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Fri Apr 24, 2009 3:59 pm

Actually have no idea where the seats are from, they came with the car. Have always wondered because they are super comfy (velour is a pain to keep clean though) You may have just solved that mystery :D because they sure look alike. Funny story in that actually. When i bought the car, as I said the seats where in the car. They were engineer approved, and the punch line? I broke the mounts within 2 weeks, my friend in the passenger seat only missed the windshield cause the seat belt ended! Hmm. . . . . . . engineers :?

Fri Apr 24, 2009 5:01 pm

nilza wrote: Dude, look at the difference in the trailing arm's angle! :shock: That must have serious caster change through suspension travel, but I suppose if you're not running it in the baja/dunes it won't affect much.

Mon Apr 27, 2009 4:33 am

You know petrol punk i never noticed till you pointed it out, but your are right... . .. . . . .there is a much larger distance between the link pins on kombi than a beetle. Strangely i have run this thing on most anything and i swear it handles better than the original beetle spindles, particularly at speed. Maybe the old VW engineers had alot more tricks up there sleaves than we give them credit for?

Also found a torsion bar spring rate calculater here on the samba, (one less thing to search for)

Quick question though and it seems really obvious, a coil over shock only runs in a linear direction, so if the the springs are rated at 250 and 350lb the max pressure on the heims when the shock is bottomed out can only be that of the largest spring ei. 350 lbs?

Can anyone confirm this? it seems too simple :?

Thu May 07, 2009 3:17 am

So its been awhile, the weather has been good and the girlfriend is back.. . . . so the baja took a bit of a backseat. But i picked up a few parts on the sly and still got a day in on the long weekend.
The engine is coming along nicely, getting started on the rocker geometery, speaking of - with swivel feet adjusters . . . . . is this shoulder at the bottom of the rocker that gets ground, right?

AND . . . . . back to the baja, got to drill the floor pans out, they are pretty rough. not sure wether to replace, repair or to make my own.
Add it to the 'to do' list :lol: with the floor out i got the chance to start welding the rollcage

Anyone got pictures of home made floor pans?

Thu May 07, 2009 9:43 am

i have always wanted to give these a try.

http://www.vwinnovations.com/bug.html#floor

if your seats are attached to your cage work running a fiberglass floor pan would be sweet. shave some weight off of the car, easily reparable, no rust ever. but of course off roading might take to much of a frequent toll on them.

another thing i have seen (but cant manage to find a picture of) are just single sheets of aluminum bolted down to tabs welded to the tunnel and the outer pan edge.

Thu May 07, 2009 12:58 pm

Ha ha! you could almost build the whole car out of fibre glass off there website. Cool as they may be, i think the abuse would crack them pretty fast. Found out what replacement pans are worth today, definately be passing on those. think i will make them out of 1mm galvanised sheet (that should keep the rust off them)

Thu May 07, 2009 3:19 pm

Great Build. It's nice to see someone building an extremely capable vehicle without dropping loads of cash at a parts shop.

http://weldingweb.com/showthread.php?t=22623
Here is a link to build that has the tab mounted floor pans that penguin was talking about (page 3).

Thu May 07, 2009 7:02 pm

scoobasteeve wrote: Great Build. It's nice to see someone building an extremely capable vehicle without dropping loads of cash at a parts shop.

http://weldingweb.com/showthread.php?t=22623
Here is a link to build that has the tab mounted floor pans that penguin was talking about (page 3).

Yeah thats not really what i was talking about. i dont know what that was. :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:

Thu May 07, 2009 7:25 pm

runslikeapenguin wrote: i dont know what that was. :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:

I said the same thing when I saw it, doesn't seem very strong. I don't know if he is a VW guy, but he is one heck of a welder.

Thu May 07, 2009 8:21 pm

scoobasteeve wrote: runslikeapenguin wrote: i dont know what that was. :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:

I said the same thing when I saw it, doesn't seem very strong. I don't know if he is a VW guy, but he is one heck of a welder.

i suppose . . . . stitch welding (trigger welding) is not very strong at all. its normally reserved only for things that just need to "look" TIG welded. they are structurally unsound.

