The Cal-look Lounge

The one and only classic VW-aircooled rallyserie continues: Kuplapaja-rallyserie starts in january 2012 in Finland! We have counted over 15 rally VW:s here, hope to see allmost all cars joining the serie. There is again: type 3 notches -65, -68 -72, beetles 1302, 1303 + one Ghia coupe -68.  This serie is open for all aircooled rally VW:s with FIA-papers or national rallypapers. International drivers are invited to join also, we will help with the arrangements here.

More info www.golf17rally.com  and  info@kuplapaja.com 

Last season 2011 ended with very tight on the top. Top 2 drivers had similar points.  Come on, join the different races, meet the limits of your rally VW in Finnish winterroads and on summertime serie continues also. If you dont have the car yet, we can inform you how to do it in "10 days" racerady. 

Different, difficult, fast and fun! Come and see how fun is winterracing with VW:s!
Dont forget to mount your gasoline heater, last winter races went through on minus 18c days also...

Jussi, Finland ;D

 8)

This is awsome jussi i wish i life beside you in finnland .here in germany ther are no event´s like this only dragrace

Jussi that is good to know. We will need as many photos - videos as possible. Keep them coming.  :) :) :) :) :)

Dragrace season is so short here, so we must have other VW-hobbys for winter also...

Jussi :D

Rallyserie will start at january 28.  2012 in Laukaa in the middle of Finland. Hope to have snow and minus degrees to have the "normal" Finnish winterrally.

More info at www.golf17rally.com

Jussi ;D

Hi Jussi cool link, really like the rally movies on (here) youtube keep them coming for the new season.

Do you drive 'your' cars with an in line oil thermostat (like BAS on Type 4s)?
I have been driving my bug in 2 - 3 degr Celsius and the oil temp stays a little on the low side, only between 60-70 degr Celsius max
on my engine (type 4 with modified type 1 doghouse cooling with type 4 oilcooler in shroud, no other extra cooler).

Regards Edgar

We dont use any thermostats. Most of the beetles has drysumpoilsystem with extra oilcoolers in the front. My Ghia has type 4 in fanhouse and exta coolers near gearbox. In very cold wintertime -15-20minus celsius we dont keep all coolers open. Temp is normal between 80-100 like normal. Summertime we drive 20w-50 and wintertime10w-40 mineral oil. 
Interesting to see how many new racecars comes to start at 28. january 2012.

Now it  has been a very long seasong with all kind of racing etc events internationally also.
It is time to say thanks to you all VW-guysl Hope to see you next year in many events!
Keep on knocking and rocking, next raceseason is near!!!


Jussi, Finland ;D

Thank U Jussi

Rallyseason has started!!!  Our very famous and fast driver Juhani Laaksonen drove with his very nice beetle 1302 S -72 on very slippery Finnish winterroads last saturday. Now the car was uppdated after long last season and it seemed that the horses were all back in action. He started very good, missed only 0.01s from whole races fastest specialstagetime... He had also "situations" but hold on the road all the time and finished very nice as 3.rd in his class. Only Golf MK1 and Sumbeam Avenger was before him. Distance to the winner was only 9s.  Of total 90 drivers he was 6.th. Not bad start for this season.
January 28. will continue VW-rally again in middle of Finland, we will wait hard race between all VW-topdrivers and some new are there too. Stefan Wiik has made a new very nice light blue racer 1303 S -73, interesting to see Stefan driving now. He has been codriver for Juhani before. Timo Varis will come back after his crash last season in his type 3 1500 S -65 notch, also one very nice -72 beige notch is coming back in races driven by Jukka Puskala.  Raceinformation will be uppdated in www.golf17rally.com

My rally Ghia is staying in our new showroom, which has now 800m2 more room for only VW:s!!! Ghia will have only seasonservice and will be on the race next week also. We have started our next rallybeetleproject 1302 S -71, it allready has a rollergate welded on, engine is ready and gboxparts are waiting on the table. We will test there some of our new ideas + JPM-specialparts for IDA:s. The car will be just like in historic class FIA-regulations, only difference is a Finnish dogring-racegbox + Finnish IRS LSD and engine little more modified. The car will be classified as a F-class car, means like free class, but suits on VW-aircooled races. Afterwards by changing a FIA-classed engine and syncrogearbox it will suit on historic classes. Intersting to see free class 1.6 singing with MSD + JPM etc dragraceparts...

