The Cal-look Lounge

Russel what do you want to know about the car?

1st question is How tall are you ?

I plan to take her up the strip at EBI but am very worried about my manhood, the steering wheel is like a weapon........ I have looked at a tempory measure to move it to make it more driveable for me, Im not the smallest or lightest guy in the world.

The fuel injection set up is pretty awesome but would love to know how and what size of Pills work better for using normal Pump Gas ? I seem to be flooding it on start up too easily !

Ever the master of understatement...  ;D

Keith

Thanks.

Ive got pills and Nozels for regular Gas, but why dont you run it on methanol like it should be?

I´ll have loads with me you can use some of that. also got a range of pills for the methanol.

I have a starting Procedure with woper,

1) Shut the fuel off
2) shut the mag down
3) Crank for oil (this should also help prime the fuel system)
4) I squirt a small amount of regular Gas (petrol) down the inlets
5) Arm the Mag
6) crank the motor (it should fire then stall)
7) turn on the fuel
8) crank the motor and away she goes!

I do the first fire of the day with regular gas as it get a little heat in the heads and help the methanol fire up.

what ever you do dont keep cranking the motor with the fuel on and no mag as it will hydrolic. Once your all up and running you just crank the motor and turn on the fuel and thats it

i found that my hilborn system drains down even with the fuel tap off so becarfull if the car is sat with a full tank of fuel, it will fill the motor up!


at the end of racing i just drain the tank, put some regular fuel in and run it with the shut off valve half closed (leans it out) and it help keep the lines clean.


Good luck


Martin

Russell,
I am 5'8" at 140. The car, as all professional race cars are, was made to my size. Did you run the car? The injectors are different than carbs. You have to prime the car to start it. You have to run them fat at idle and then it leans out around 7,500 rpm. You have to remember that was the only thing we had to go with back then was track conditions, temp, and elevation played a very important part. Today computers are used to control fuel flow. When Simon bought the engine from me he was minus the heads and cylinders. We ran the 82 roller with 88 or 92 cylinders. The heads were the trick in making the HP out of the injectors. Ratio was somewhere in the 12.5 to one of course gas was much better octane back then. We did run 10.80 on al but had to ware a firesuit!
The car gets a lot of wind in the floor where the front struts that come through the pan and are connected to the tunnel. If I were you I would use a boot, maybe a trans boot, to block off the air flow. Also the lexan glass windows in the doors should be tightened up with rubber or something. At 120 the windows flex and want to blow in past the opening. The car has a tendency to run on the back wheelie bars through first and second so a good heavy battery in the front helps hold the front end down. One more thing always and I mean always shut off the fuel then the mag at the top end. The mechanical pump on the injectors has to be shut off first. If you don't the engine will run even with the mag switched off which can cause all kinds of problems. I have not seen the car since I sold it back in 1997 but I would also check the front tires to make sure they are in good shape. If I was going to race the car today I would make sure all old rubber was replaced. Going through the top end at 120 can be a little harry. Try and never lift till you run through the lights and shut the fuel off. If you lift early the car can actually fly and become hard to control, hence forth the scar on the front fender at Lyon's drag strip 1973.  Remember the downward force keeps the front end down so as long as you have your foot in it and stay in the rubber path the car goes straight as an arrow. I was the only driver that ever drove the car and of course there was no passengers. The roll bar saw to that.
Gary

 :o

Awesome post!  8)

Useful advice for Russ and an great read for everyone else. In short stick Russ in a firesuit and tape the pedal down.  ;D

Wow, great post  8)

Good to scare anyone willing to drive it!!  If I remember right the car was driven once in England by Ian Clark... they did a 13 second pass or something like it...

here's the picture from that run & the team who made this possible :o

roller crankshafts are you  gary holzenecht ???  the owner/driver of lil snort  ???
have you some other story about that car i never saw a picture of lil snort in the old vw magazine , did you have some old pictures too post  ???.. ;)
another question:  to how much bug in the car such ran , and to which other dragraces such she ran  ???
regards
speedwell

Thanks for the picks. It was fun seeing the car in action again. I noticed that the mag was missing. Maybe Simon did not sell it to ya or could not get it to work. Fuel injection works much better with a mag. Better spark. When I sold the car to Chris Andrews I let him (Borrow) all my old pictures. He never returned them!! Maybe if anyone knows how to get a hold of him and shamed him into returning the pictures I could post them here on the web. The pictures showed the building of the car in many steps and a few at the track at bug-Ins. Please Chris return the pictures. I was approached several times in the 70's to do articles on the car by Hot VW's and a magazine called Great Volkswagens. Please remember at the time we were inventors. The car has several trick things about it for its time. We did not want the competition to learn our tricks. I turned down several requests for articles. Looking back on it I guess I should of done a few articles, but at the time we wanted to be secret about the car. I was partly sponsored by Hilborn and we were the only drag car running their injection at the time. Also the front end of the car we ran a drop axle Angela spindle mount with 12 spoke hildabrand mag wheels. The wheels looked really cool but were a pain in the ass to keep polished, not to mention no front brakes. We would bag them when the car was not in service to try and keep them polished. The rear wheels were Deano Dyna Soars. We had several trans in the car. For a while we ran a 3 speed Linco Automatic. The trans worked well till we twisted an axle (like a pretzel) and broke the trans. Oh well enough of that stuff for now. Would anyone like to see my current project?
Gary