Thu May 07, 2009 11:14 pm

Quote: Great Build. It's nice to see someone building an extremely capable vehicle without dropping loads of cash at a parts shop.
thanks scoobasteeve!

All the work is mostly to do with the cost of getting good parts here in australia. There are a small number of custom vw shops but prices of parts are just too high, and then often they are poo anyways. Besides, am looking at doing my mechanical engineers qual at the moment, so is great practice of welding, problem solving and design!
As for that tabbed floor pan (if we can still call it that)
Yeah. :? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thats a little ghetto for my liking (how much dust, mud, water, ect, ect are coming though that floor? I am actually a little upset at myself for not just putting new pans in, but with everybodys budgets being tight today parting with $350AU for a pair, would rather put some brain and elbow grease into a better solution

Mon May 11, 2009 2:00 am

Put a whole good weekend into this hole in my wallet!
Cage is in and welded,as are those holes that i put in the A pillers. cleaned out the whole interior and finished the new seat rails.

Is great when you start to see the ends of things! Interior is just about ready for paint i think, just waiting for the engineer to put his tick of approval on it.
Moving right along to the front end. started on the bars for the front, not sure if this will be the final design. But i am quite keen on the idea of the front bumper attaching the same way the rear will. Not sure where these tubes will stick out of the front end, but it won't be a flip front now anyways (the legal problems with putting the fuel tank inside the cockpit are just to much of a pain. So fuel in the front and tyre on the back above the engine again. Also looking into a legal means of putting a rack and pinion in the front, the center mount VW box is an ok idea but is still old hat. Time to step up! :D
anyway some photos :oops:
You can see how damaged the front end really is, yes. . . . . I checked that it was straight

Sun May 17, 2009 12:59 am

Another busy weekend, unfortunatly not much on the VW. This is how projects get stretched over years isn't it?
Came to a decision during the week that seeing as how much work i am putting into this thing, mixed with being unable to get the front tyres that i want. (can't get anything under a 8.5inch tyre that is 29-30 tall) going to make steering a cow, I decided . .. . . . . Rack and pinion!
Did a bit of research, and came up with either a Daewoo lanos rack or a Lada samari rack. Both are centre load and have the steering rod reward of the axel. At the end of the day the wrecker had a lanos one for cheap so i grabed it (got a power rack, because the ratios are quicker 3 turns lock to lock) and i have the option of going power later :wink: I hear the manual rack has 4 1/2 lock to lock . . . .excessive!

Now.. . . . I'm off to do steering geometery and bumpsteer spreadsheets, so the engineer allows me to do this (the fun never ends here!) :lol:

Mon May 25, 2009 11:30 pm

haven't had much of a chance to update this week, busy busy. The engineer is looking at the cage, seats, seat belt mounts, and gearbox mounts this thursday. Everybody cross your fingers. have been playing with the beam abit, cleaning it up, cutting the adjusters out and the such. did a bit more work on the front tubing. Added the brackets to the bottom of the rollcage to floorpan

Thu May 28, 2009 3:59 am

**UPDATE**

Took the day off work the play with the dub today (seriously) haha, the real reason is i had an appointment with the engineer at lunch, finished the frontend and some welding in the morning

Spent some time with the engineer today, went over the car what has been done and whats to come. the rollcage, rear suspension, gearbox, seats and seatbelt anchors are past. The one big thing that i was a little surprised at is that i will have to be building crumple zones (sort of) into the front bumper.
Basically where the bumper slides into the rollage at the front, will be attached with shear pins (at least it will till the final inspection) :twisted:
the bumpers will slip back into the cage in an impact, but only to a piont.

Mon Jun 08, 2009 3:25 am

Haven't posted anything here for a while cause i lost the cable for my camera for awhile. But that's ok nothing exciting going on really anyways. Just filling in all the holes that putting a cage in has left, plus the rust.

Also adding metal around the coil-overs so that i can boot them at the top. coils look cool inside the car but the dust and mud can stay outside.

Fitted the seat belt mounts, now looking at the photos i'm sure alot of you are thinking WHA?!, but this is how they specify they need to be built to be legal. I don't know, i don't write this stuff.

