Time attack beetle

[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.

[Humble]

Had Lucy for 2 weeks and already got the porsche stuff on her. One thing I didn't transfer over yet was the front strut bar and camber plates from the old car. I really need to since I can only get down to +1.2 camber on each side. I also have some shorter/stiffer springs coming for the front as well. Here's a couple in progress pics








I don't have any pics of her on the ground yet but I'll grab some today.

I've been reading and memorizing the competition rule book for NASA paying particular attention to the time trial rules. One of the reason I'm switch back to a type 1 is a weight/power limit I found. Originally I was after an hp target of 350hp and 1800lbs wet with driver for weight. That gives me a 5.14lb/1hp weight to power ratio and puts me right out of all competition classes. In reality I'm limited to 8.7lb/1hp for a total of 206hp, but since the car is so light I have a penalty modifier of -1.5 so my actual target number is 10.2lbs/1hp, or 176hp. Now the thing is they go by hp not torque, so I can make a peak of 176hp anywhere. So I've been considering different motor ideas and I'll put a couple up here when they're fleshed out.

[Humble]

Racing update!

First things first though... I got the new springs in for the front end, settled on QA1 10" 125 lb./in. springs. While I had the front suspension apart I put the strut bar and camber plates in. The minimum settings previously in the old car were -1.5 degrees camber so it should be close to that now. Once everything was back together I did a ghetto alignment by tape measure and got it within 1/8th to 1/16th of an inch of toe out. I also stripped out the front carpet, floor mats, back seat, spare tire, and jack to get ready for race day.





Last sunday I was able to get Lucy out for an autox down in Marina. First impression, it takes a couple runs to warm up the front tires. For the first couple of runs all I did was push the front end around. It didn't help that I was running in the morning so both the tires and the course were cold. Secondly, I really need more HP, the poor stock motor just doesn't cut it but it was still fun none the less. Class wise they stuck me in FSP, I'm not sure how accurate that is but the group is pretty laid back. Afterwards I realized I probably had too much pressure in the front tires and after checking it (28lbs in both front tires) I put them back down to 20lbs. The rear tires I left at 24 lbs. since it seemed to work well there.

As promised heres a couple pics of the car so far.

[Humble]

Motor Update

Thought I'd spill the beans on the new setup as parts arrive. Got most of the long block so far and the rest is coming. Here's what I decided to start with

2165cc turbo
CB super case, 7.0 deck, 10mm head studs
78mm forged race crank
94mm forged pistons w/ total seal 2nd ring
CB 5.7" super race rods, chevy journal
CB 044 cnc mini wedge port heads, ls1 springs, cb forged 1.3:1 rockers
K8 cam, 107 lc, 308 dur, .491" lift with 1.3:1 rockers
28mm light weight lifters
straight cut gears
4 gear dry sump pump
giant oil cooler w/ fan
3gal sump tank
dtm shroud
CB quick tune turbo/efi kit
turbo tbd

Right now I have everything but the cb efi/turbo kit and I'm still deciding on what turbo to use. I'm still working numbers for a big T3 or a T3/T4 hybrid or possibly something else. I want to have it together, tuned, and broken in before memorial day because there are a good number of track days comin