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  #361  
Old June 26th 2012, 15:43
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Well that was an interesting weekend! To date I've done about 100km worth of testing up on the local forest roads here in Squamish. Switching from an Audi quattro (All-wheel-drive, massive amounts of front end weight ahead of the front axle), to the bug is quite the challenge. I've been getting used to it up on the mountains, though I have to be honest it occasionally catches me out...let it get away from you and it will just spin regardless of what you try :P

Sunday was a local RallyX event though, so it was up at 4:30am and the three hour drive to Hope BC. Unfortunately I didn't wake up to my alarm, and woke up at 6am. Whoops! Lets just say the bug gets real light up front at speed, and I will be starting to look at front spoiler options :P Made it in time for registration, and even early enough to end up tech'ing the other cars. The course we've got out in Hope is pretty tight. Depending on the configuration you can get up into second gear, but it's down to first for most corners. Considering I have the 901 gear box with dog-leg first, and a pretty heavy lockout, dropping down into first gear isn't the easiest proposition. I made the attempt for the gear change on a couple of runs, sacrificing some syncros along the way. After a couple of laps I decided the time lost hunting for first wasn't worth the gain made in second gear along a short section. This, of course, was mostly irrelevant seeing as I was mowing down cones with almost every run. With low momentum I just couldn't get the car to transfer weight under braking, resulting in understeer into corners. When it would transfer it would grab so hard I'd end up taking out the inside cone. Mostly humorous, but frustrating as I wasn't correcting my errors for future runs. Definitely need more play time in the tight stuff if I'm going to do well in RallyX in this car. Oops, isn't that one of the things I built it for? :P





For the afternoon the course was reversed, increasing the overall speeds significantly. For RallyX, however, the 901 as I've got it set just isn't precise enough for the 2-1 shift. Second gear really would have helped coming across the mid section, but I ended up just wailing off the rev-limiter in first. The back section was my arch-nemesis, a missed gate in run one...the same cone mowed down in the next 3 or 4 runs. For the last couple of runs I stopped caring about the back half and just focused on enjoying the first half where the speeds were higher. Figures that on the final run I finally cleaned the afternoon course with no penalties :P

While I wasn't able to link up a single run to my satisfaction, I did have some great "segments" where I was able to pitch and flick the car exactly the way I had planned. Essentially the stuff I had practiced on the forest roads was dialed...now I just need to back it down to some tight stuff and get re-learning for the Rear-Engine 2wd setup. Either that, or I need to find a larger venue so the courses can be faster! I'd love to try the car out on some rally-sprints, where the gear box wouldn't be an issue and you could really work the car over a longer, quicker, section.







As you can see, the course was pretty wet...and the mud accumulation was incredible. After the morning runs...





...end of the day was a bit worse...





Rob was commenting on some different Tin he has to seal up the engine bay better. I think I'm going to take him up on the offer.


Pretty sure this is the first DVKK badge to be treated this way...




So, last night I figured I should start taking care of the cleaning process. I posted this photo up on Facebook with the question "this is normal, right?". #1 comment was the fact that "No Handwashing" definitely means no removing the tires and putting the car on Axle-stands!









...40min of pressure washing later, and I have *most* of the mud off the car. Seriously, the stuff was like concrete. Thankfully a buddy works at Sea to Sky carwash, so I had a semi-sponsorship last night!



I'm not sure how I'm going to get it out of all the fender lips, but I won't leave it in there as it will just hold moisture and cause the fenders to rust. I guess you could say "stage one" of cleaning is complete? I anticipate an other 3 or 4 evenings to get the car clean. One to wash the body with soap and water as per normal, one to work on cleaning out all the fender lips and any missed areas on the underside, one to clean the engine bay and a fourth to clean out the interior. Racin' is hard work! haha

I did have two casualties this weekend while racing. The car performed absolutely flawlessly, and was only hindered by my driving talent and the gear selection. There is something satisfying about tearing the car on the rev-limit knowing you're just running it for exactly what it was built for. Back off? heck no! I may consider trailering the car to the next event, only because there is such limited space for carrying the four gravel tires. The bakelight heater outlet was casualty #1 from loading tires in the back. As we all know, the body needs to be removed if I'm going to replace this. For now I think I'll epoxy the parts back together! (and shhhhh...don't look at those welds)



The second casualty was on the Accusump. Kind of hard to tell, but the tire slipped back and crushed the pressure gauge. The gauge is bent back, and the face is broken. Accusump seems to be working fine still, but I'll need to swap out the gauge for piece of mind.



At the end of the event I was second in 2wd class, and 5th overall. The field was small, however, and based on my driving I have work to do before I would be "happy" with my performance. But honestly, who cares? I built the car to race it, and I was out racing it. That in the end is the important part. I was having a blast, and will look upon all of it's new stone chips with satisfaction. I've now got 6,300km on the build and will be busy scouring the Pacific Northwest for other events. Maybe a track day next so I can avoid the week of cleaning?

-Dave
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Last edited by owdlvr; June 26th 2012 at 15:49.
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  #362  
Old June 26th 2012, 16:01
al_kaholik al_kaholik is offline
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One muddy then clean beetle!

