My 65 Notch Subi swap resto mod

[Chris253tac]

Hey guys,

I have been on The Samba roughly 15 years and for the life of me cannot remember my old username etc. Anyway, Im looking to log a build of mine somewhere for safe keeping instead of social media. What better place to do than here right?! Forgive me while I re acquaint myself to the forum operations. IE loading photos and a possible failed attempt at a structured blog of sorts.

So ill give you the long version of the story rather than fly by posts were all used to by now on said social media.

The story begins with a clapped out 65 notchback I finally got to snag from a good friend of mine. Since I was a kid I always wanted one and finally got into a position in life where i can toss some money at one. So off the Oregon I went.

Here it is sitting in my garage on day one. I did it. I finally bought a notch!

The notch didnt stay in one piece long. A few days later I started tearing into the thing. Boy was I getting in way over my head.

I gained a bit of courage and decided the pans werent going to cut it. They had been replaced with "modified" Ghia pans. The old school way.. But we have options now in the T3 world. So with both feet I jumped in. Pan off here we come.

I ordered pans and off I went to california to my brothers wedding. All I could think about was this damn car lol! On my down time I started whipping up a list of things to buy. You know.. for my simple pan off "lets get it back together" T3 project. LOL that list grew by the minute and so did the cost. What the hell did I do?

Shortly things started to show up.

So then began the cut, chop and welding. Lets do this.

but then things got weird. You see, my intentions were to freshen things up and toss it back together. But my mind was getting mixed up with the idea of an outlaw theme. 356 type of outlaw. So i started down a rabbit hole on IG. Found a rad guy that makes seats that sort of fit the bill. Then things got really weird and I wanted to make some kind of suspension seat. So i started mocking things up.

With that idea now somewhat a reality, i let my mind stew on it while i moved on.

I needed a roller. We have a 58 ragtop that needs to get back into the garage and I am confined to an oversized 2 car garage. Not a lot of building space or storing space. Good luck trying to do both. So with a roller, i could sneak the pan around as needed. I had no clue what i was in for. I let my mind get the better of me and my ideas tend to get... well.. youll see.

Heres where Ill end the first post. Id hate to lose all this progress by accident so Ill go ahead and post this and continue the saga. Stick around if youd like. The ride gets wild and I feel like I have a few things to offer folks if they are looking to do something similar. As the title says, Subi swapped notchback but it sure didnt start out that way as youll see. This project has been 2.5 years in the making and I have hundreds of photos to share.

thanks for reading.

-Chris

Teaser photo

[Chris253tac]

In order to get the roller I needed, I had to acquire a few more things. I already knew I wanted to put power to the ground AND have some meaty tires to do so. This basically pushed me to the decision of IRS swapping my swing sub frame. Also, Ill need to purchase a set of narrowed trailing arms considering my decision for wider rear wheels/tires. I snagged a donor beetle IRS rear end for parts and mock up. Purchased a set of Pacific Customs IRS jigs, CoolRydes trailing arms, CB Performance IRS pivot brackets. So with the pan epoxy primed and raptor lined, I assembled the first wave of parts.

Youll see a hole in the upper shock tower. Ill explain.. In order to use the Mendeola Kafer bar kit on a type 3, you have two choices in respect to how youll join it all together at the shock tower. One being that you use "all thread" and screw the kafer bracket on like a wing nut, thus tightening securing the shock and kaerfer bar. However, you will run into clearance issues when you mount the shell ALSO now you have to take the kafer bar off and fish out the "all thread" in order to replace your shock. To mitigate this, I drilled a hole in the tower, drilled out the threads on the inside and put a thru bolt from the outside that bolts into the kafer bracket. Make sense? Simply put a cap on the hole and now youre in business.

some freshly sand blasted goodies I snagged from Joel at T3Parts. Joel Mitchell was an absolute gem of a guy while building this car. Full of knowledge and always willing to answer questions. Not to mention I ran him ragged sending out packages back to back because I couldnt make a list lol. That would have been too easy!

More Pics on the way!

[VWporscheGT3]

I like where this is going.. KEEP GOING BRO! lol
_________________
If you have any questions about Forged ICON 4032 VW pistons just shoot me a line.

[Chris253tac]

After waiting what seemed like a lifetime (just over a year for the last box to hit my door) Everything to make my roller showed up. I wont go into details as to whom I ordered from and all the problems I had with the parts etc. That horse has been beaten to death on every public forum and the shop is banned from here anyway. Lesson learned, it was time to assemble. I skipped a few steps here and didnt take many step by step pics of my trials and tribulations. Most here have had their fair share of T3 beam installs, needle bearing replacements, bushing installs etc. I will however go into detail on a few things in my description.

