Dave's 1971 1302 Not-So-Secret, Secret Project Build

[owdlvr]

Wasting no time...







It's slightly before this point that things took a bit of a turn for the worse...







I couldn't afford to rebuild the 901 gearbox when I built the Rally Bug, figured that if it was "bad" I would rebuild it down the road. It's always been rough/notchy getting it into 1st or reverse (common problem) but I didn't think it was was that bad. The Hargett Shifter had developed some play, Mark was going to send me some parts, but it never seemed to happen...lightly clipping reverse would happen occasionally while looking for 2nd. I knew it wasn't great for the internals, but it was not that common. Here's the rub. If this is 300,000km and 12 years on this fluid, it's kinda not the worst. But I think this is only 150,000km on this fluid change.

Regardless, it's well overdue for a rebuild. I've got the tools and the knowledge. The "middle of the road kit that replaces the wear items in the transmission from shifting use as well as the bearings that usually exhibit wear from age." is $1500 USD, or $2k Canadian. Ouch. But this really is the time to do it with the box out of the car. There is a part of me that is heavily considering just popping a 4spd Beetle box into the car "for now". Of course, we probably know that would end up permanent. At least I have a lot of time to consider this one :P

Call it a hunch...but I think the drivers side axle might be just a hair too long? No marks on the axle end though...

[owdlvr]

Found a few spots in the body that need to be taken care of...plus I snapped off three fender bolts on the left-front corner.







Bob came over and welded in the turn signal holes. Going to go with the Mexi-bumper setup.



Still a lot of work to be done here...



But it's at about this point that I got a bit of a crazy idea, which is probably going to be a little controversial. I'm pulling a fair bit of budget out of the Family Heirloom project to repaint and rewire the Rally Bug, and with the transmission sitting on the floor I started to think about something. The one thing I really want in the Family Heirloom is a five speed Porsche transmission. It's a no-go due to two reasons: a) budget. I'm just not prepared to buy and rebuild a Porsche trans for the car. b) it requires cutting out the torsion bar splines on the inside to mount it where I want it. Thus negating the "can always go back to stock" ethos. Well, I've decided that it probably doesn't matter. Let's be honest, it's never going back to stock while I'm the owner of it! If I were to pull the 901 gearbox and the rally bug, fuel injected, motor for the '75 Heirloom project, it would be the perfect setup for that car. But what about the Rally Bug?

In some ways, I kind of feel like the Salzburg replica has served its purpose. I've had a good 11-12 years of enjoyment of it, it's had all its magazine features, but it's not doing anything more than just being stagnant. Swapping over the Subaru wheels pretty much ended the "replica" part, so can I experiment further?? I was shuffling cars in the storage area of my property, and scrapping some parts cars that have fulfilled their purpose and overstayed their welcome...when it hit me. I have a complete Subaru setup waiting to go in a Beetle. I bought the kit necessary to do either a 2.5 naturally aspirated setup, OR the twin cam WRX setup. As part of the car shuffling, I had the scrapper yank out the engine and transmission of one so I have a 2.5 RS core motor (to go with everything else I pulled from an earlier car). I recently traded my EZ30 six-cylinder to a buddy for his WRX motor...so I've got a turbo option as well.

So, yeah, going to go Subaru in the Rally Bug, thus giving me the aircooled engine/trans setup for the Family Heirloom. Settles the budget issues for me, but totally sets me back timewise! Ha.

[wouter1303]

that was a big plot twist....

[72marinablue]

From a usability perspective you wont regret going Subaru. I have over 3000 miles on my subaru swap now and its makes the car much more livable. It doesn't leak, the factory fuel injection ecu works reliably, and its enough power. Definitely work to have the cooling system installed but in my eyes worth it.

[owdlvr]

Originally Posted by 72marinablue

From a usability perspective you wont regret going Subaru. I have over 3000 miles on my subaru swap now and its makes the car much more livable. It doesn't leak, the factory fuel injection ecu works reliably, and its enough power. Definitely work to have the cooling system installed but in my eyes worth it.

