ProVolks Official Shop-Car Build Thread. . .

[panel]

Nate.......thanks for the link!

[aircooledtechguy]

The relentless quest for more power and speed continues. . .

Ever since installing the 5-speed, I was forced to go back to using the stock Porsche flywheel. It's a nice forged piece, but damn this thing is boat anchor @ 17+# compared to the conversion flywheel I had on it that weighed in at about 12.5#. Believe it or not, when I had to switch back to the Porsche flywheel (due to installing the Porsche 5-speed), I also upgraded to the larger P&C set upping my displacement 85cc and the car got a bit SLOWER. . . This COULD NOT STAND!! So I did some calling around and found a local place to lighten a spare Porsche flywheel I had laying around. They were able to conservatively shave a full 5.5# off and still leave me tons of meat on it. I'll bet they could have gotten another 2# if they had not conservatively done it. Next time, I'll tell them to go crazy with it!!




I'm SUPER happy with the results. Instead of using HP and torque to spin that heavy flywheel, the motor can now put that lost energy to my tires, and these things are gonna pay for their past 6 months of laziness. The car is MUCH quicker getting to a given speed. It's lighter, but not so light that it is jerky to drive and still drives like stock. Coincidentally, I had the opportunity on the way in this morning to test the added acceleration against a guy in a winged H*nda fart-car. I don't think he ever had the chance to see that I have a blue trunk lid that doesn't match the rest of the car. . .

I also removed my rear hub assemblies and modified them for Porsche 930 press-in wheel studs. One thing VW really missed the boat on is using wheel bolts instead of studs and nuts. I only did the rears for now since I'm planning to change the entire front-end this winter. Instead of using steel nuts, I modified a set of Porsche alloy nuts on my lathe for use with the long studs. Now tire changing will be a breeze. Especially since I have to use 1/4" wheel spacers on the back. What a PITA to hold the wheel AND spacer when using the lug bolts. . . BTW: the photo makes it look like the lugs are not pressed in straight, but that is just an illusion due to zooming in for the photo (I blame the jerk behind the lens ).




The final thing was that I made a significant change to the end of the shift linkage where it mates to the Porsche trans-axle. Over the past 6 months, I had come to realize that my dimensions were off just slightly on a couple things and this resulted in a "compressed" shift pattern which sometimes made 2nd to 3rd and 5th to 4th gear changes a bit tricky. So after lots of thought and staring at it from underneath, I realized the error and corrected them. Thankfully it turned out to be a fairly simple fix after some careful measuring, cutting and welding. The result is that now it shifts *EXACTLY* like a stock Porsche 911. All gears are super positive, the shift pattern is spread out like stock and I have not missed a shift since, even in fast power-shifting. I even had a client stop by who drives a Porsche 911SC with the same trans and shifter and asked him to shift it through the gears and tell me what he thought. He said it felt better than his Porsche!! That's what I was going for, so the design is finalized and I can put the shifting to bed once and for all.

[Piledriver]

Consider taking the rears hubcentric too-- I just turned the hub a bit and pressed on some 3/8" aluminum then turned to final size.

Make putting the heels on a one handed operation.
+studs and it would be like cheating.

[aircooledtechguy]

One thing that consistently bugs me about ALL A/C VWs is that there are no cup holders in the car. Typical aftermarket one-size-fits-none solutions generally suck and are flimsy. The Squarsche needed a set, so I came up with these, which could be the words fastest cup holders. I made them out of a pair of un-usable Porsche 911 Nikasil-coated Aluminum cylinders. I first TIG welded them together, added a piece of pinch-welt to the base (from an old set of beetle pop-outs I had) and then mounted them to a bracket I welded to the tunnel to keep them from moving around while driving. They fit a large McDonald's coffee (Mmmmmmmm. . .) great as well as any of the drink cups.

[sideshow]

OMG, that is overkill, you now need to research some barriers to prevent those heat sinks from ruining the temperature of the drinks!

[Steve Arndt]

Put the cylinders in the freezer before a hot drive, then bolt them in. Built in bev chiller.

[aircooledtechguy]

I've been turning my attention to handling and adding spoilers for future track use lately. I've thought that the back of the car was missing something, so I made some cardboard templates and fabricated a simple rear visor spoiler out of .100" aluminum. It's pretty mild and has about an 8 degree angle to it. I probably don't really need a spoiler of any kind, but I wanted a rear visor. I did have to swap out the rear antenna for a short flexible one so it wouldn't interfere with the visor.

