80's Cal Look Resurrection

[AZOffTheWall]

Since the majority of this car is pre 1967 I'm putting this here, if it's wrong feel free to move it. The last time I turned a wrench on an aircooled VW the internet didn't exist. My plan is to bring this car back from a long retirement in all of it's 80's glory with a few subtle modern touches, I plan to use as many of the existing parts as possible.

It seems after sitting for nearly 24 years in the desert something has decided this would be a good place to live, thankfully the interior was sealed up nice and tight

[AZOffTheWall]

So the first step in this journey was to evict whatever had been living in there, what a pain, I'll be getting stuck with Cholla for a while, it was everywhere.

Also needed some tires, the old ones had seen better days

145's in the front and 185/65's in the rear, apparently 185/70's are tough to get?

[AZOffTheWall]

So the next step was to get this thing out of the desert and into modern suburbia where we have power, air, concrete floors and a roof to work under. JK mom & dad, I know you have all of that stuff at your place

I needed to pull the gas tank, some how putting this thing on a trailer and towing it 30 miles caused a gas leak.

It had about a half gallon left in it. Lots of dirt every where and the wiring is a mess.

[Sharp64]

Totally love it.
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1960 Indigo Blue Ragtop (Blue Barry)
1967 Ghia
1985 Westy Money Pit
“...some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.” - Michael Caine

[AZOffTheWall]

So a little on the back story of this car and my connection to it. The pan is a 61, it came from a friend that passed way to early. My father, brother and I had helped him build a nice little cal looker which was Grabber Blue, you'll see some of the blue parts on the suspension and pan, they will stay blue in Joey's honor. After Joey passed his father asked if we would take the car, the body was destroyed but the pan was good and bodies were cheap so this car was born from his passing.
I don't know the exact year of the body, it's obviously post 71 due to the vents behind the quarter windows.
In the 80's late model bugs were looked at as used cars, not nearly as cool as pre 67 cars, so the decision was made that this car would get early front fender and a long deck lid.
At the time this car was being built I had an oval so this was going to be my brothers car, our family also opened a VW shop in North Phoenix and used this car to promote our business. Since we all loved drag racing some go fast goodies were added and the car was raced along with my oval at local races and VW events.
A nice little 1915 with 44 IDF's

Some Racing seats

A short shifter

And a little nitrous to surprise the guy in the other lane

[stale air]

Ah, the 1980's. I remember it well.
That thing is a time machine, that's for sure!
Nice find!
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[AZOffTheWall]

Time to start taking stuff apart, first out comes the motor to be rebuilt.

And off comes the stainless firewall, I think I'll be painting the sheet metal flat black, lots of orange showing through and plenty of holes to fill.

Here's a look at the dash, I need to pull all the carpet off and see what's left to work with, I know I'll be sticking with an aluminum dash but I'll fill all the padded dash mounting holes and paint it blue to match the car (I think it's currently orange)

[AZOffTheWall]

So, I can't get the gland nut loose but I started taking the top end apart, everything looks amazingly well preserved, no water, oil looked new.

Autocraft Rockers? I built this motor about 25 years ago, I can't remember exactly what's in it. It has a counter weighted 69mm crank, polished and shot peened VW rods with good bolts (Diesel IIRC), and a decent set of ported heads with stainless valves

Carbs are bad, I bought some master rebuild kits, the first one is done and came out great, still have this one to do. Look at that rust.
This is where I am with this as of today, I need to pull the tranny out and have it gone through, it has a spool so I need that changed out if I want to drive this on the street again, also need to replace all of the brake parts before I touch the inside.

[AZOffTheWall]

Started cleaning up some parts, I can't believe how much silicone was on stuff. I'll be using this old school Four-Tuned 1 1/2" 4 into 1 exhaust, hopefully I can find a set of dual quiet pack mufflers that look the part.
Any suggestions?

I also managed to rebuild one of the carbs with a master rebuild kit from Pierce Jaguar, these kits are nice, they come with everything except jets, emulsion tubes and pilot jet holders.I need to soda blast the other carb, at some point it got a ton of black over spray on it.

