ProVolks Official Shop-Car Build Thread. . .

[jgm_72]

Man, that things gonna be a sweet ride for sure! I look forward to your updates!

[aircooledtechguy]

Been sewing up details on the shop-car over the past few weekends. Finally got them all finished and can officially close out phase-3.

Fired the motor up and did some gear checks. Found all five so that''s good. Then out of the blue, my alternator let the magic smoke out. . . Luckily I have some spares around here (and it's easier to change than on the teener).

I could have this beast prowling the back-roads by tomorrow afternoon. . .

I've decided that this is as far as I will take things this year. The front-end swap is as ambitious an undertaking as the 5-speed and also includes a power brake upgrade, so knowing how much I will actually have to dedicate to this during the busy months here at the shop it will be put on hold until next winter. I want to be able to drive and enjoy it for the upcoming show season and only do fine-tuning to the current set-up.

I will be going ahead with custom widened wheels and tires though and adding in my 911 seats when the upholsterer gets them finished in a week or so. I also may fabricate a custom center console so I can move my gauges in there permanently. If I do, I'll probably wire-in the cruise control at that time.

I do plan to have the MS2 re-tuned for the added displacement and CR when I upgraded from the stock U.S. spec 94s to the flat-top 96s.

I know some have been interested in the gearing and what it would translate MPH = RPMs The preliminary tests on the gearing for the 923 (912E) trans are as follows (as indicated by the speed sensor in the trans and indicated by the 912E dash gauge I have installed and wired into the car)(RPMs are rounded):

In 5th gear

40mph = 1700rpms
50mph = 2200rpms
60mph = 2600rpms
70mph = 3100rpms
80mph = 3600rpms
90mph = 4000rpms

I didn't feel real comfortable running it faster than that on my lift in the shop with the tires only an inch or so off the ground. I may have to wire in that cruise control sooner than later. . .

[supaninja]

That gear ratio is sweet!

[aircooledtechguy]

So I've logged about 60 miles on the Square since getting the 5-speed installed and I LOVE it. Cruising down the hwy, I have less engine noise and we'll see about the fuel mileage when I get the bugs out of the speedo (needle sometimes works flawlesly; other times not at all).

Some things that I definitely need to do to make it a solid driver are:

- rear-end alignment. I can tell it's out. It drives perfectly straight, but becomes a little "twichy" as speed increases. It's O.K. below 55-60, but the couple times I sprinted to 85-90, it was beginning to feel dicey. Don't want to crack this thing up because of a simple alignment issue. . .

- I need to replace my rear axle bearings. Probably should have done that during mock-up, but i didn't think of it.

- Rear brakes slightly drag. I may need to do my Porsche brake MC upgrade sooner than later. . .

- I need to get the wider tires on this before I even attempt another high-speed run over 80mph!! The 155R15s(!) that are currently mounted are wholly insufficient for anything other than drifting (which is quite fun BTW), and don't add to the stability in or out of corners.

- The speedo works only about 1/3 of the time. I'll have to investigate that. I may just have a wire that is grounding on the back (they are really close to the chassis).

- The lights for high beam, park lights and blinkers don't work or don't work correctly. I just LOVE wiring. . .

- My oil pressure gauge is not reading right. I may have the wrong sender. I also need to re-wire all the grounds for my gauges. I daisy-chained a few of the grounds together for simplicity of wiring and I think they are insufficient so some weirdness is going on.

Other than the alignment problem, the axle bearings and the brakes, the rest is more convenience stuff that I will just have to get sorted as time allows.

The ugly and unassuming "Squarsche Type-3/P SS" (Super Sleeper) is now mobile and prowling the roads for winged H*nda f@rt-cars to embarrass and demean publicly.

[BAJA-IT]

The ugly and unassuming "Squarsche Type-3/P SS" (Super Sleeper) is now mobile and prowling the roads for winged H*nda f@rt-cars to embarrass and demean publicly.

