The Cal-look Lounge

hi guys,

let me introduce myself, my name is chris, 21 years old, student biomedical sciences in utrecht, holland.
for the information of some of you, i'm 67-indeed's brother. he's the one who is dragging me out of resto into cal-look, for what i'm thankful for. i have come to think that cal-look is the purest of styles.

i bought my 69 'economy beetle' three years ago, and a lot has changed eversince. my curiousity for accesoiries i got myself into resto style and gathered some nice and funny gadgets.
but since my brother in deep into cal-look i got interested. so now i'm planning to build my beetle in a 90s cal-look(is that correct, brother?)

(http://www.keversite.nl/fotoalbum/fotos/41578.jpg)

(http://www.keversite.nl/fotoalbum/fotos/41552.jpg)

these pictures show how my car has been for a long time, you can see the accesoiries and yet the nose-down. it had 155/75 front tyres and 195/70 at the rear, and a 1200 engine.

i recently installed firestone f560s, 145 front 165 rear. soon i'll be installing dropped spindles and get a better stance.
i will obviously loose the resto accesoiries(except for the flowers at the mirror) and be working on the interior which all the useful and fancy gauges(probably smiths), wooden steeringwheel and gene berg shifter. not least important is that i'll be building my new engine.

the engine will be 1600cc dualport with double kadron carbs, a.j. sims 35/32 heads, stock crankshaft, web218, single quiet pack and the other neccesairy parts which i can't all remember right now.

let me know what you think of my project as a cal-look newbie and my apologies for any mistakes i made in the engine specs.

Welcome! :)

Looks like you have a nice car to build on there. Welcome to the lounge.

--louis

Welcome!

Your brother is a wise man for dragging you into cal-look..

thanks very much for the kudos  ;D
welcome to the dark side, and let's all be honest, as you'll find out this is the coolest place to hang out!!

apart from the tyres being 175-55-15 and 195-65-15 it's all correct  ;)

we've got some work to do, aye?
selling off the accessories may be a little difficult especially the hard to find australian sunvisor, but in return you'll be driving a cool car then  :)

anyway, this is a cool start of keeping everyone updated on the changes we'll make on your fine 69.

Hi There and welcome aboard. Man, where are you going to store all those accessories as you make your Bug "Cal Look"? ;D ;D

Cool car, now GET TO WORK!!!!  ;D


PS: when you get a chance, hide your brother's Webers in the bathroom vanity or something....watch him FREAK OUT hahahahaha

Welcome...........  8)

thank you 67-indeed  :D
car looks nice, would like better without all the accessories  ;D

Glad you turned your back to resto cal and joined the cal-look side...  ;D  I did the same 2 years ago and I'm not regretting it...  All those accesoires are cool in a christmas tree, not on a car!  :D   ;D

Welcome.

Dem

Hey Dude welcome to the Lounge and most important of all Welcome to the Cal Look side  ;) :)

Cool car too dude I started with a late 1200 base model ;D its what became my manx :)

Sounds like you have some cool plans for the 69 and your Brother will have LOTS of input I am sure  ;) :)

I look forward to meeting you when you come over for VoWo show - Its gonna be an AWSOME weekend  ;D ;D ;D

P.S you could always give me the flowers cos they would look sooooooo cool in the Manx  ;) :)

Once you go Traditional Cal-Look, you'll never go back!

Should be an easy project.
As long as you use the right size tyres and get the stance sorted, it will look good.
Btw, you should maybe look into using short axles - the offset on those rims is huge!
(http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b166/yvre/chris69.jpg)

WELCOME Chris !!!
Although I already knew it but it's still a cool thing to go cal-look ...

Hi Chris,

I have the same story, also bought a roofrack etc. But now our time has come to build some mean cal-lookers. Maybe i'll put my car on the lounge to.

Your car is gonna look great, see you at the next meeting!

Jesse

you're pretty much spot-on there yvre!
and yes, the rear wheels come out quite a bit. but now that we've fit my old set of 145 and 165 F560 firestones it looks a little better. yet still if we were to change the gearbox, the next should have short axles.

 :)

Welcome Chris,and succes with your ride.
See ya.

thanks for the warm welcome here guys!

@yvre: that's pretty much the look i wanna get, except i'll have bumperguards as well. the offset of my wheel is indeed quite wide, but with the firestone 165s i'm satisfied for now. i'll propably fit another gearbox with short axles in the future.. like my brother said.