Got the heads and sump pretty clean with Simple Green HD

Still need to get the gland nut off and disassemble the short block, getting this case cleaned up will surely be a pain

[borninabus]

right on, man!
so cool that you are keeping your friend's memory alive.

much respect
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88 Van WBX, A/T - 13 JSW TDI 6M/T - 2012 Touareg TDI Sport

[wcfvw69]

Wow.. that baby takes me back to 84' or 85'. A guy rolled his cal-look bug with a similar paint job in SD. I bought his bad ass 1835 out of it. I hope you roll that time machine with that original 80's cal-look to it!

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/detail.php?id=1877196
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/detail.php?id=1877219

Ironically, I'm selling my dual mufflers from that engine from back in the 80's. I also have the drag bar support for the back of the engine to prevent wheel hop.

I'm in Gilbert. Send me a PM if interested.
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Contact me at [email protected]
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40+ years of VW repair, and VW parts and vehicle restoration experience.
The Samba member since 2004.

**Now rebuilding throttle bodies for VW's and Porsche's**
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**Restored Porsche distributors or I can restore yours**

[AZOffTheWall]

I PM'ed you. The only thing I'll change is the stance, it needs to be a little lower in the back, right now it's preloaded on the stops with spring plate retainers for drag racing, it doesn't budge.

[AZOffTheWall]

I made a little progress on the motor yesterday, finally got the gland nut off using a 6 foot breaker bar, 2" pipe welded to an old clutch plate and 2 250lb guys, in the 80's red Locktite worked!
Lightened flywheel, looks like it may need to be resurfaced.

Crank and rods, all these parts were dynamically balanced back in the day, the rods are also balanced end to end.

1700lb Kennedy Clutch and 4 puck disc, this car ran in the 12's but I think I'll ditch the disc

and an old Engle K8, I will be using this again but with some straight cut gears this time.

Time to clean it all up and reassemble the short block.

[slalombuggy]

Man, I can here New Order blasting in the background when I look at the pix. Glad to see someone keeping the 80's look alive. I know you can still get 185/70s I bought some last year, the 65 series I'm not sure. Not going to roll those horrible 135s in keeping with a true 80s Cal look? Gawd I hated those tires....

brad

[AZOffTheWall]

I had a chance to do some work on the motor yesterday. I cleaned the case and everything that goes inside and started assembly, everything was going smoothly until I bolted the case halve together. Like a fool I didn't pre assemble everything so I have some clean up to do before I reassemble everything.
So the issue was the Silverline cam bearings are to tight, the thrust was way to thick, cam wouldn't even spin laying in the case half so I tossed it and used the old one but that wasn't the only problem with this bearing set.
Cam

Bearings

You can see the wear on these and I didn't turn this thing more than a couple full revolutions, crazy companies get away with selling this stuff.
Picked up some new bearing and everything now fits as it should

Time to clean up the cases, rods and pistons, paint the cylinders and cut down a bunch of chromoly studs. Also need to do something about the shroud and tins, all has surface rust, I'm thinking about sanding them down and painting it all cast iron, new stuff might be easier, we'll see.

[slalombuggy]

I've had to sand down the thrust surfaces on the last few sets of cam bearings I've used. You should also put them in the case and then the cam without the gear on it. Tap on both ends of the cam back and forth a few times with a brass hammer to form the thrust bearing properly. Silverline bearings are about the best out there right now. Never seen wear on the face like that unless the was debris on the cam or in the bore of the case and the bearing didn't seat all the way.

brad

[SBD]

Just found this thread. This is SO COOL!
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"Just $99 down and $64 a month for 36 months buys you a brand new Volkswagen Beetle!"

[Bashr52]

[AZOffTheWall]

A buddy that builds 1600 motors for off road cars had a set, he's just around the corner so I picked them up and the bottom end is together and free spinning. Got my cylinders all cleaned up, some new total seal rings so I'm almost ready to button this thing up (sorry, no pics). I have .050 deck height and semi-hemi cut heads with 45cc chambers which gives me almost 10:1 compression, I'm thinking that's too much for our oxygenated fuel these day, where should I be? I know Berg says 7.3:1 for dual Webers and big valve heads, any opinions?
Thanks

[ps2375]

If they are semi-hemi and have a 45cc chamber, there must not be much "hemi" left. To get to 9.5CR you'll need a .065" deck. That's getting to the outer limits of "recommended" range. I have some SCS semi-hemi heads with 57cc chambers on my late 80's built 2087, and it currently has a .07" deck for an 8.6CR, runs well and made a decent 114whp recently.
You should be able to get the CR down to 9.4-9.5 and live on premium fuel.