Attached are some pictures of a turbo 36hp VW 1200cc built for a vintage race VW class of land speed racing called the New Age class. The motor must be 36 case with stock stud spacing and anything goes in this class. Bore, stroke, Okrasa heads, cams, fuel injection or turbo. I chose to build a turbo 36, blue printed, 8 doweled but stock cc just to see how it would respond to a turbo.
I used a T-2 Sunbird turbo, built an exhaust system with 1 1/2" OD mandrel bent tubing, a very smooth, alternate firing pulse style header and a 2 1/2" smooth exhaust from the turbo out and under. This is a total hideaway system, stock deck clears everything, no cutting anything on the car. I tried to make this clean and efficent and to the standards of Marty & Matt. I have been following this site for a long time and it's just great.
We ran this car at the September Bonneville meet without any R&D on the road (ran out of time like racers do) in Burly's retro sedan. We only got a few passes in before the rain storm hit. We did OK, not super, but learned a lot. At that altitude, 5-6000ft, the engine vacuum was down 3-4" and the turbo would barely make boost. The Harley carb is a CV type so low vacuum & wide gear spacing really killed the power. I have the motor back in Iowa now, in a test car and are doing R&D now. I went to a real carb, Solex single 32, changed turbos three times and it's getting a lot better now.
What I'm realizing is that the turbo size is very critical on an old poor breathing style motor. There is not enough air flow through the engine to drive the turbine. This is not as easy to make it run as it looks on paper, however I will stick with it until I solve it.
BvilleTom
Motor:
Car on the flats after the storm:
Great job!