The plan originally was to run a 2" dropped T3 spindle with T3 1.250" narrowed control arms. Long story short, the spindles were trash after the 2nd attempt by the aforementioned shop and I had enough of his shit. By trash, I mean dangerous looking and twisted due to excessive heat. Im running a wilwood disc kit as well so he decided it best to weld the brackets on the spindles and the tie rod arm as well. Wrong move so i junked them and had him send me 2.5" forged CB T1 spindles. I had a plan. I went to a local guy and had him make me T3 arms with T1 BJs and narrowed them 1.250". This allowed me to run the T1 spindle without an issue. Like i said, I didnt take many pictures of this process for some reason. I think I was in panic mode trying to figure it all out.

With all that said, I was ready to mock up brakes and drivetrain. I bought a late beetle single side cover IRS, JBUGS T3 left side auto shortened axles (due to narrowed trailing arms) and off i went.

I finally settled on wheels at this point. I wanted Porsche 10 hole spares. Now at this point I had already bought wheels but that was a debacle on its own. I originally wanted Escras and paid a guy "Escra money" but when they showed up they had been repops. Not the German repops either. Some company in Brazil made them and they were called "ramdas". Well shit, that sucked. So anyway, I got a hold of a guy in Cali whoom had a full set of spares and he sent two my way and two to a shop for me to have widened. The shop burned up a set of some other 16" aluminum wheels and welded the 2" barrel and lip to the outside of mine. They also welded up both holes for the valve stems and reloacated to the insode of the barrel.

when i recieved them they were a bit rough albeit VERY concentric and ran true. I just had to fix them cosmetically before powder coat so i got fany lol.

I spun them up and hit em with sand paper.

With the wheels at powdercoat I set off tot replace the stock engine. This adventure took more turns than I was ready for. Originally I wanted to build my old 2020cc back up and toss it in. Then at random, I came acros an ad for a T4 big boy.

In order to run the T4 on the T1/3 trans, you have to put the pilot bearing in the flywheel. On a T4, the input shaft is longer and thus the pilot bearing is inside the crank flange. So i bored the hole and pressed in the new bearing. This flywheel is a 200mm T4 to T1 conversion flywheel also. Now you can use any beetle clutch you desire.

Wheels came back from powder coating and I went and had rubber put on. Toyo Proxe R888Rs.

I finally had a roller! for the most part.

[Thorkhild]

SWEET! Hopefully i get to see your notch in person !

[Chris253tac]

Onto the shell. She was roached.

I bought a set of solid rockers from Joel and started the process of grafting them in.

....
without going to far into the amount of work I did, it was going to take a long time to get it squared away.

While I was in the middle of doing that, I received a facetime call from a close friend. He was at the HQ of non other than T3Parts at the time helping Joel out. He walked me around a freaking GEM of a shell....! If I snagged that shell it would put me months ahead. It had one major flaw. The passenger side B pillar midway down do the rocker and back to the C pillar had been replaced with the incorrect year. I think the car had been hit or dropped during transport years ago and someone replaced it haphazardly. Other than that wow! I was off to Tri Cities to snag me a shell.

Here is the only downside. But I got it patched up using my now "donor" OG 65 shell.

off to the blaster it went.

Came back looking like a gem. I only had minor rust repair that needed to be done. Let me say now that Im not a professional. I dont do this crap for a living and have NEVER built anything like this before. Im a one man band. So every step of the way was a learning curve.

with 90% of the metal work done it was time to throw some primer on before it got any surface rust from media blasting.....

[Bobnotch]

Very nice build. Nice details too.
Repairs to the "new body" look just fine from here. While not perfect, they look better than the previous repairs, and should last a very long time. These cars all seem to rust in the same places too. The rockers/heater channels, top and bottom of the front fenders, the bottom of the rear fenders. Looks like you've gotten those places taken care of.

As for your first shell, I've repaired worse.
_________________
Bob 65 Notch S with Sunroof
71 Notch ...aka Krunchy; build pics here;
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=249390 -been busy working
64 T-34 Ghia...aka Wolfie, under construction... http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=412120

[Chris253tac]

Thats about the time things started getting crazy....

I brought home a 2008 Subaru WRX. My intention initially was to just bring it home for a future swap but my neighbor wasnt having any of that. He and I pulled the engine and trans that day! LOL

I got the car from a guy after he blew the head gaskets and called it quits. HE just put $5k into the engine and didnt want another mechanic bill to pay so he bought a new subaru lol. I gave him what the dealership was going to give him on trade plus $500. So out came the heads and I took them to work and flycut them.

made a call to Subarugears and got some goodies on the way. Time to buiild the TY758 5 speed. IF you dont put a reverse R/P in the trans, youll have 5 reverse gears and 1 forward gear. You can also use a VW trans and adapter but that would last me all of 5 minutes or less with the power I intend to put down.

