EJ20G into 67 Bug

[surfbeetle]

I installed the fuel pump on the front firewall above the master cylinder. I have to install the scirocco fuel reservoir and get some fuel lines. I'll post photos after I get the lines and reservoir in. I have to get some fittings for the return hose to plumb into the tank. Link to thread with Fuel system info: http://www.shoptalkforums.com/viewtopic ... 4&start=60

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I have been trying to figure out what I would do for my gauges. I currently have a VDO temp gauge that was hooked up to oil temp. After some research, from what I gather is that the gauges don't care what you are sensing the temp from. VDO makes the sender for whatever the full sweep of the temp reading on the gauge is. In my case, it's a 300° gauge so as long as I get a sender for that max temp I should be good to use my former oil temp as now as my water temp. I am going to something along the lines of the adapter here http://www.deftracing.com/prosport_gaug ... daptor.htm to put the sensor in the hose going to the radiator. I will leave the stock sender alone since it's hooked up to the Link ECU.

And speaking of the ECU, I should have the rest of my cables and stuff for the ECU back on Friday, hopefully I can play with it over the weekend.

[surfbeetle]

So was wondering if anyone has done it or at least thought about it. I was looking at the space between the spare tire well and the front beam on my 67 and would a radiator work if mounted in this space? I know everyone with a standard bug is putting them in place of the spare and letting the air escape out the back of the spare wheel-well either by cutting it open just the access holes.

Here's where I am at, there are a few people who claim to have successfully put the radiator in the rear of the bug, I was thinking of behind the rear seat with either scoops coming up from the bottom of the car or vent scoops in the rear fenders to force air into the area behind the rear seat. I was planning the Jeep Cherokee radiator, it measures about 11 x 33 inches and I found one that was double core. I really didn't want to mess with cutting up the front and I like the spare where it's at. I've only had two or three flats in 25 years, but I like having a spare. I remembered seeing an air conditioning kit that had a condenser mounted on the front beam so I was thinking why not?

I'm getting closer to the finish line with this project, still quite a ways left to go, but with the fuel system just about finished, I feel like I got a lot more accomplished. At this point, I need to finalize the cooling system, weld the exhaust piping back to my quiet packs, plumb the heater, find a good spot for the ECU to be mounted, make some intercooler brackets and plumb it to the engine and then there's always the little bits of forgotten crap like oh yeah, I need some new rear brake lines since the grinder took out the line a while back...

[Mooosman]

So was wondering if anyone has done it or at least thought about it. I was looking at the space between the spare tire well and the front beam on my 67 and would a radiator work if mounted in this space? I know everyone with a standard bug is putting them in place of the spare and letting the air escape out the back of the spare wheel-well either by cutting it open just the access holes.

Here's where I am at, there are a few people who claim to have successfully put the radiator in the rear of the bug, I was thinking of behind the rear seat with either scoops coming up from the bottom of the car or vent scoops in the rear fenders to force air into the area behind the rear seat. I was planning the Jeep Cherokee radiator, it measures about 11 x 33 inches and I found one that was double core. I really didn't want to mess with cutting up the front and I like the spare where it's at. I've only had two or three flats in 25 years, but I like having a spare. I remembered seeing an air conditioning kit that had a condenser mounted on the front beam so I was thinking why not?

If you're going to run the radiator up front, you'll need to cut out the spare tire well. There's no other way around it. The incoming air has to get into the well, and the radiator+fan combo is too thick to fit without cutting. I have my radiator in the spare tire well, and a small Mitsubishi fan mounted to the back of it. All told, the Mitsu fan is less than 2" from touching the front beam. I also had to remove the stock sway bar, as it interfered with both the bottom radiator hose and the cooling fan motor.


That said, I think you'll save yourself a lot of time and hassle by just mounting the radiator up front to begin with. I've seen plenty of threads on the Aussie VW sites where people tried to mount the radiator in the back, and ended up having to move it up front when it didn't work. The problem is that there just isn't an effective enough way to duct air to the radiator in that location. It may work during short trips in town, but with no natural airflow, your electric fans are going to run all the time to pull air in. Many people try to use the electric fans as a crutch, thinking that the fans will always pull enough air to cool the radiator. That's a bad way of looking at it; you want to design your cooling system to be as effective as it can be without the fan. Your goal should be a cooling system where the fan rarely has to come on, like only in traffic. The only way to build a cooling system like this is to mount the radiator up front where it can get the best airflow.