Approval from me. There is some pretty awesome photography going on too
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  #363  
Old June 26th 2012, 16:13
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Gerrelt Gerrelt is offline
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It's cool to see you using the car where it's meant to be used for!

I think the mud looked great on the car.
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  #364  
Old June 27th 2012, 08:46
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Looks like it had a great first test under fire. The 901 gearbox is not a fast shifting box. They are very finicky and you will have to learn what it wants. I had one rebuilt and ready to put in my car. I ended up trading it for my daughters 66 Beetle and having a type 1 gearbox built to order. What gear lube are you running in the 901?
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  #365  
Old July 13th 2012, 13:49
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Well, not much progress in the past few weeks. I've been traveling for work, so the car has been resting in the garage. I've currently got Redline MT-90 in the transmission, but it needs to be replaced with Motul Gear300. I've noticed the redline gets worse the hotter the trans gets, and I've always had great success with Motul. Just can't buy it here in small-town Squamish.

In the meantime, I've been making a list for the next stage of development. Some of the items are ridiculously simple, and others will be more complex (like the skid plates). While I do love the "sport" style wheels, and they are definitely my preference, they aren't correct for that "period look". The factory cars ran 5.5" wide hub-cap style Porsche wheels:



So I figured I better pick up a set.



I was hoping to sandblast and powdercoat them, but my friend's shop is currently "clean" for painting, and not messy for blasting...so the wirewheel, hand sanding and spraybomb will have to suffice for now. Once you run any wheels on gravel the finish doesn't last anyways, so powdercoating is really just lazy not better. Of course, the wheel purchase means I'm going to need to buy more gravel tires. As the set I have are narrows for use on the 4.5" wheels!

-Dave
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  #366  
Old July 13th 2012, 19:40
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Looking better in silver...



-Dave
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  #367  
Old July 15th 2012, 08:19
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They cleaned up very well.
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  #368  
Old July 24th 2012, 04:00
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Despite a lack of posting here (Summer will do that to a guy), I have been tinkering with the bug on a weekly basis. One of the main things that bothered me was my lack of working headsets for the intercom. Peltor transit headsets are about $290 a piece, and the quality leaves a lot to be desired. Most rally folks won't loan them to buddies for events when not used, as they are so well known for breaking. The Peltor intercom, however, is relatively cheap and bulletproof. Go figure. I've tested a lot of broken Peltor headsets over the years and when it's not user-error breaking the cables, it's always the microphone that fails.

A few years ago I did make up my own intercom headsets, but I could never get the microphone circuit to work properly. The FMT110 intercom, which I own, requires a dynamic microphone. Even with piggyback circuitry I couldn't get the electret mics I had working. For the most part I didn't worry about it, as my last car wasn't so loud that you needed them to talk to each other. The bug, however, is pretty loud inside. To make matters worse, Mom was coming out to visit last week...so I needed a solution! A pilot friend brought me over a bin of broken airplane headsets, and after a day of breaking, testing and soldering...I combined about 8 different headsets, and some bits from radio-shack to create four good working headsets which are compatible with a Peltor Rally intercom. Success! I picked mom up in the airport, and we spent the week using the bug able to simply talk to each other instead of yelling. Once I dropped her back to the airport (5 days later), I started on the hit list for up coming events.



As you can see, the events are coming up fast...and there isn't much time between them! I'm going to start with a High Performance Driving Event on August 9th. I've done quite a few back east, but due to the length of time and record keeping I'm considered "beginner" status out West, and will need to start fresh again for Track & Lapping events. I still haven't sorted out a good stiff Tarmac setup for the car, but I figure even if I run it as-is, that's going to be more fun then not running the car at all! Following that, it Classic Car Adventure's mixed gravel/pavement event the "Rush to Gold Bridge". Should be a good and dusty time, which I poorly planned when setting the dates. Why did I plan a dirty gravel event that ends just FOUR DAYS before the Great Canadian VW show?! I'm going to have to pull the engine and the interior just to clean it in time. Eek!

The hit lists for the events is starting to pile up too:


But no worries, I'll get it all done!

As a start to chipping things off the list, I tried to take care of the big chips I put in the B-Pillars. The match isn't bad...and I actually think when this is dry it will be passable.



-Dave
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  #369  
Old July 25th 2012, 04:22
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fyi

http://www.ebay.de/itm/VW-Kafer-Salz...item2ec05275be
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  #370  
Old July 27th 2012, 09:14
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that's KILLER thanks for posting
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  #371  
Old July 30th 2012, 03:17
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Such a good weekend!

A buddy of mine does snowboard, mountain bike & outdoors films/videos, he and I have been talking about shooting the bug since it was a project in my garage. We've bounced around different ideas, but still haven't gotten around to doing anything. This past week, Taylor sweetened the pot the little with the addition of a RED Epic Camera. As if that wasn't good enough, his friends from Sea to Sky Cable Cams were looking to do some testing with a rally car. Hmmmmm....

Taylor's current demo reel.
Sea to Sky Cable Cam's demo reel.