@monkiboy: i'm really looking forward to the volksworld show! i'll bring you a string of flowers for a gift, my friend :)

@jim ratto: i've already modified one set of the ida's to binoculars for my bird-watching passion.

i wonder what kind of "birds" those are  ::)

 ;D

hey guys

thought i'd might give you an update of what i'm up to lately.
today, i fitted the dropped spindles and started highering the rear.
but the front types hit the fender when steering, so the beam has to be narrowed.
it'll be narrowed 2 tot 2,5 inches, hope that'll do the job give the good looks.

like i said in my first post, i have some engine plans for my car.i am gonna use my brother's old engine for this. it is a F case that we will open to install a new cam alone, it is not a complete rebuild, i will do this next year when i go for more cc's. for now i will use the stock crankshaft and the lightened 180 flywheel with the clutch and pressure plate that have only run 1000 miles.

my plan is to make a 1600 dual port with a web 218 "kadron plus" cam and of course my brother's kadrons.parts i will use are bugpack racing lifters, steel pushrods and single quiet pack.

but i have two questions:
-first i wanted to use A.J.Sims "HP Stock" heads, 35/32 valves, but now i found out they are not ported. so, for the same money i can also get 40/35.5 heads from CB Performance. unported of course, is this better? i can't port myself and ported heads are too expensive for my budget. the heads i'm talking about are Los Banditos with single valve springs. what should i do?

-my second question is, should i use 1.25 rockers or 1.1? i have 1.1 rockers, is there much performance difference?

is there anyone who can help out my brother on these two matters?  ::)
i can't...

how about out of the box 041 39x32 heads?

Chris/Died i would go with the Banditos as they will perform better then the stock sized heads.

As far as the rockers the 1:25 will give a bit more lift.
But i'm not at home with web cams.

Is the web218 like the engle w120/110 or higher?
If so then you can use the 1:25 rockers otherwise i would use the stock ones as they will work fine
too.

Since switching to a higher cam use a solid shaft rocker assembly.

Hope this will help.

Stanford 8)

Hey Guys, i held these heads in my hands at the Mol Swapmeet in Belgium. I would avoid them like the plague. You will have a L.O.T. of porting, polishing and cleaning-up to do. Not to mention the material, or none of it around the guides. My 2 cents.

Stay with standard rockers if going for the WEB #218. The cam was designed for that and it worked out for me. Basically it's a turbo cam and gives you a good overall torque. MHO.

which heads do you mean hurry?

Banditos.

now rolls with a good rake due to the new stance :)
dropped spindles drive so nicely!!

i'm sure pictures will be on soon when we take some...

hey guys

here's another update with visuals.
i fitted the dropped spindles, firestone 145s & 185s, and gene berg shifter(pictures soon), raised the rear, removed the roofrack, sunvisor, mudflaps and foglights.
so here it is the look. still eager for a frontbumper with guards and can't wait till i can fit the engine when it's ready.
i'll most certainly fit a single quiet pack. other things i still have to do is renewing the window rubbers and fix some of the paintproblems.

let me know what you all think(though i'm thinking of raising the front a bit)

(http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/3435/img2888ov2.th.jpg) (http://img339.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img2888ov2.jpg)

(http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/5058/img2892wn7.th.jpg) (http://img229.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img2892wn7.jpg)

(http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/3272/img2894lg0.th.jpg) (http://img229.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img2894lg0.jpg)

(http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/5530/img2908bf4.th.jpg) (http://img144.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img2908bf4.jpg)

(http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/2626/img2919cc3.th.jpg) (http://img229.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img2919cc3.jpg)

p.s. i tried to get some fancy outdoor-night shots with my tripod :-X

very nice now chris  ;)
fabs

looks better now..........  ;D

edit: the beam has also been narrowed about 2"

the photos are a bit too large for my 13.1" screen brother.
but i'm glad you're keeping the VW nuts on here updated ;)

now, let's go find a decent front bumper and raise the front a tad before we really lose the license plate on a speed bump ;D

very cool! a friend of mine has a 68 standard on sprinstars which looks veeeeeeeeeeeery similar! his is dechromed though

Awesome car! Have you tried to take the bumpers off to see how it looks without them?