Think about it like this: look at every mid-engined or rear-engined sports car ever sold. Where do Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Audi, McLaren, etc. put the radiators on their sports cars? In the front! If rear-mounted radiators worked, don't you think those guys would've used it?


Running the rad up front is no harder, and the cutting to the spare tire well isn't too bad. Getting the water up to the rad can be done multiple ways. The best part is that, since the piping and radiator are hidden under the hood, the interior of the car can remain stock. You also don't have multiple electric fans right behind you whirring loudly! You can still run a spare tire, too: I put my spare on top of the gas tank, lying down horizontally, and secured it with a large bungee net. The spare is secure, and is bundled with my scissor jack and tools.


My $.02

Nick

[surfbeetle]

Nick,
Thanks for your $.02. I keep going back and forth, and I know that you are right. Then I look at quick108's black and white bug with the cooling in the rear and think it's possible. But the thing about his build is his budget is/was a lot more than mine and he used two rads with one right at the top of the decklid with it open at the top.

I want to hide everything as much as possible and I plan to run A/C. I guess now I am going to research how everyone has done the front radiator and fabricate one in the front. Also my bug is a 67 with dual circuit master cylinder, I need to replace the reservoir anyway, I am wondering with the front radiator, should I just go ahead and relocate the reservoir with 68 and later reservoir that sits higher up in the front trunk.

[Mooosman]

I want to hide everything as much as possible and I plan to run A/C.

If you're planning on adding A/C, then I would definitely mount the radiator up front. You need lots of air going over the condenser for the A/C to work worth a damn.


I hope I'm not harping on you, but I just don't want you to have to cut your car more than needed. I know the front mounted radiator works, because it works for me here in Las Vegas in 110+ temps. If there were problems with the cooling system, I would've found them by now, but my cooling system hasn't skipped a beat.

Me on the other hand.... Driving around in 110 temps without A/C sucks!


Nick

[surfbeetle]

No harping taken. It's more like constructive criticism, only better since I haven't made the mistake yet.

[Buggin_74]

I'd be surprised if quick108s bug does a whole lot of regular daily driving in stop/go city traffic.
I get the impression it is more a strip/track weapon

I know what you mean though about carrying a spare, *touch wood* in more than half a million KMs I've racked up since getting my license I've only ever had 2 flats but you never know where or when which was why carrying a spare was one of the prerequisites of my conversion.

If you spend abit of time designing a radiator mount and shrouding setup you can do a fairly neat job of it and fit a spare in an early beam bug.

There's a bloke in Germany that has an EJ22 powered early bug who did a very neat job of mounting a small alfa radiator like mine under a shroud with a small discrete scoop underneath




And plenty of room for a space saver spare tyre.



He has done 30 mins cruising at 200km/h (125mph) on the autobahn with no heat issues, only problem is there's not much room for a A/C condenser there.

[surfbeetle]

Joel, I just re-read that thread last week and agree with you about quick108's car. I'm going with the front radiator. My next door neighbor builds and restores hot rods and muscle cars, he gave me the name of the exhaust shop he uses, I'm going to see what they can do for me on the cooling lines. As for mounting the spare like the photos you posted, I am running the 205mm wide 5 wheels, I would need to find really a small rim in that pattern to fit.

What I would like to find now is what radiators have you guys used to fit into the spare tire well of an older bug (not super beetle). I mean what existing car's radiator would fit, I don't want to make a custom radiator, I would rather find one that is close and then cut/weld up my spare well to fit it, and photos are greatly appreciated. I think that I may make a tire bracket to hold the spare in place up above the gas tank, kind of like how the 80's model subarus had theirs above the engine.

[Mooosman]

As for mounting the spare like the photos you posted, I am running the 205mm wide 5 wheels, I would need to find really a small rim in that pattern to fit.

