The Plan

For as long as I can remember, this car of mine has been made fun of for one fact. Its slow as hell. I cant fault that though, the car was never really intended for speed, granted the Ghia was designed to look like a sports car, but have the reliability and economy of the Beetle. My car came stock with 60hp, which is probably more like 53 hp. Factor in the loss due to the tranny and we are looking at 40 hp at the wheel. Its pretty anemic but there are ways to get around that. Most people like to build engines, the design is straight forward and the block can be bored out so new pistons can be slipped in. The most comon is a 1915 engine which gives good torque and can last around 50-75k miles before a rebuild is needed. Fuel management will need to be upgraded though. Then guys stroke them and can build up to a 2332cc engine. This thing is huge for a VW engine and make around 150-170hp but its not cheap. A good well built 2332 engine that will last 50k miles cost around 3k low side and 5k.


Then there is the type 4 engine. This came on some late model buses and and late model vws. Type 4 engines are stronger, but there is a lot of modification that has to be done oil cooling wise and transmission wise. Type 4 engines are very expensive to certain degrees and the best builder is name Jake Raby. He has done some stuff with these engines that is amazing. I have seen a type 4 engine run to 9 grand and dig into concrete with its tires. They are awesome engines but they are just to expensive to be justified at this point.


And then there are turbos. Turbos for these engines are pretty straight forward. There is a company called CB performance which sells complete kits for around 3.5k. Looking back my car would be turboed by now if I had gone this route. But I decided to go the hard way and build a kit myself. It is more expensive to do it the way Im doing it, but I wanted to put some trick parts on myself, something that was tasteful and combined the parts that I wanted, not just what CB sells. The only real benefit to the cb system is that it has fuel injection. Id like to add that at a later point in time.





I decided to go turbo because I like the idea of being able to switch parts over to another engine externally and still get mounds of hp out of it. So lets get to the parts.


So Im not going to be able to tell about everything right about now, but these are prelimiary parts, some for boost control and what not and or monitoring. They are important as I can see what my engine is going to be doing when under boost. Going to have to make this quick. I wish I had more time but I dont want to keep my friend up.


For boost pressure/control I decided to go with an HKS blow off valve. It is some what ricer I know, but I liked the design. Ive heard mixed reviews but I like the design, look, feel, fit and finish of the part. These get bad rap because of the atmosphere blow off which wistles quite loudly. I am going to recirculate it though so I get better response and not as much boost lag.







For monitoring the boost Ive decided to go with a set of gauges that are akin to the setup of Randalls car. http://garagehumble.blogspot.com Hes got a setup very similar to what Im going with. I liked his choice of gauges and placement and also which gauges he chose to use. I mirrored that to a certain extent. As you can see there is a boost gauge, oil temp and pressure gauge out of a 911sc , and an EGT gauge.






For direct boost controll I really liked greddys profec spec B unit. Next to it you can see an AEM Uego AFR unit. I was going to include these with the gauges above, but I am going to relocate them to the glove box so they can be hidden. These parts are a little more pricey so I wanted to hide them, plus their design is not really in with the others.





Next is a Borla muffler, I liked their build quality but this one is a little questionable, got it from Summit racing, and it isnt stamped like it should be, but it will suffice. All stainless steel an a 3in diameter. It should be quite loud :) but I am hoping for a good deep resonating tone.





Lastly this is the hotside of the turbo. Im going to sandblast it and then ceramic coat it. Should be pretty potent with the coating and a good turbo blanket.



Ps, Randall convinced me on the 60% throw, and Im going for it.

Shifty Situation

Ok, so I got bit the other day, more like yesterday but whatever. I currently have a shifter in the car naturally, but it isnt really upgraded, more just a stock shifter with a bit of a chrome cross drilled sleeve and a nice shift knob.



snagged this off www.thesamba.com any ways, I have the formula vee shifter (upper right hand corner) which come to think of it, FV sold little nick knack things for vws to "dress them up" a bit. I see no performance out of this shifter and when I bought it at the time I wanted to see if it would. It doesnt :( . I dont know why this has irked me so much recently, I mean it worked at the time yeah, but now it just doesnt seem to fit what I want. This means that I can use it for my very one day though which is cool.