I like it.   ;D

thanks for all the replies peeps!
i haven't taken off the bumpers, i kinda like the look of them.
i will have a try soon, and see how it looks.

i haven't decided yet what kind of gauges i want to get, i guess i want a kind of vintage look.
i was thinking of a smiths tachometer(which is rare and expensive) and still need 2 oil gauges..
what do you guys recommend?

no news about the gauges yet?

i wonder if anyone knows some cool tach and oil gauges besides the usual VDOs.
besides, you don't wanna use the same gauges as i do, right? ;)

any suggestions, anyone?

so, news on my car.
it's been completely repainted, as well as the engine-, frontcompartment and dashboard, in the original toga white(L90C). it returned a bit lighter as expected because my 40 year old painted was indeed faded.
two new read fenders(couldn't find originals unfortunately), a new rear decklit, renewed almost every rubber seal with originals during the rebuild, fitted my pop-outs and bought original mahle wheels(still got my 145/165 tires).
the rebuild is almost ready, except for the fueltank and some electronics, so the build of the engine is going to start this weekend.
i also want to fit my smiths gauges but i guess they'll have to wait till later this summer, a running new engine is of more importance.

let me know what you think of it.

the departure(the worthy are able to spot 67-indeed)
(http://www.keversite.nl/fotoalbum/fotos/80819.jpg)

rebuilt door and sneak of the interior
(http://www.keversite.nl/fotoalbum/fotos/80818.jpg)

the new wheel(porsche stickers for the centre caps on the way)
(http://www.keversite.nl/fotoalbum/fotos/80817.jpg)

(http://www.keversite.nl/fotoalbum/fotos/80815.jpg)

(http://www.keversite.nl/fotoalbum/fotos/80814.jpg)

looks cool  8)

X2  ;)

x3  , especially with the baby GB

Nice work !

x4 and the black and white plates look good on the car as well. lucky you don't use the yellow ones on this one.

it's coming together nicely indeed.
gonna build the engine this weekend, or at least get most of it done and then 1 days hard work should get it on the road again  :)
then it's gonna be on a rock werchter/chimay cruise ;)

Very nice work Chris !!  8) The Rims look sooo cool under the white car :D

looks very nice!!! Well done!  ;D

Very good looking car.

i oughta shoot some spy pics from how sits in the garage as we speak  :)

please do, if you got the yarbles  ;D

so, a cool update on my car.
i got it running wednesday last week, still with my stock engine but with single quiet pack, drove it to rock werchter festival back and forth.
drove to EBI on saturday, my exhaust started to leak as one tread on the head broke off while taking my old exhaust off.
fixed it with a csp and extra thick bearing.
but i got it on the show and shine on sunday, which was really nice to be standing with all those cool cal-look cars around!

now, i have to start building my engine, install the gauges, want to raise the front end a bit. and, i know, need to have the muffler a bit more tucked into the fender, so cut if off and re-weld it into a new position.

some pictures from before the trip to chimay

(http://www.keversite.nl/fotoalbum/fotos/81676.jpg)

(http://www.keversite.nl/fotoalbum/fotos/81677.jpg)

(http://www.keversite.nl/fotoalbum/fotos/81678.jpg)

Congrats, very nice car  8).

Damn, looks great Chris !!  you did a good job  ;D

so, long time no update.

car still in good shape, have been busy trying to start up the building of my 1679cc engine.

bought a set of d/p heads, turned out to have only 36cc in the chambers, got them enlarged by hemi cut to 47cc.
got a stock crankshaft pulley powdercoated as can be seen in the picture. still need to smoothen out the chambers and remove the excess coal.

i closed the case with the crankshaft for measuring my deckheights, they turned out to vary between 1.4 - 1.7mm.
so i need to check the face of the case where the cylinders touch and perhaps get that face flattened or get my cylinders machine of course.

(http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/8886/dsc00190yf.jpg)

(http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/8196/dsc00191n.jpg)

(http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/1174/dsc00193tk.jpg)


also, bought a spare mahle wheel and i will respray all the wheels in satin black.

after three months in africa i'm back and ready to work on my car again.

did some grinding in the dashboard and fitted my array of smiths gauges. all gauges are modified and repaired to work with all the senders etc, the fuel gauge works and the rest will be connected with the new engine.
i don't know the use of the ammeter yet, as it's mostly a space filler and i'm planning to look for a voltmeter since that makes more sense.

next up is continuing on the engine, get the cylinder faces on the case halves flattened to get good deckheight and from then it's only assembly.


a pic of the dash:

(http://img600.imageshack.us/img600/2396/img3113q.jpg)


(http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/7296/img3117t.jpg)

Whowww Chris,that dash looks superb,like it a LOT.(looks like a factory option).
 ;)

Dash looks killer!  ;)

Nice dash ! The rest of the car is not bad too  ;D

nice love it bravo