'56 Oval

[David Leikvold]

Maybe get in touch with Cookey. The new SATA might be able to help with your question. Our rule book for the future is available on our website, that's where I'd be looking before I bought another seat. When you get around to a window net, make sure it is in tension when it is done up, some cars this year had big, generically-sized nets with lots of freeplay in the webbing which defeats the purpose of the net.

Cheers
Dave

[T-34]

I emailed Cookey about the SATA, keen to get involved if I can. He hasn't got back to me yet tho.

[IN2VWS]

For a Beetle, you will need to get a custom made full door net.
A guy in Melbourne made mine, and he has the template for them. Can hook you up with the maker if you like.

John

[T-34]

For a Beetle, you will need to get a custom made full door net.
A guy in Melbourne made mine, and he has the template for them. Can hook you up with the maker if you like.

John

Cheers John, that would be appreciated.

Mick.

[GeeTee]

For a Beetle, you will need to get a custom made full door net.
A guy in Melbourne made mine, and he has the template for them. Can hook you up with the maker if you like.

John

yea I would appreciate that too. I bodgied up two nets to make my car 'legal'

Are there further revisions to DLRA's regs for nets, and can this bloke comply?

Seating has been mentioned; in my opinion and limited experience the seating/occupant protection regs pertaining to seat construction material, head restraint, HANS compatibility, seat integration into chassis (mounts/runners) and harness type/installation all desperately need revision. These systems are critical!

[gidge348]

Someone in the VW community may be interested in this???
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Bonnevil ... 2a29df513e

[T-34]

Looks like a nicely turned out bug.

Bit too slow for my liking tho

[T-34]

Right. Before I can get moving on the Oval there is one other project I need to finish. For those of you who made it to the salt this year you might recall seeing my Kombi parked up by the lake. This is possibly the worlds slowest Kombi. It's a 1600cc early bay window (or more commonly referred to as a low-light due to the location of the turn signals). VW only made the 1600 for a few years before realising that it was dog slow and updating it to a 2.0 litre. Having just built the 1600 and foolishly forgetting how damn slow 1600 Kombis are (even after spending 18 months driving around Europe in one) I decided that I could not be arsed to build another engine so the best thing was to make this one go faster.



(BTW. You can see more photos of speedweek here - https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set ... 840&type=3)

Bolt on power generally comes in two flavours, super and turbo, so for this project I decided to go Super.

I've been developing a kit to fit the stock 1600cc engine, using an AMR500 supercharger and an aftermarket carby. My initial prototype utilises a 40mm DHLA Dellorto (mostly as it was cheap) but will also easily accommodate a weber. Ultimately I need to source a new carby to supply with the kit, but at the mo I've not decided this yet.

I started off by getting the bus Dyno'd, which returned a massive 39.8 BHP (approx 51BHP at the wheels) - more or less the exact figure quoted by VW



This has given me a baseline from which to measure my efforts.

The AMR 500 charger is a small Japanese supercharger fitted to a small engined Subaru (they also do an AMR 300), the AMR 500 has 500cc per revolution output, (surprise), and a top rev range of approx 18000rpm. This means that it is only suitable for smaller engines like a 1600 unless you wish to run more than one. It's obviously nowhere near the kind of set up that the big B&R's and the like will offer, but then this isn't a massive V8 and the goal is to simply make an underpowered car (bus) drive like a normal car.



I started off by getting some flanges laser cut and mocking up some brackets



Next up was to make up a custom manifold to mate the Dellorto to the AMR





And a custom balancer pipe



This was then tacked up and trial fitted to the engine





This is as the system currently stands. I've got a few things to sort out on the throttle linkage and an exhaust header to locate but things are progressing really good. Hopefully I hsould have the initial prototype finished some time next week and it should be back on the dyno in a few weeks to get tuned up and a second Dyno reading.

The plan is, once I've honed out any issues with this prototype I will sell them as bolt on kits. Initially they will only be available for the 50hp 1600cc Kombi, but plans are in the pipeline to also make kits for both the 40hp and 36hp engines.

Once I've got the initial prototype functional I will look at getting stuck in to the oval.

MIck.

[harky]

interesting
I drove and worked on sigma s and Datsun s with chargers that blew through the carby (with mods to the carby ) These were Japaneese kits , the brand I have forgotten , they had 3 / 5 lbs of boost and the torque change was really good , which is what you are after , keep us informed
harky

[T-34]

Originally I was keen to reuse the stock carby and supply a re-jet kit for it (making people to get carby mods done would probably not be a good sales point) The idea was the same kit for Bugs and busses. Then discovered that there was not enough head-room in the kombi engine bay to mount the charger with the stock downdraft carby above it. So for the Kombi I've gone for a side draft configuration, unfortunately this will probably not fit under the beetle deck lid. I still need to source a new side draft carby to supply with the kit as I don't think that supplying pre-loved dellortos will be a good idea. Still need to get it figured out for a bug but decided to at least get the proof of concept prototype working before refining the idea. Ideally I would like to use a single choke side-draft so that I can get it to fit both a bug and bus.