[aircooledtechguy]

I've been changing all my lights to LEDs, both exterior and interior with good results, but didn't want to use the stock bolt-on reverse lights that VW used back in '67. They always looked like an afterthought to me. I found these and they are a perfect match for the rear reflector housing. I had to make a small cut-out on my replacement fenders to have them fit correctly, so they may not be the thing for stock-nazis out there,. . . but obviously, that ain't me!!

[Piledriver]

Where are you sourcing the nice LED arrays?
Most of the ones on the net are junk or worse.

[aircooledtechguy]

I got these ones on eBay from this seller: closertowholesale

They are sold as 2" diameter mini 9 LED reverse lights, and come with wire plug/pigtail and the rubber grommet that fits the reflector housing perfectly once you open up the center out to about 1/8" from the edge. It's like they were made for these housings!! Under $25 for the pair delivered.

[Jadewombat]

Nice work on the car. You probably don't need a rear spoiler that big though. The angle you have is interesting but the rear spoilers mostly help the air roll off the rear of the car better. Would save a little weight for the car if you cut it and wouldn't bind on the antenna. You could just cut it down at the rear portion in half (attached). Just a suggestion though. If you start consistently going over 100mph on a track you'd need a rear wing anyway to keep the rear end planted with enough downforce.

http://www.gerrelt.nl/section-aerodynamics.html

I would suggest using a manometer or other gauge and or some wool tuft testing as it's basically just guessing otherwise. I used one on my bug before and after doing the aerodynamic mods to see what the differences were. Who knows though, get some measurements and see, maybe you do have more downforce at the rear end.

http://www.autospeed.com/A_108675/cms/article.html

[aircooledtechguy]

Thanks for the links Jade. I've seen the second one before. I really like what the guy in the Netherlands is doing with his SB. I'm gonna have to make a set of those drip rail covers for sure. They ARE really loud.

At this point the wing is just mainly for looks. Don't really need one. When I do begin to use it at the track, I'll make another one that is adjustable. It'll be really simple to do and could easily have 20degrees or more of adjustment. I'll go down that road when I need to though

[aircooledtechguy]

I finally got the opportunity to make a mount for the seat heater switch and the cruise control switch (though I haven’t yet mounted that). I didn’t want it to be visible from the outside and didn’t want to cut big holes in the dash, so I made a 4 sided box and a pair of brackets and mounted it all to the side of the passenger seat mount between the mount and the tunnel. It’s ergonomic for yours truly to reach as I drive and that was a must. I ran most of the wires down the tunnel so they won’t be visible and won’t interfere with carpet later.

So how do the new seat heaters feel??. . . Aaaaahhhhhh, so nice on a cold morning and they have really turned cold as of late which was part of my motivation. It takes about 2 minutes for them to heat-up and then it’s pure heaven with 10 adjustment settings. I can definitely see my lower back getting a therapeutic benefit from this upgrade. New car amenities in an old package; gotta love that combo!! If you’re planning to re-do your front upholstery anyway, these are worth the $80-$100 for the set of elements, the switch and the wiring.

[aircooledtechguy]

Big changes coming to the ProVolks shop car.

I've taken it off the road for the foreseeable future to complete the final body mods to fit the wheels, brakes and front-end under it. I'm begining with the rear-end since it's the easiest.

Brakes: I recently scored a complete rear-end off a Porsche 924 turbo so i could switch to Porsche wheels and brakes the right way. Since I already had IRS rear-end under it, I just swapped out the backing plates and the hub assembly. At this time I didn't swap the stub axle since I the stub is identical other than the CV required. Since I already had that sorted out, I figured, why bother at this time??

New brakes mocked-up:



Mocked-up with 17"x8" 40ET Porsche wheels w/ 235-50-17 wheels w/ the 23mm factory spacers:



Mocked-up with 17"x8" 40ET Porsche wheels w/ 235-50-17 wheels w/o spacers:



On the ground (yeah, it's on the fenders):



A glimpse of the old and new:



I'm gonna have to stretch the rear fenders about 2.5" - 3" in order to get everything to fit. I'm going to be doing all the body work with these over-sized tires AND the factory spacers so that there's plenty of clearance ion the inner side (which was tight without the spacers). When completed, I plan to run slightly smaller tires on these rims, but also this will allow me to run 17'/18" BBS LM wheels if they should ever present themselves for a good price. What I have planned should send Tram into cardiac dis-arrhythmia. Just makin' your stockers more valuable folks!!

So much debauchery; so little time!!

[supaninja]

Look at those meats! I look forward to seeing how you stretch the fenders.