So... what to replace it with?



I was thinking Hurst, but Hursts are very much Mopar and non VW, I mean they did come out in the 60's and 70's but yeah, way more Mopar then Dub. And then I remembered Ive always liked and wanted a Gene Berg Shifter. These things are hella famous and very well made apparently. People swear by these guys and Im pretty sure put Berg on the map. So the question is, do I want a 40% or a 60% reduction in gear travel. Little undecided. I have found a standard 11" with a small curve 60% reduction throw for $225 shipped, then a 40% reduction that is 9.5" tall. I want to get the 60% as I can get 40% reduc out of a stock shifter with a $5 part. Decisions decisions.

some pictures of the two proposed options, but Im really thinking the 60% reduction.



40%







the 60%, notice the ball and shaft protrudes a bit more and requires a special plate that isnt shown that lifts the assembly up a bit giving the larger throw.









Im really feeling the 60% reduction though :(

Slipping away

Cant justify the title other than me listening to the song by Sum 41, but it fits at this point in time. Ive done a lot and its been a while sense posting so this should be a good long update.



Any way, on to the car.



The car officially runs now. Carburetors in general are a tricky thing, its not like you can plug up a lap top and viola, its tuned. These things take time and dedication nowadays. They are tuned by small pieces of brass which are hard to find and cost some money to be honest. As it sits right now, I find that my carbs are pretty set in. I am noticing a bit of a lean spot on initial acceleration but I can adjust that by going from a .40 pump jet to a .45 and that should make the car run perfectly.

Any way lets get to the pics.






Thats a big difference mind you. To the left is the single Solex 34-PICT3. This was the stock carb for my car and it worked ok I guess. I fried an engine over this single setup.







It was very fuel efficient, so much to the point that it really restricted the fuel delivery to the engine. And this is how it looked originally on the engine.





I didnt like the way it looked much less the way it performed. It was great for stock use but I needed something more. Enter the larger carb on the right, there are two of these arranged in a double barrel setup which means there are 4 barrels on this engine now. Now we are talking :).
These allow for each cylinder to be tuned to what they need which is important. Here they are on the engine now.






There is a considerably noticeable difference on the car now, this thing has a little more get up and go. I finally nailed down the tuning after a very long time and I like the way they run the car. Much more throttle response but if you drive it normally just like it used to be it acts much in the same manner. Notice the Alternator. I replaced the generator and Im also pleased with this upgrade, it feels more inline with the car and its goals and will be able to power some of the electronic goodies that will help it with a future mod... turbo :)



I am planning to turbo the car some time within this life time, but Im taking a long time to do it. The car is going to sport some nice turbo parts and controls. I will get to those at another date and post.



As for now I have decided to go away from the WRX turbo I picked up as it is not in the limits for my engine and will not boost as I want it to. Whats the point of a turbo if it only spools for 800 RPM? So I have decided to go with a Garrett T25 turbo.





This is the .8x A/R one but I have one that is a .49 A/R which will spool up a lot sooner, Im hoping at 2-2.5K RPMs. I dont want to get to much into the setup now, but that will come as I acquire more and more parts for this project. Im aiming for 150-160 crank horses which this car would be a BLAST to drive but we shall see.



Ive also been restoring/cleaning the hell out the visors.






The off white is clean of course and the brown one is one that has yet to receive treatment. That is a solid hour of cleaning via Windex and then re moisturizing with Vaseline which I have fallen in love with its ability to cheaply lubricate leathers, plastics, and vinyls. Infact I used it to treat my dash which looks amazing and factory fresh now. Keep in mind this shot was in the dark so its not a glamor shot
but you get the general idea.






I then spent some time one the wheel and got it looking a little bit better. First is how I originally got it and then after massaging.




So yeah, thats about it for now.