The EJ255 came with a cobb accessport, VF52 turbo and an Invidia turbo back system I made some upgrades myself like a billet TGV delete and Mishimoto intercooler but well get to that later..

So now with a 340 whp engine and a 5 speed trans at my finger tips, the T4 had to go. The hurdles have only just begun.

Also to make sure i wasnt going to snap CVs or axles, I upgraded to Swayaway axles and German 930 CVs.

Things were going to get interesting.

The hydraulic clutch was the first modification I had to do to the pan. Simple enough. I later built a nice removable box that covers the master.

[Chris253tac]

[grenadeAcorn]

Dang, cool seeing these pics, been following in the PNW group!
_________________
1967 VW Type1
1966 VW Type3 (Squareback)
1967 Land Rover Series 2a 109 (NOTAVW)
1964 Ford Galaxie 500 FB (this one either)

[Chris253tac]

[grenadeAcorn]

[260KMN]

Excellent work.

[Jason37]

Speechless.

[vwfye]

Me likey!
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64 No'back Speedster "Pearl"
1980s Sand Dragster "The Plunger"
LME "Little Giant Killer 3"
1974 Ghia "PUK"

[Chris253tac]

Ok lets keep it rollin! Where did we leave off..? Oh yeah, Subi swap time. Since the engine was mocked up, it was time to test fit the shell and see what needed to be modified. Theres an untold amount of work that goes into a subi swap. Depending on the year you use and trans, it can be fairly plug and play or absolute hell. Welcome to my hell.

Coolant lines have to be plumbed, electrical has to be done, intercooler has to be, well, cooled. Mock up, tack, grind, mock, bend and tack etc etc..

I went with Mishimoto intercooler and radiator. These things are solid and offer best bang for my buck. The hardest part was deciding how to get fresh air to the radiator. This was the do or die part of the swap in my opinion.

Who builds a car like this without a staging brake and line lock? haha

Next photo dump in coming.

[Chris253tac]

Oooof...Wiring is a pain in the ass. I decided to take the harness on myself. I also found out by doing so that Im some kind of masochist. Who volunteers for that stuff? 2008+ Subaru's have a canbus system as well as an immobilizer. With that said, you need several key features in order to get the engine to turn over at all. Key, ignition, body computer, ECU, dash cluster and for all the things canbus necessary, AGT engineering's Canbus emulator. The canbus is a high/low com signal that everything requires in order to function. All the aforementioned parts need to be from the same donor car in order to work. Now onto the wiring.

after several weeks of fussing around, I had all the necessary fat cut from the harness. The test fire of the harness showed promise. But on the first initial engine fire, a different story. Theres so many dam signal wires in this thing. I had actually been extremely lucky when I cut everything down.. I only snipped one wire needed and it happened to be in the fly by wire throttle harness. The engine fired up and idled like a champ but would not throttle up. I was missing the a 5v feed. After a day of messing around I found it and bang! She was revving like a champ.

now it was time to focus back on the body.

I wont bore you with all the block sanding details and countless weeks spent prepping for paint. So lets get to it.

Im going to disclose again how this is not my field of work and Ive NEVER built a car like this before, I am doing this entire build in my 2 car garage by myself lol! Paint and ALL!

That said, Some PPG Porsche gray/black 7A1 should do the trick...

NOw that that is shot I focused on the interior. I took very litle pictures during this time and Im a bit bummed out about it. I had a cool dude in Rochester WA wrap my dash after i fixed the big cracks. Here is what the plastiweld kits can do. I was impressed to be honest.

Feels like Im jumping around a bit and missing some very important lessons learned and what not. I have to say, the photo dump is going a lot faster than the build went LOL. Lots left to post.

[Bobnotch]

I love these kinds of builds, lots of little hidden gems hiding in them.
What hydraulic clutch did you go with? Loved the little box you built to hide it.
That wiring must have been a real nightmare, especially trying to figure out what you needed to keep, and what could go. Did you keep the immobilizer? Or end up using the Subaru stuff? Just wondering how you got the VW part to work with the Subaru stuff.

Love the color you chose for it. Nice job on painting everything, even doing it in your garage for a beginner. More people need to try doing that at least once in their lifetime. Can't wait to see it all back together to this point. And YES, pics load faster than the actual work behind them. Great work so far, still waiting for more.
_________________
Bob 65 Notch S with Sunroof
71 Notch ...aka Krunchy; build pics here;
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=249390 -been busy working
64 T-34 Ghia...aka Wolfie, under construction... http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=412120

[Chris253tac]

[W1K1]

I'm likin' where this is going
_________________
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/manuals/jim_martin_engine_build.php

1973 super
1965 squareback 1500E
1971 bay window westy- subi swap