This I approve of!!!

[Chris4747]

ok so which one would be better for a street rod sandrail? easy instal and most reliable .Heres the real question if you had to have a new tranny for a new build with a 1914cc engine whould it be worth the efort to chek into if say you were thinking of adding a supercharger in the future .i guess what im asking is this could you just drop in a 923 tranny ?or what mods would you have to make on an irs torchen housing .
bare with me guys im not as skilled with vw mechanics as you

[supaninja]

The ugly and unassuming "Squarsche Type-3/P SS" (Super Sleeper) is now mobile and prowling the roads for winged H*nda f@rt-cars to embarrass and demean publicly.

This I approve of!!!

I approve too

chris4747- dude, it would be way easier to just do a 091 or a 002 tranny, a 1915 isn't making crazy power and if you SC it's going to lose torque to spin the screw.

[aircooledtechguy]

ok so which one would be better for a street rod sandrail? easy instal and most reliable .Heres the real question if you had to have a new tranny for a new build with a 1914cc engine whould it be worth the efort to chek into if say you were thinking of adding a supercharger in the future .i guess what im asking is this could you just drop in a 923 tranny ?or what mods would you have to make on an irs torchen housing .
bare with me guys im not as skilled with vw mechanics as you

On a sand rail, I would expect the install to be a much straight forward thing. On a regular car, you have to make any custom part fit into whatever space the designer of the car has been nice enough to give you. On a rail, everything is out in the open, you can add frame tabs virtually anywhere you need them, no tunnel to deal with, etc. I would think that on a rail, this type of tranny would be a lot more straight forward than I had to deal with in my Square.

I don't really see this tranny to be any easier or harder than a 901/902 out of an early 911. I would have had to do everything about the same. In fact, you clutch cable set-up would have been more complicated with the 901/902. That ended up being the simplest part of the swap (that kind of dumb luck usually eludes me ).

Finding a 923 trans is the hardest part I think. Since there was only 2099 ever made over 35 years ago, the pickin's are slim. The stars one weekend aligned just right and this one just kinda fell into my lap. A re-geared 915 could be set-up to work the same, but you would need to re-index the clutch arm on the shaft and possibly modify it slightly to work as a "push" clutch (915 equipped cars have a "pull-type" clutch). Anyone with a cutting wheel, welder and the ability to measure twice (or thrice) and cut once can get it done.

I'm going to have to invest in a chin spoiler for this beast similar to the one Piledriver and Angelo Amato have on their cars to help stabilize the front. I can tell the air getting under the front is wreaking havoc on my quest for speed. . . The car was pulling hard at 85-90mph and it really wanted to go faster but started getting really scary

[supaninja]

A nice lowering job helps with the stability too. I have had mine to 100 a couple of times and it felt stable, I think to 205's on the front help with that.

[Piledriver]

If you drop it at all from the stock ride height go with the std size MK1 Golf chin spoiler, not the deep one.

I can scrape the deep one I have on under very heavy braking and entering parking lots too fast, and have been amazed it has stayed put on occasion.

It does make a huge difference on the highway, esp behind trucks.

I have been considering dropping the rear of mine 1 spline, as it sits somewhat nose down with my lardass in it.
That should add a little caster, which will also greatly help high speed stability.

It went up an inch or so in the back when I replaced the beaten to death stock bushings with the Energy Suspension graphite-impregnated bits.
(no squeaks, BTW)

[aircooledtechguy]

I've got the rear about as low as I want to take it for now. Since i lowered the entire rear sub-assembly to fit the trans, the springplates are already adjusted as if it is quite low. I also want to keep the 4.5" of ground clearance (road surface to trans skid-plate). Any lower and it's just too darned low.

