Tell me all about the Puma

[mattlockwood]

Curious about the Brazilian Puma.....

Does the body fit on a beetle frame?
Does an IRS trans fit?
Does a standard 1600 sp fit? I’ve seen ads for fan housings that look a little flatter than the regular 1600 doghouse .

More questions to follow as I think of them....
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1970 Bay Window Bus.
110 hp 6 cyl Aircooled automatic

[rayjay]

IMO the Puma is the best looking of all the "kit cars" [ I know it's not really a kit car". It was styled by Pininfarina in a roundabout way. If you look at the early Ferrari 365GT 2+2 you will see where the styling for the Puma came from !!

They don't use a bug pan. You can use Ghia floorpans as replacements but I think they takes some mods to work. Swingaxles. I have heard that to convert to IRS you have to cut up the underside of the body.

Not much headroom like all most all the swoopy kit cars. The VW pans have the bottom of the floor pretty much inline with the axles which is where the problem lies. That and the 15" wheels.

There are several yt vids with some puma footage.

[Petfisheric]

The VW based Puma started life on a cut down Karmann Ghia floor pans. Later the Brazilia, not really any difference. Plenty of people do the IRS conversion pretty easily but they all started life with a swing axle. The seats are flush with the floor and allow for plenty of headroom up to about 6' unless you have a convertible then its unlimited

Most Puma's had a dual port 1600 with dual carbs and a Brazilia fan housing which is commonly referred as Puma fan housing in North America. Puma supposedly modified the standard 1600 to get 75 hp instead of the factory 65 hp. They also offered an 1800.

Of course all of those brought in the US carried the moniker of "Kit car" to get around crash testing requirements. So some of those were sold with out transaxles or engines leaving it up to the buyer to source. When I bought my GTC they had a 2110 in it but offered it with the original 1600. After a test drive I elected to get the 1600 so I wouldn't end up in jail or dead.

A lot of the mechanical are interchangeable with North American/ European parts but a few items like the Master cylinder has to be sourced form Brazil.

[David Grason]

[Petfisheric]

The car was fast and I knew I would get in serious trouble.

[VWFIXER]

Had some neat OG Puma carbs and manifolds, does anyone know WTF I am talking about? Steel, Tall, DP OG VW part numbers, barn was cleaned out while i was in Thailand.
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( ) Cheap
( ) Fast
( ) Reliable

Choose 2

Over a million air cooled miles driven and 15,000+ cars serviced.

[Max Welton]

I think Pumas originally got Kadrons on their 1600s, right?

Puma is one of the three kit-cars I wouldn't kick out of bed. The other two are the Manx SR and the Sterling.

Make that four. SP2 is right sexy.

Max
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1967 Type-3 Fastback
Under the Knife https://shoptalkforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=151582
Home Stretch https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=767836

[VWFIXER]

[Buggeee]

Here are the pictures I have of my Puma's carburetors

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1966 Sportsmobile Camper https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=...mp;start=0
72 Super Duper http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=672387
(adopted out) 61 Turkis Pile https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=728764

[VWFIXER]

[Buggeee]

I will look to see If the part number on the manifold is accessible

In the meantime, the K&N E-3205 filter fits the paper filter housings for my Puma. These type were stock on mine, and the housings are marked with the Puma logo. I could see replacement filter on a Brazilian parts web site but could not navigate that. So I searched K&N filters by their dimensions and found these.
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1966 Sportsmobile Camper https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=...mp;start=0
72 Super Duper http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=672387
(adopted out) 61 Turkis Pile https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=728764

[Buggeee]

[quote="VWFIXER"]