Lastly decided to make the floors myself, have the sheet lying around and the cost of new halves is just not in the budget. Used the edges of the old pans for shape, turned out well.

Sun Jun 14, 2009 2:50 am

Unfortunatly has been a slow week, more work less buggy at the moment. Think alot of us are feeling the financial pinch at the moment.
I also have a finish date now, as I will be part of the airforce january of next year. Will have to get this thing done before otherwise there will be somewhat of a gap between updates.
So to the steering rack, got a few parts back from the machine shop on friday and was able to reassemble that and get an idea of how it is going to be mounted.

I welded up the opening for the center load of the rack, cut the hole in the back end instead,

took the rack out and had the shaft machined same on the back

Put it all back together and .. . . . . . .voila!

Mon Jun 22, 2009 9:47 pm

Wow, i can't believe all the crap you have to do to stay legal. Amazing. and to think here in the USA, we can do whatever we want and all is well. Crazy. and i thought california was bad. Tho, in some cases, prolly not a bad idea. I work at an auto parts store, and have seen some crazy shit. One guy came in needing a battery installed, and noticed he had a bad fuel leak. Gas was gushing from the line, all over the motor. I told him about it and all he says is "yeah, i know, been like that for a few months". Another guy came in, and needed a headlight installed. I just happened to look down at his wheels, and saw that the vented brake rotors had worn down so much that one side of the disc (u know how vented rotors have what looks like two rotors faces, with inner supports) was completely missing, and the pad (just the metal part), was scraping against the inner vertical supports. one whole side was completely missing.

and another guy had a piece of shit camaro he is supposedly making into a race car, but with parts from the junkyard. anyhoo, he has the badly dented, and scratched all the hell fuel cell where the backseat was, and its not even tied down in any way. Just sitting there. also the battery is just sitting there, with only the cables to hold it back in the event of an accident. he has atleast 2 lug nuts missing from each wheel, and he welded the motor mounts in his car, cause he put another motor in it, and the welding looks awful with gaps in between, like he was drunk when welding. And the other day i notoced one of the mounts broke off. He also has no shocks in the rear. One side completely broke off, and the other side, 1 mount broke, so the shock is just dangling there. i can go on all day about that dudes car, but im sleepy.

I hope the owners of the above cars aren't reading this, lol.

Mon Jul 06, 2009 3:42 am

Hi guys been a while, don't have the time to post pictures on the net at the moment :lol:
Bugman, you are right on the money there. (people may mod there cars to the n'th degree, but often the neglected stockers are sooooo..... much more dangerous) we don't have yearly checks here in queensland, some other states do. They frown on modded cars and not only do the police pull over anything a little exciting, but we have roving patrols from the department of transport (They have PURPLE, YES PURPLE! flashing lights) and if you don't have the relivant paperwork and modification plates, look out! Your parting with alot of your cash.
I now have a - certificate for the quality and fit of my fibreglass,
- plate for seats
- plate for seatbelts (and the fact that it is a 2 seater now)
- plate for rack and pinion (*Pending * is only approved as a design athe present)
- plate for gearbox
- plate for IRS conversion
- plate for rollcage
before this thing is done am sure i will have one for the brakes too, then maybe an engine coversion (where does it end) :x
and it costs $90 for each one!

Anyways have been getting some work done of late, still pulling the rear suspension apart and putting it back together getting it sorted. Put a breather into the gearbox and sealed the old one, fitted it up again. While it was there I thought i would drop the oil, . . . . .um. bit dry and those teeth rattling around in the bottom sure do look like they should be part of the ring gear :cry:

I fitted the seats and the belts and mounts for the highlift, things are looking busy so i busted out the spray gun. And pointed it in the wrong direction :lol: Painted this thing for my parents business, signwriting is up next. Decided to save some coin and paint the beetle yellow aswell, as a tax writeoff. It's a "promotional Vehicle" now, wonder if i get cheaper rego :D

Primed the rear with some epoxy and then hit it with some yellow, am kind of sick of the surface rust.

Mon Jul 06, 2009 4:18 am

Hey Nilza, i dont mean to alarm you, but the windows wont fit with the high lift....... :P