Let see first what will happen on january 28. with that Ghia between beetles and type 3:s...


Jussi ;)

That´s awsome ,please tell us more how the dockring gearbox worked in rally dirve.It must be a fantastic innovation to rally sport.

We have driven rally with dogringbox last season and the year before also. We started rallytest by putting my dragrace gbox into my friend Ekis 1302 S beetle with 1.6 engine. We just changed the spool to SSF IRS LSD and changed the sideparts for IRS ones. It worked at once 100%, no misses, much faster up and down.  On rally you dont need to  lift gaspedal at all to shift! My 3.4 2.0 1.56 1.15 with 4.15 R/p was not perfect for rally and 1.6 engine, but after tests we made a new box with the "right" numbers. We just took same numbers as in syncrobox and 4.125 VW R/P, then it was perfect. In the first race with that gbox audience also noticed the new thing, because many asked in servicearea that how the enginesound didnt cut when shifting...  By Ekis words: just the best gbox he has driven ever.( he has driven active rally and rallycross with beetles since 1986) Afterwards we developed also a 5-speed dogringbox to increase the maxspeed in long straights and to have lower rpm for distancedriving on highway between specialstages. That gearbox included: Rhino-case, all Finnish gears, 1-4 with dogrings + 5th with syncros. The 5-speedforks + aluminiumpart + shifter was from GeneBerg. long 1+2 axle was specialmade in Finland + new WEDDLE R/P was modified also in Finland to fit this set. 
Later on we developed the engines run so high that we went back to 4-speedbox and now that car is retired from development and i made my own Ghia coupe for other class(historicrally) where dogringbox is not allowed. The new 1302 will be with all goodies and is allowed to use dogringbox in those VW-races, because of the different regulations.   

Now we have all gears of dogringsortiment in the stock available if there is someone interested of those.

More info> info (at)kuplapaja dot com


Jussi ;)

First VW-rally was driven yesterday. It was very nice winter weather there, only  minus 18-20... and enough snow everywhere in the middle of  Finland in Laukaa. VW-class was interesting and they allowed VW:s to start as first, so the road was very good.
The specialstage was 28 km and after first round i was 1st with Ghia, next Kimmo 1302 S, third Matti 1303, Stefan with 1303 and after these came type 3:s. We had some interesting situations, because in the start we noticed that helmetphones were not working at all. Co-dirver had not similar helmet, so the adapter for the cable did not connect at all. Also after some kilometres the cold started to come in. Gasoline heater stopped and glasses began to freece and same did feet etc.  Normally the stages are closer to 10km each, but this Lankamaa was old JYVÄSKYLÄ-rallystage and it felt superlong without heating. We got it work at servicearea, but same happened at final round, just after start stopped warm airs incoming. We just got old VW-feelings back and pushed hard in cold cabin.
After two rounds the final result was: Kimmo 1302, Stefan 1303, Jussi Ghia + the rest. It was quite tight, not many seconds made the differences in top 3. The road was very interesting to drive, lot of places to drive as fast it goes and very tight places after highspeed places so many possibilities  to have "game over" easy... All VW:s hold on the road, one beetle had engine damage + one type 3 lost its oil by dropping the oilpress sender.  
This is very interesting class and the audience like these old cars between the new cars very much. Next race will be 11.february in Nurmijärvi, only 40 km from Helsinki. There will be over 10 VW:s driving. There will come also legendary Solbergs old factory-racer -69 beetle, Ulf Grönholms old 1302(WRC-Marcus Grönholms father) + many other rally VW:s. The competition will be hard, because now comes also Eki back on track with his famous 1302 and Bärlund direct from Artic Lappland rally with 1303.
Bärlund won last year Artic Lappland rallys 1.6 class and now on this weekend yesterday also, after two days he was leading the class in very cold circumstances minus 30 degrees, but in last 48 km ! stage he lost the spark and he luckily finished rally after stopping  many times, but loosed his victory.  It was not fun to try to repair in snow  when minus 30 is around you.
This is Finnish rally.

More info will be in www.golf17rally.com

We have now easy to continue to next race, there is nothing to repair in Ghia. Just check that the gasolineheater will work 100% and try to get gaspedalwire tighter...


