my '60 drag bug (bad luck betty)

[yeti]

hi all! been reading this forum for quite a while now and thought my project might be of intrest to some of you!

i've had this bug for2 or 3 years now and she's been slowely moving more and more towards the drag strip, i finaly got round to joining my local vw drag racing club (the Air Cooled Eliminators) who race at my local strip york raceway. i only managed 2 rounds before the old pro street box gave up and lost second gear! so i decided to make the final step towards making her a drag car!

anyway a quick photo catch up!...

when i got her she was running on 14" fuchs and had a knackered 1914cc motor,


i rebuilt the motor, swapped to disks all round and slapped some 3.5 - 5.5 centerlines on there!


i started some light tweeking work over winter and it escalated into a full blown rebuild! it came out like this!...








motor was upped to a 2109cc and a pro street box was dropped in (allong with lots of other work!) and its been driving to the strip, running 13's and driving home again over the course of this year!

that sorta brings us up to date! the broken gearbox put a stop to my racing because i didnt want to simply fix it and find i have the same problems again next time, so i decided to take the car off the road and do the job propperly!

the plans are to replace the box with a pro drag, add a turbo into the mix, narrow the rear end, raise the transmision and basicaly give the car that hard as nails pro street stance! she will eventualy be pin striped and lettered up too with her name (bad luck betty) and some artwork i've been working on.

i've got most of the parts gathered up and im basicaly at the start of the new phase!

i picked up a nice rlr lader bar rear end! 3" narrowed


an oldskool draw through setup, although i've had to drop the neat mid mount turbo header as it wasn't gonna work with my plans, so the new plans are to make one that hangs out the back instead.


and my old pro street box is going to be upgraded rather then forking out for a complete new box!

started work a few weeks back, removed the old side trays and found they were pretty thin and crusty! also never realised how bad some of the old repairs were!




from my measuring i knew i was going to have to either tub or remove the inner wings so after some thinking i decided it would probibly be more benificial to remove the inner wings and parcel shelf area and replace it later with an alloy bulkhead,
so out came the grinder!...





i still have to go back over it all propperly, i basicaly just hacked it out inside my measurements to get the guts of it out!

i picked up some 10" banded wheels and kelly supercharger tyres dirt cheap off ebay to help me with mocking up and thats basicaly where im at now!







the cars going to aircooled performance sometime soon for a rear cage which will be tied into the frame horns, and the lader bars/coilovers/narrowed suspension can all be fitted to it once the cage is in place!
the trannys going to be lifted too while were doing the cage/suspension work but ive not decided by how much yet, i'd initialy decided on 2" because i wanted to keep the shift rod in the tunnel but im leaning more towards a 3 or 4" raise now to get the stance right. not really sure!

the turbo is hung off the deck lid mounts to give myself an idea of where its gonna sit and how im gonna route the new header! its a long way off that point yet but i thought it was probibly wise to keep in mind where i want it to sit knowing the motor will be raised up a fair bit!

anyway hope some of you like it and i'll hopefully i'll have some more progress soon!

steve

[Fastbrit]

Well, they say all projects are never really finished, and yours looks like one which is constantly evolving! Good luck and keep us posted!

[yeti]

cheers! well not a very exciting update but its progress none the less!

finaly managed to find some time to spend on the bug this weekend, so decided to finish what i'd started and neaten up the cuts i made last time when i hacked all the guts out of the back end!

i managed to make enough space on my bench to get the engine up and out of the way so first things first that came back out and its now stashed away till i get round to modding it for the turbo.



comes out a damn site easier without all that metal in the way!

once that was out i made a start at cutting to the lines i'd marked out origionaly! not a lot to show for the work but its definately neater!



all i've left to trim are the horns that hte wings bolt to, and i need to do something with the two small nibs that are left where the rear firewall/inner wing/inner bodywork meet up. im not totaly sure what to do with them so i've left em for now.

this is the offending object!





i dont really want to leave them because A they look shite and B if i go for more than a 2-3" raise on the rear end they might foul the tyres on a hard launch. so my plan is to cut it on the red dotted line, basicaly following hte current path of where ive cut away the rear inner wings, and then make a small plate and weld up the box section that would be left open!

and finaly i've stripped away all the rear brake lines, removed the backing plates, old shocks, loosened up the gearbox, and basicaly made it ready to strip out when it goes to daz's!

glass is also out of the rear half to make life easier, plus it'll be replaced with pollycarb eventualy anyway!

this is how she stands now!



hopefully next time i post up it'll have been to aircooled performance and should be sporting a rear cage, some laderbars, and a narrowed rear end!

steve

[jamiep_jamiep]

Coming on great Steve.