cool gary for the info and story , for the pictures the first time i saw lil snort at volksworld in 2001 there a  2 panels with old pictures from lil snort  i looking for that picture of the lil snort at vowo
and now pictures of lil snort at european bug in this week end  ;)

return form the dragstrip

Here's a couple we took a PATS  ;D ;D ;D

A few pics from Goodwood FoS 2002...

(http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r151/gingabloke/LilSnort.jpg)

(http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r151/gingabloke/GWLilSnort.jpg)

(http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r151/gingabloke/LilSNortBootlid.jpg)

(http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r151/gingabloke/GWLilSnortengine.jpg)

:)

Great shots! Sure brings back old memories. Yes the roll bar is right in front. Kind of a slight design flaw but if you know your history many of these gassers went flying at the top end. When Deano went upside down we were next in line in the staging lanes. Not a pretty picture. After seeing that we felt the roll bar was just a minor inconvenience. Oh one more thing about the car. A lot of people ask who did the graphics on the car. A guy, older gentleman, called Shakey Jake was famous in the 70's for pin striping VW's. I contracted Shakey to do the graphics and he did some drawings on paper that we liked. On the Saturday morning we towed the car to his shop Shakey was to hung over from the night before to do the job. He had his apprentice do the job. That is real gold leaf by the way. Somewhere in the drawing he signed it. Also the "Few things in life work as well as a VW" was taken from a Volkswagen add back in 1969.
Gary

Great stuff, Gary! To me it still looks like one of the meanest cars ever made. Nice to hear you're still into vw's too. What are you working on right now?

yeah come on Gary lets see the new project  ??? :)

Where's the details on this new project then Gary,, the suspense is killing me?!

Very old topic, I know, but are there any pics available from the Snorts front "suspension"? I've never seen it "live" so never got the chance to study it.

regards
Mango

...if you ever need an Anglia frontend, i have a spare one for you if you want it (with spindles etc)  ;)

the front suspension was modified this year , the car returned to a vw front beam ,because it seems that  the old started to broke  that's why the lil snort had new wheels this year at EBI
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/1004078_534901989890605_1595841446_n.jpg)

(https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/1016706_534910886556382_114162230_n.jpg)

here's a original shot from lil snort with out the body

 ;)

Love this thread!
Thanks for bringing it life again.

That axle is a fabricated drop axle, and not one from an Anglia - but most probably Anglia spindles as stated above (very common on gassers and dragsters back in the days).
Anglia axle could probably be used though, for anyone who wants to build something similar...  i believe trackwidt on the Anglia is much more narrow than on a vw bug, not sure how much though - have to measure.

Thats a really cool picture!! Top 3 of coolest vw gasser ever! shame to see the old front suspension removed  :'( It completly changes the apperance of the car. Why not set up the front suspension for the old 12 spokes, like Alien Bug?

Folke Vogn

AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks Fabs  :)

Oh holy moly Mother of Jesus...why I even ask? There's drool all over my Laptop now, who's gonna clean that up? Thanx a lot :P

Bring it on, PM me, how much?!? etc. I'm dying here.

Cool picture!!

After endless hours of searching the www I finally found a very short sequence of Bill Mitchells Thunderbug, IN MOTION! I Guess by now, everyone else has seen it, but, anything available on Lil Snort? From the 70's that is.

Man I want to see that to.......

I was just saying to Rob(themanx) the other days..... Its nearly 10yrs since I first spoke to Gary and sent him my Crank......

I am just about to email him now about dropping off my crank at the shippers.....

 ;D

Not related to Lil Snort though, but here's the clip w/Thunderbug (3:16 and 5:11):

sorry, wrong link. Speedwell got it right

here's a video with the thunderbug at englistown raceway nad also there's the lil screamin zonker  check at 3.15 sec & 4.03 & 5.10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMHXitkbMWc (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMHXitkbMWc)

Is 4:03 the Zonker?

 ;)

Thanks, that had totally slipped me. Seen the vid a couple of times, but no. Cool

whats the one at 3.39 in the background?  thunderbug?

my Guess: Zonker

correct that's lil screamin zonker


 well seen mike , i don't have seen the bug at that time