Jussi :D
    

Awesome!!!  ;D

Thanks for reporting Jussi!

Next race is near...this weeks saturday starts next rally. We still have lot of snow and minus degrees around 20, hope it is near 10 for weekend. Let see how these VW:s will run...


Jussi ;D

Keep fingers crossed for you victory again ,hopefulle the gasoline heater will work better than the last race. ;D

...and here´s some footage from the weekends rally! Jussi´s Ghia at 1:42 in a niiiiiice slide :)
Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZN_NnXyphc&feature=related

Our Jussi the best all time :) :) :)

This weekends rally is driven. Weather was very nice round 6 minus only and roads were good and icy. Now our Webasto worked 100% and it was like summer in the city (cabin). We tested Ghia in dyno in thursday to see how it would run now with JPM valvesprings and JPM IDA-venturis + velocitystacks. The engine sounded very nice, put out 146 hp at 7000, but runned easy to 8600... Vi put rpm limiter on 8000 for race, because the hp didnt increase after 7, but also didnt drop much to 8. At drivingsituation it felt more flexible from low rpm and sure was more agressive as before with these IDA-parts.

Our race started with missunderstanding, so we loosed by waiting in start 31 sek. Without this extra time we had got 1st place for 1.stage. 2nd we lost only 0.4 sek and 3rd 8.6 and at 4th 15sek for the winner with that kind of wide wide slides etc. We finished total 3rd with that extra 31sek. That is racing, so next time we must check and ask twice.

This VW-class is very interesting and audience loves these old cars coming in their own class. Competition is hard and as before, also here the top places change many times. The finishing % is very good, only one beetle got the hockeystick in wrong place during this race and stopped the race.  More cars are coming to this class and new plan is to increase the races for 3 on winter + 1-2 on summerseason. Many of these VW:s also drive other historic etc races here. The feelings among the VW-racers are very good and the serie seems to have got its place here on racecalendars. More new rally VW:s are coming and some old are on restoring soon.

This weekends toplist was: Bärlund 1303, Raitanen 1302, Jussi Ghia, Hannu Type 3 1600 L, Liukkonen 1302, Varis type 3 1500 S
Wiik 1303 stopped

If we have some time, maybe we can consentrate on exhaust to increase the high-rpm hp for next races...

In Mikkeli-ralli will be some VW:s after 2 weeks and march 3. there is Hankiralli in Porvoo near Helsinki, which is very old/famous race in Finland. We counted 6 aircooled VW:s to come there now, let see if there comes more closer the deadline date. In Porvoo those VW-cars will drive in historic 1.6 class between and beating the others...

Some more picts and info in youtube/google by pakkauspojat ralli 2012 kuvia or videot

and www.golf17rally.com

Jussi ;D
 

Thanks for the infos  :)

Realy BAD corner for the VW`s   ;D  Good to have so many people help...

Erich

Mikkeli rally is finished.The weather was perfect, only minus 4 all day. The race started in friday on horsetrack specialstage.  Liukkonen-Matsinen couple who drove with the legendary Marcus Grönholm fathers old 1302 S got again very tight situations. They drove out of the road on the 4th specailstage from allmost full speed, luckily the car turned very fast uppsidedown and stopped on the wheels in deep snow. With the help of audience the continued to the last service,  where we had biggest work to the get the snow out of the cabin... also we did some hammerwork for the fenders  + put one sidewindow back. 
They drove through the last stage and won that class. Next weekend 3.march will be very interesting big rally in Porvoo, in that legendary Hankirally will start over 200 cars, 21 in same class as aircooled VW:s.
 5 top drivers of "our class" will be there: Bärlund metallicblue 1303, Laaksonen orange 1302, Liukkonen Green 1302, Wiik lightblue 1303, me with red Ghia.
The roads will be fast and this race is one of the Finnish historicrally-cup races.
There will be driving also many other fine fast cars, for example Ford Escort MK1 BDA:s, Sumbeam Avengers, Talbot Lotus, superfine first Finnish historic MB 190 e cosworth...  etc. Like moving carshow for racecars fans. The race will start at the old trainstation by the river in that very old town Porvoo.

Intersting to see who will see the finishing-flag in the evening...

Jussi ;)