I considered blow through but as you mention the carby needs modifying - the the Stock Solex does not like being pressurised. It requires shaft seals and a new float to make it work reliably. A mate of mine in the UK developed a similar kit to this but using a turbo (again for the stock 1600cc engine) he used a Renault 21 turbo carby and a Garret T3 turbo (found in a variety of similar capacity cars of '80s and 90's and easy to find in the wreckers in Europe) and supplied the kit as a header system, inlet manifolds & a re-jet kit - the carby and turbo you had to source yourself. They got good figures out of this setup from memory I think they ran into the high 13's although I'm guessing the boost would have been set to destructo to achieve this. (There are guys running similar turbo setups on 12psi with no issues). I'm planning to run somewhere in the region of 8-10 psi but will see how it turns out. It's actually quite hard to calculate the overall boost accurately for the charger setup as there are too many unknowns (VE / losses in system / supercharger performance / etc) My calcs actually end up with something like 19psi assuming 100% efficiency of the engine and charger but this is an over-estimate, if I assume 75% VE it comes down to about 12psi. My plan is to get it together and then tweak it by changing out the supercharger pulley to suit. (harky - funny you should mention Datsun kits as this is where I actually got this charger from - the pulley is for that application and probably a little too small for this application)

My charger kit is actually inspired from my mates turbo kit - the stock compression and cam work really well on a forced induction setup - minimal cross over and about 6.0:1 - plenty of room for improvement. My plans are to supply the whole thing as a bolt on kit - something a novice can do in a day - easy bolt on horsepower. Ideally I plan to supply it with the supercharger and carby (and maybe a locked dizzy) but my initial thoughts were to only supply the manifolds and a re-jet kit. Still not 100% on which way to go. AMR's are hard to find in Europe, the stock carby looks like it will not work due to space constraints and I am yet to find a suitable alternative carby that I can provide new that will not make the kit seem financially less attractive than other VW performance mods.

First things first tho - I will get this one finished and get it back on the dyno to see if actually works then refine it so that it is reliable and simple to install.

[harky]

me again
the Diathasu wheel barrow car, --- charade turbo blew through the carby , which they enclosed in a sealed box ( fuel pressure increased with boost ) it was like the other things this I refer to , and very low boost pressure
some response by chris ( momec 3 ) would be of interest ( I know he is more up to date than me!)
any way nice looking work so far , and with the carby so far away from the driver ----- the noise from it will be behind you ----- like a jet !
harky

[T-34]

me again
the Diathasu wheel barrow car, --- charade turbo blew through the carby , which they enclosed in a sealed box ( fuel pressure increased with boost )

I've seen similar home-brewed set ups to this before. Always look very interesting - great big welded up box looking thingo instead of a carburettor, almost makes you wonder how they work.

Spent some time this evening and welded up the manifold. First time I've cranked the TIG up in a while as I had to go get a new bottle of gas (last year my 3 year old decided to open the bottle valve and so the damn thing emptied out ). I gave up half way through and got the MIG out. Think I've got the wrong sized nozzle on the gun, just couldn't get it to form a nice sized pool. Had this issue before when trying to weld internal 90's, it seems very hard to get a small weld pool going, it almost seems to want to form two pools - one on each side - but nothing in the corner. I'm sure I'll get it figured out one day. My MIG is not much better - el cheapo CIG-Weld 250. I'll abstain from posting a pic as it's too embarrassing

Also spent some time to try and figure out the throttle linkage, was hoping to be able to make up a solid linkage from the existing cable but looks like it is not possible with the current carby location, plus there is the possibility that the charger can be moved which will change it's relationship to the throttle linkage. Have decided to use a flexi-cable instead, will need to get the supercharger bracket on the mill and mill some slots in it to make some clearance for the cable but hopefully got it figured out.

[T-34]

Been out of the loop for a while. Various commitments have kept land speed racing off of the agenda for a while but a change of circumstances and a little inspiration has led me back again.

But first a bit of an update on the supercharger build from a few posts back... After going through a few prototypes I've ended up with a really tough little setup. It takes the stock 1600cc's power from 50 horses up to just over 80 at 7psi. I've now got about 10,000 km on the current build with no issues at all. I'm even selling them as a bolt on kit.





So with the supercharger kits taking off I've decided to change path on my LSR build. Instead of the big block turbo engine I'm going to run with a standard capacity supercharged setup and save the big block for another day. I figure that this will be some good press for the kits plus I'm intrigued to know what I can get out of it.

So with Speedweek a mere 8 months away it's time to take check and figure out what I need to do to get the car finished in time. I have an engine sorted but need to decide whether I want to strip it down and rebuild it or run it as it is. The car also needs to be reassembled and the safety systems sorted out.

Lots to do.

[gennyshovel]

Very interesting MIck, I dunno how I have missed the build until now ?, I guess it saved me from hanging out for progress reports
My 1/4 bike was originally set up to run 8 /10 lb of boost, which was fine (will be once I sort the A/F )
After melting a piston I had the opportunity to set the engine up properly for boost, which included swapping the cams with a non overlap set .
This upped the boost to 15 lb , which in turn , turned the engine into a weapon, so I promptly re-geared the blower to lower the boost back to 8 / 10 lb.
After witnessing Dave (post100) Plecas' engine survive a LOT of boost using OEM conrods, I'll take the 15 lb pulley option with me to lake G next year, with another WOW gearing option, just in case
With 15 lb my engine is a torque monster, an adjective rarely used in conjunction with 250cc and 4 cylinder, in the same sentence.
Tiny

[Rob]

Good to see it you back again, I was only thinking about the Oval the other day and wondering where it went.