I need to study your thread and cooling system install for sure. May need to hit you up with specific questions/photo requests.

[72marinablue]

Originally Posted by owdlvr

I need to study your thread and cooling system install for sure. May need to hit you up with specific questions/photo requests.

Happy to share anything you need!

[H2OSB]

@72Marinablue. Are you using the factory ecu?

[72marinablue]

Originally Posted by H2OSB

@72Marinablue. Are you using the factory ecu?

Yes I am.

[Steve C]

Hi

Welcome to the dark side. If I can help in anyway let me know. I've made a few errors and found better ways to do things over the years.

Cheers Steve

[owdlvr]

Originally Posted by Steve C

Hi

Welcome to the dark side. If I can help in anyway let me know. I've made a few errors and found better ways to do things over the years.

Cheers Steve

Excellent!

Currently trying to find good photos of a radiator setup that I can acquire the bits for in North America…

[wouter1303]

maybe something like this?

https://www.csp-shop.com/en/brand-sh...sd-29965b.html

I dont know if it has the amount of cooling surface as needed, but in this way you won't be modifying your trunk/front.

[Steve C]

Hi

My latest radiator is from a 944 Porsche in all aluminium. I have used Audi 100/200 ones in past.

I've used Audi fans with the Audi fan housing which work pretty good.

On the 944 radiator that I'm using now I tried an unshrouded fan which wasn't very good. I'm now using twin 11 inch Spal fans which have an amazing amount of airflow. They came with a fan housing that I needed to trim to fit the 944 radiator.

You can tilt the radiator so that it sits lower and is supposed to make the radiator work more efficiently. You need to use a radiator as wide as possible and seal around the radiator so that all incoming air goes through it.

Cheers Steve

link to fans that I used https://thermofans.com.au/collection...roducts/ef3580

[owdlvr]

Time for an update! I was off traveling for a friend's wedding, and the shop is getting way too full with multiple beetles exploded...but here we are.

The welding on the body shell is now complete. I have my buddy Bob to thank for that. For some odd reason he really enjoys thin sheet-metal welding. He must be ill or something :P


While waiting for the 'ok' to run the car down to the body shop, I've tried to start dealing with a number of the items needed on the Subaru swap. I pulled out my bins of Subaru-Swap items, and discovered that I don't actually have everything that I need for the swap. It looks like I (likely) scrapped the motor that came out of my donor, probably when I moved seven years ago. At the time I had one or two running Subarus that I was using as 'daily drivers' so it would have seemed logical. But one of those Subarus, my wagon, is a 2.5i engine with variable valve timing and the drive-by-wire throttle. Neither of which I want in the car. My '05 that we just yanked the motor out of, rats had destroyed the wiring harness in many places...so it's just a good core longblock I can use.



In doing some detailed research, I need to have the following from the same car: Wiring harness, under dash harness, intake manifold, cam/crank gears, intake wiring harness. Hmph.

In my current stash:
- Wiring harness from a 2002 - missing the "intake harness".
- Engine and intake from a 2005 DBW - missing the intake harness (rats)
- A boat load of rebuild parts and timing belt kit to match the 2005.

This leads me to three options: find yet another Subaru donor to strip, find a parts car / wrecking yard that has the right year/model for me to pull my missing bits from, or just accept DBW and variable valve timing and part out my wagon. Hmmmmm. As I was contemplating this, a guy walked up to me at the car wash in town and asked "Hey, any chance you need a parts car?" Um, yes? So I have a tentative deal on a running, driving, Subaru Legacy. More updates soon!

On the transmission side, I have two transmissions to work with (currently). The first is a "known good transmission" I purchased from a local rally shop, and the second is the one I just pulled out of my 2.5RS Rat-infested parts car. The rally shop transmission is most desirable, because it has the diff-studs that I need for use with the Subarugears parts...so lets open it up! The fact that there are broken parts floating around the centre diff, not a great start...