I did order the short Mk1 chin spoiler this weekend (those things are cheap!) so I'm looking forward to getting that on soon. As luck would have it, I'm getting a new set of tires for my 914 today. Since I'm running Mahles on both cars, my old 205 series wheels/tires from the 914 will be swapped over to the Square and I'll get those pizza-cutters off once and for all. Then, when I get the wheels widened, I'll upgrade to a new set with the proper sizes then. Until then, the added 50mm or 2" of additional tread width per wheel can't hurt the stability factor even if they are a little worn.

[aircooledtechguy]

The relentless quest for speed and stability continues. . .

I swapped the wheels/tires off my 914 to the Square and it already feels 200% better. On my way home on Saturday night from a VW GTG, I broke 100mph on I-5. I can only imagine what the guy in the Suburban next to me was thinking when I dropped the hammer in 4th @ 60mph and walked away from him until he was just a memory in the rear view.

I have not installed the chin spoiler at this time, but I have it in hand. I think the hot ticket thus far has been tires, but I've already hit the limit of the speed rating of these ones I have.

I can say that it easily pulls to 100mph and feels like it's got a lot more to give. I shifted into 5th at around 85mph and it was pulling hard when I backed off @100mph (my goal for the night) which was still over 1000rpms till red-line. . . Damn this thing hauls ass now!! After that run, 55mph seems like it's lugging in 5th

Now that I have some better tires under the Square, I have had some chances to test the handling too. The front and rear sway bars and the IRS suspension really add to the cornering. That dreaded S/A tuck is gone and the car is a lot flatter in the corners. The rear sway is great and my tires can really stick. It feels as if I lost 200# off the rear of the car. I have not received my 911 seats from the upholsterer yet, so I can't be as aggressive in the corners because I get launched off the seats and find myself holding on the the steering wheel just to keep myself in place (damn flat vinyl seats).

As one can imagine, I don't drift as much as I used to now and I have to admit; it was a lot of fun especially in the wet. Now it just hooks-up in all but the most extreme situations. I can get it to break free if I really try, but now I have to try. The back-end just squats and the car rockets fwd coming out of the corners. This thing absolutely smokes my 914 in everything but the more extreme cornering.

[aircooledtechguy]

Got a call from the print shop today. The new tach face I designed was printed onto a vinyl sticker the exact same size as the face of the VDO tach. The tach didn't really match the two other Porsche gauges I had in the dash AND it had to be clocked in the hole so that I could read it properly. I really like how this turned out (though I do still need to paint the bezel black). Now it looks the part and is ergonomic too.

Before:



After:

[BAJA-IT]

That looks real good. I like how you won't have to turn the tach to have the needle where you need it.

[aircooledtechguy]

As I log more and more miles onto my shop car, I have found that I miss the larger 15 gallon tank on my 914. I drive 40 miles round trip a day minimum and find that because of that, I need to fill up before the weekend if I fill it on Monday. Also, the Porsche 911 fuel gauge works on a slightly different oHms range so when full, it only read about 7/8 full. Currently I'm getting around 27mpg in mixed driving. So I decided to do something about the lack of range and the incompatible sender.

I have had a spare tank for years, so I carefully cut it with a cutting wheel (after ensuring there were no old fuel fumes present) and cut off the original filler neck. This is the tank "on the half shell"



I added 2 "L" shaped pieces that were 4.5" tall into place and welded them into place.



After everything was fully welded, I placed the top back on and welded that into place. Then I brazed a custom filler that will fit below the hood like stock. I also brazed in a fuel return nipple to the bottom as well so the plumbing can finally be correct for the MS2.




Now I need to coat it with POR-15 tank resin to ensure the rusted areas are stopped AND to ensure that if there are any small pin-holes in the welds, they will be permanently sealed. Then a black paint job and undercoating to make the outside look the part.

I should also mention that another reason for this was to better balance the car and up the weight a bit over the front wheels for better cornering (she pushes a bit in the corners like my 914 does when the tank gets below 1/2 full). I will be giving up a good portion of my frunk, but it's a Square, so room for crap is no big deal and I never really used the frunk anyway.