Time attack beetle

[Humble]

Oh man time flies, there has been progress but not as much as I'd like. Most of the stuff happening isn't picture worthy and some is but I haven't taken the pictures yet. A lot of wiring and test ideas that were a $200 gamble, some worked and some didn't. I haven't had a lot of time between turkey day, becoming a new uncle, and planning an early xmas for the newborn/family while everyone is together. Some of it is my fault too I'll admit I got a new toy and I'll put up a new post elsewhere for it.

On this project though, here's whats been happening:

Got a new intake from an ej25, larger TB and different layout, so i've modified it to make it work.
Wiring is the bane of my existence, everytime I think I've thought of everything a new circuit is needed.
Took some parts to a machinist to modify for megasquirt and edis, also getting the top water manifold modified so i can spin it around backwards.

[mccarthy500]

anything new?

[mccarthy500]

are you planning on driving your car on the streets and doing some occasional racing or will it just be a track car?

[Humble]

I have a few updates, some good some bad. Life has been up and down for me lots of good and lots of bad. I hate to say it (cause everyone else said it first) but I've been spending more time and money on my newly acquired sports bug than I should. While it's a really nice daily, it's pulling resources from the race car. More bad news, my recent divorce filing got snarled when the company handling it folded so I've been trying to kick start that again. Only to find out my ex had to go in for emergency surgery for spleen and kidney failure. Finally have paper work on the way and I found out last week she may have breast cancer (her family has a history). So while I may not love the woman anymore I don't wish that on anyone, and I've been trying to help her pay off bills from before we separated. In retrospect I've had a lot of time to think about this project and my current situation and my plans needed "adaptation" After 2 years of interrupted fabrication, fits and spurts of progress and no real progress I decided to axe the project. I can assure you there are several reasons, all of them good.

The Good part:
There's an old saying that says you can take a horse out of the wild, but you can't take the wild out of the horse. Well racing is kinda like that, especially if you've ever tasted victory. I'm starting a new project, no motor swaps this time, and going with what I know. I started all this to go racing and then kinda lost sight of what was going on (literally and figuratively). So the goal here is to go racing, and the sooner the better. I've already started work with a new chassis and there's a lot of "bolt-on" stuff already being transferred over. I'll continue this tread since this new project was born from the ashes of the old one.

mccarthy: The plan here is to make a race car first, so it will still be street registered but only because a couple of classes I want to participate in require it. It's not the kinda of car you'll want to drive to work, but I'm sure I'll try it at least once.

[mccarthy500]

sorry to hear it. this build up thread was one of the projects that inspired me to do a subaru swap. what are you going to do with all of your conversion parts?

[Humble]

The list of parts that won't be recycled is pretty short.

subaru motor
kep flywheel and adapter plate
koyo radiator
radiator lines
link v3 ecu

I think just about everything else will go to the new car. I'll probably end up selling those parts and feed that cash back into the project. So if anyone is interested shoot me a pm. I never thought I'd be anybody's inspiration, especially after this long. I finally realized that I'm a driver not a fabricator, so why am I building when I should be driving? That's the driving force for the new car.

[Humble]

So here is the new girl, her name is Lucy (the daughter of the devil). I bought her off an old lady and I'm the second owner! I wasn't out to buy another sport bug, in fact I know 2 other people looking for them specifically, it just happened by accident. She's a 73 sport bug, 86k miles, original interior and wheels. At some point she was given a bad rattle can red paint job so a trip to the paint booth is it store for the future. Here's a couple "before" pictures.