We haven't even gotten to the drain plug at this point...but pulling good sized metal bits out of cavities here does not bode well. Sharpie for scale.



Ahhh, there's your problem. It would appear that 3rd gear has left the building.



The rear diff casing has a good score mark on it, but may still be okay to swap over into my newer transmission. I may also just take the circlip axle stubs and see if they will fit in the spring-clip front diff. I can't find any definitive answers as to whether this is OK or not.

But onto the second gearbox...


This one is fortunately clean inside, and has all the teeth where they should be.


Unfortunately, the speed sensor was damaged, and seized to the case. The whole assembly came out in pieces, and I have to find an exploded parts diagram and manual to figure out how to pull the GOOD pieces out of the parts transmission to put into this one. I also may need to buy a really large tap to clean out the threads for it, because I can't seem to get them clean with a pick and brush, and don't want to damage the aluminum case.

So that's where I'm at. Body ready for the body shop (but haven't heard back that they are good to take it)...can't start on the floor pan because my shop is out of space. And four steps backwards on the Subaru swap :P

-Dave

[owdlvr]

Let the case modifications begin! The Subarugears written directions are pretty poor, but his Youtube video on the modifications is quite complete. I'm a read/manual kinda guy, so I find it frustrating to have to pull up the YouTube video multiple times if I need to check something...but alas, I guess I'm old now :P







With the case ready, it was onto swapping out the pinion shaft, which is actually really really easy with the Subaru transmission.



The pinion shaft is then shimmed to set the pinion depth. The Subarugears kit includes the tool needed to do this, but you have to buy the shims from Subaru. With two transmission torn down, I had enough shims to get close...but not perfect. I messaged Todd with a photo, asking if 0.05mm was close enough to zero, or did I need to get it zero'd out. He replied to ignore the tool, and simply check it with the "stock shims you took out". Uh, okay? Why include the tool then? Anyways...we'll come back to that, because it's hilariously annoying.





The next step is to mark the ring gear with grease, and assemble the transmission, torquing the case bolts to spec. You then adjust for backlash, set the bearing preload, rotate the transmission a bunch of times, and tear it all apart. Take a look at where you are at with the grease markings, reassemble and repeat. If (like me) you've never done this before, it helps to dance a tribute to the gear mesh gods, pray, sacrifice a beer on the floor (that may have just been me knocking it over), and any other spiritual things you may think will help the situation. The biggest key, however, is to focus on one measurement at a time and only change one thing in between case tear-downs, so you can learn how each adjustment changes the mesh pattern. Ultimately you need to setup pinion depth and backlash, but changing one changes the other...so don't attempt too many things at once! Three assembly/teardowns later, and if you're doing really well you end up with some patterns like this:





I thought I was pretty much spot on, but it looks as though my gear mesh is a little loose (pattern too high on the tooth). Thing is, I'm measuring 0.005" backlash, and spec is 0.005-0.007. So if it's not the backlash, that tells me that perhaps I want to be just a touch tighter on the pinion depth. Checked with a bunch of buddies who know these things better than I do, and they all agreed I could run it as is, but maybe try and move the pinion a hair just to see.

So at this point, since I figured I was almost spot-on, I'd ask Todd what he thought. "Looks excellent, but you should move the pinion a touch. We find that 0.45mm of shims is usually the right spec." I'm sorry, what? Why didn't you tell me that five hours ago when I asked about the shims!?! ARGG! I could have had it spot on tonight if he had. I mean, not really that big of a deal. I learned a lot, and I'm very fortunate that the guy who sells the parts replies so readily. Just hilarious considering the time frame. But at that stage, it was 11pm, and I figured I'd be smarter to go to bed and deal with it tomorrow...

-Dave

[owdlvr]

Haven't been out in the shop to finalize the transmission setup, time of year and all. But I did hit a major milestone yesterday!




Wahoo!