son is into drifting and NPC do a lot of the drift car clutches. They found that the Kenndy pressure plate and flywheel just needed a grind but I have gone to one of their cushion button clutch plates.

So the motor is out now, I'm going to send the car away to have a 1/2 cage fitted that will tie into rear part of the chassis.

I asked for advice from a water cooled VW tuner when I made my air intake in the right mudguard about what sort of enclosed air filter to use. So I bought an Italian made BMC Oval Trumpet air filter, the VW tuner told me he was using these on 400 hp water cooled VWs.

You can see the BMC air filter in the top view of my engine

I sent an email to BMC asking what would be the upper limit of this air filter.

Their reply,
"It is difficult to answer. 307 kW is about 415 hp.

In the past we tested the OTAs on engines having the above power, but due to the huge quantity of air they needed, they were insufficient to power any engine.

The best result we achieved is around 300 hp = 180 rwKw.

Please take note that also other factors must be considered, such as for instance the load loss consequent to the installation.

Just to sum up, it is not only a matter of empirical power.

We eventually recommend the filer with PN ACCDA100-220-01."

My tuner was worried that he couldn't account for the air flow into the inlet at high speed so I'm pretty sure I'm going to use a Blitz Carbon Core but this time I will only have the air from my mudguard intake blowing on the filter inlet not physically connected as I did with the BMC unit .

Steve