I used a regular 4" wide stock VW steel wheel for my spare. I went to the junkyard looking for the smallest donut spare tire for my 15" wheel. I ended up finding a brand new Continental spare out of a late 90s Volvo. I just had that spare tire mounted on my VW rim and I was done.

Most newer cars use small donut spares on narrow rims, which is perfect for our narrow VW wheels. Plus, with enough searching you can usually find a spare that's brand new. Mine still had the little 'hairs' on the tread of the tire and sidewall. It looked like it had never been installed.


Check the european section of the junkyard; a lot of Volvos and Saabs have skinny 15" spares.


Nick

[Buggin_74]

That's what I was going to suggest.
Nearly all space saver spare tyres are 4" wide which is what a stock vw rim is anyway.
And like Nick said if you hunt around you can often find one that isnt even used.

I dunno bout in the US but here in Aus brand new space saver tyres are outrageously expensive (read $249 for a 15") but second hand from a junk yard is cheap as.
I run 4x100 on my car so I just grabbed a 15" one out of a Honda EG6 that has never even been bolted onto a car for $40
But it could easy be swapped onto a stock rim.

Took me some hunting to find a 15" one though, plenty of 14s but none of them cleared my disc calipers.


Have a look at new radiators on ebay, some sellers put up diagrams with measurements on them like this.



Just find out how much room you have to play with and see whats out there.
Although alot of standard beetle conversions I've seen use mk1/mk2 Golf radiators.

no need for expensive custom made alu ones

[surfbeetle]

Good idea there. The photo you posted Joel brings up another thought, tanks on the side or top/bottom of the radiator, what would be better? I think side tanks because I could have more air flowing though the core at the bottom of the wheel well.

[Buggin_74]

Cross flow radiators are only used due to space constraints.

The downwards flowing radiators work abit better, it's just height is an issue in many cars.

It doesn't really matter much, just make sure it's got enough capacity and plenty of air flow through it and you can't go wrong.

[surfbeetle]

So not much of an update here. It's been too hot to work in the garage, 104° F for a bit. I was hoping to buy my radiator on Saturday. The second Sat of the month is employee pricing day at my local Napa store, but it is not to be. We went camping last week and the fifth wheel camper got a flat, the tires were from 2004 so it was time to replace all four, it was just shy of $500. And in case you haven't heard yet, 5 or 6 million of us in Southern California are sitting in the dark tonght. Some worker in Yuma, Arizona made a serious error that has killed the power grid for us. So I'm sitting in the dark with my generator powering up my two fridges and a light. I'm using my phone to get online with my computer. So far, the power has been out since 3:40 pm Pacific, almost 8 hours.

[surfbeetle]

I have an update. I started in on some wiring. I pulled the Link ECU harness from the engine into the passenger compartment on the right side of the engine compartment and into the area by the trim panel. Basically it's opposite side of the car but like the factory harness is on a 67. I got it wired up with some relays and a fuse block. I connected up to the Link ECU and was able to connect to it from the laptop via the serial/usb connector. Here's a screen shot...

linkscreenshot.jpg

Now I have to figure out how to configure all of this so I can run the motor. I still have to finish up the wiring to the fuel pump and get the fuel pickup for the fuel tank. Also I need to do the exhaust and cooling systems.

[surfbeetle]

So I ran into an issue while wiring. My subaru alternator has four wires. I had started to use the alternator harness that came with the link ecu but it only has three wires on the plug. The harness that came with my engine for my alternator has a black with white stripe wire, a green with black stripe, White, and then a yellow wire. So I had started to wire up the three wire harness based on Joel's build on Aussieveedubbers. I put the whites together for the battery, the black with white stripe connected to the dash light. The Yellow wire I connected to the former coil wire so it would get power on key on. When I turned the key on, one of my relays that is for the coil pack started to buzz really bad where it does not buzz if the alternator was not hooked up. So obviously something is not right. The Coil relays and its wiring has not been altered from the way it was on the sandrail it used to be on.

Since my alternator has a green with black stripe wire, I would like to know what that is for. Any ideas?
At this point, I was trying to wire it up like this:

VW Subaru Alternator
keyed + yellow
dash light black with white stripe
??? Green with black stripe
White wires straight to battery from Alternator.