For those who don't know what an Red camera is, think the Porsche GT3 of the camera world. It shoots in 5k, and super high frames per second (super slow-mo). To give you an idea of the quality...


Can't really turn down an opportunity like that!

Started off in the garage. David prepping a shot.


Later, Taylor setting up the Red as a POV cam. A wee bit bigger then a GoPro :P


Cable Cam rigging...


I won't have the video for a while, but will be sure to post it up once Taylor's had a change to edit something for me. In the meantime though, I did lap after lap of the section of road we had set aside. "faster", "slower", "can you put the car here?", "more show-ie", "that was great...we nailed it...better do it again just in case". Now I remember why I avoid video shoots! haha

One of the lines required getting close to the raspberry bushes. They ended up all down the side of the car.


iphone pic...I think


The road section we were working on was less then a half km long, with 6 corners and an uphill section. It was top of third gear type of stuff, though I was making it 7 to 8 corners for the runs they wanted it more "showy". For some of the shots I wasn't running it end to end. So as you can see, a lot of laps and takes to get all the shots they wanted to get. I'm not complaining, getting to play on a closed road at full bore is worth every second!


At one point in the early half I smoked a big rock, and following a large bang was sure I flatted the driver's side tire. We stopped, jumped out and my tire was fine. Hmmm…as I was going around the front side, my buddy Taylor (who was 'co-driving' at the time) says to me "pretty sure it's your side", yup no flat on his side either. Remember all those to-do lists I wrote down in my notebook, crossing off items as go? There was one item on the front suspension that I didn't do, and figured I would catch in that "check all the lists" step before running. Cotter pins on the sway bar ends? Based on the fact that the passenger side one didn't have a pin, and the driver's side had spat it's parts all down the road…I'm gonna guess I missed that step! Only part of the car (beside the rear axles) where I didn't replace everything with nylock nuts and/or safety wire. A quick zip home (in a friend's truck) to get some spare bits, jack and axle stands…and we were on our way to a backwoods repair. Ever try and compress/jam those stupid things together in the middle of nowhere? Yeah, not wanting to do that again! Other then this potentially disastrous event, the car ran flawless all day.

-----

Today, it was all about clean up, damage assessment and check of all fasteners to ensure I hadn't missed anything else. I washed the car twice, first at the coin-wash to pressure wash as much dust and dirt off as I could, and then a regular hand wash upon returning home. The inside was filthy, even the dust had dust on it.




Once the interior was cleaned out, I started on the damage assessment. The paint on the wheels took the expected beating and chipping.


And the raspberry bushes left me with some passenger side stripes that I'll need to polish out this week. Hard to photograph on a silver car, sadly not hard to see in person though!


The gravel road isn't a polished prepared "loose surface" road designed for road traffic. We were using a logging access road, so the stones are bigger. Sometimes much bigger. But hey, gotta use what you got! The rocks do take their toll on the car though...

Slight dent on the driver's side rear fender...


Slightly larger dent on the passenger side rear fender. Kinda wish I had made that flap just 1" longer! The rock has completely crushed the lip of the fender and pushed it out about 1/4".


The muffler is saying "make the skidplates dumbass!"


About this time I was thinking to myself "why don't I build track cars?" And then I removed the wheels. Seems I might be switching to alloy wheels sooner then I had anticipated! This is the passenger rear wheel:


The passenger front has one small dent/flatspot on the inside edge. In true rally fashion, however, both driver's side wheels are 100% perfect. Why anyone chooses to be a co-driver I'll never understand. Now, initially I was a little down on myself for doing this, as i have to go find a replacement. But then I checked the wheel and it's holding air to the exact psi I had set it to. My friend Gord has repaired a number of rally wheels (steel and alloy) using a special tool, so really this shouldn't be so bad. I grabbed my copy of Gord's special tool, and went to work. Good as new! (or in this case, good enough :P)


The engine bay is starting to look quite scruffy, but I have a gravel rally event before our local VW show..so I figure I'll do the full detail after that. For now it was just a quick clean to get the main dirt out.


I did decide to do an airfilter cleaning, as they showed some signs of needing it.


Car is now cleaned, checked and ready for work tomorrow. Just need to pop the re-oiled air filters back on.

-Dave
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  #372  
Old July 31st 2012, 19:42
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It's like watching a super model used as a plow horse! So weird to watch you build this pretty car then instantly thrash it. I'll be living vicariously through you for a long time to come!

Jason
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  #373  
Old August 1st 2012, 00:48
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I won't lie...it hurts. And almost every day when I see the damage I think to myself how much easier a track car would have been. But, rallying is just so damned cool Every flick into a corner brings a huge smile to my face.

-Dave
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  #374  
Old August 1st 2012, 11:29
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I cant wait to see the finished video, if your friend has a RED camera and knows how to use it we're all in for a treat. BTW that camera isn't even their high end, I've seen their 8k footage with an 8k projector and it blew my mind. Even crazier is my roommate went to NAB in vegas where they had a 24k demo going You're very lucky to have friends with nice camera gear!
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  #375  
Old August 1st 2012, 14:21
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Very cool! Can't wait to see the video too!
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