Re: your turbo header - if you're at York for the ASS-whoopin come and have a chat about exhaust manifolds - I am having a new one made up and it would be just as easy to get 2 buzzed up as one. I'll be taking the mild steel one I run at the moment off (its my brothers) and basically getting it copied in stainless. No idea of cost yet though, but I have a great guy set up to make it for me who makes frames for lowriders - he also tigged my end casting's to suit my wedgeport heads... great welder. Or if you had someone in mind I could get the manifold to them? Do you think Daz would buzz a couple up?

[yeti]

hey up jamie yeah gonna try and make it over to see them yank tanks given a good whoopin 

sounds like a good plan to me mate, i was looking at making my own up in stainless and getting someone more competent to weld it up for me but tbh by the time ive bought the bends, the flanges and the other bits and bobs it works out no cheaper than the quote daz gave me a while back, so probibly worth sorting out a manifold that suits us both and seeing if he'll knock a couple together! my only aim is to keep it tucked in enough to get the decklid on, even if it means big standoffs, i want to keep it road legal if i can! will have a chat at the raceway dude!

steve

[jamiep_jamiep]

I'll bring my decklid and we'll see how close it fits with the current header style. I've never actually looked!

Cool, see you there.

[yeti]

am i right in thinking it came from lee at fairbank and craven? if not i know he had a similar setup in his oval (rayjay?), and it did sorta fit with some standoffs, there were a few holes chopped in the lid but tbh a couple of "power bulges" would sort that  will have to have a propper look dude, the only problem i can see is my engine/trans lift. it'll hold the turbo 2/3" higher but i guess i can alter the lid a bit to work round it! will catch you at york anyway!

Steve

[jamiep_jamiep]

Its the one that was on his Oval yeah. I never saw it though.... My brother still has the rayjay turbo and the DCOE ietc. to go along with the exhaust ready to go on his 1914cc...

[yeti]

cool yeah i thought i remembered you telling me it was his. it was a tight fit but it was all more or less under the lid! ran nice on his old 1914 too.

[yeti]

well time for a small update!

ive been sorta stuck saving money and not doing much to the car but i've finaly managed to save enough to get it sent off to daz's spot for the cage! so spent last weekend getting the car rolling again and he's been and picked it up today, as i said not a lot of progress on the car itself but now its out of the way i can make a start on the motor again, and start collecting the other bits i need.

i managed to get hold of a pair of wide 5 steelies for the front to get it rolling, problem is their 14's from a camper so the tyres are a bit too big for the bug and they dont have much of an offset, so combined with the 5" narrowed beam they resulted in the wings having to come off just to get it rolling (rubbing on the headlight bowels) and abolutely bugger all steering lock! but its rolling at least and thats the main thing.

i do like the way they look tho, with a 24" tyre rather than the 26" ones that are on them and a slightly less severly chopped beam i think they would look pretty cool!, would have been quite a sleeper if i'd managed to make the mid mount header work! nevermind!


just a bit narrow at the moment!!





and its finaly on its way!



daz also brought me a nice pressie too, the turbo header i managed to wrangle off donkers! nowt special but its another piece of the puzzle at least!



i was a bit worried i'd have to replace the turbo flange since he was running a smaller t3/4 hybrid but now i have it here i can see that the flange is big enough to simply re drill the holes to suit my t04b which is nice!

next job is to remove the heads, do a little work on the chambers to drop the cc's, replace the .040 head gaskets with a .060 one and make the wastegate and turbo exhaust system!

the only annoying thing is i know im gonna have to replace the pushrods. i made an error when i cut them to length last year and now after swapping to the cb pro comp rockers they are only just long enough, so with the extra tickness of the gaskets they are gonna cause problems! ah well! you win some you loose some!

steve

[yeti]

she's home! and i couldnt be more impressed with the work daz has done! the cage is spot on! really really pleased with it! anyway few slightly dodgy pics! will update it propperly next week!





picking it up at daz's!

and some bad pics of the cage, was a bit dark and the flash was thowing bad shadows so best i can manage tonight!





and the rear end! dont really know whats going on with the white axle tube but its all just slapped back in for a mock up and i'll paint it all up when it goes back in propper!





and my mate ben who helped me with a trailer and a lot of pushing and shoving when the car got stuck in the snow :lol:

steve

[71CALRIPPER]

God damm thats a massive rear end setup !! Works looks pukka you better have alot of HP to get those moving !

[yeti]

  the aim is 300hp so should shift well enough!

the biggest problem i have now is i cant afford to get the box upgraded to a pro drag this year, works a bit slow, were moving into our own house and having paid for the other stuff im just too out of pocket to stretch to it! so im hoping sissy launches and the treds will save the box untill i can scrape together enough to uprate it!

steve

[Jim Smith]

I may be wrong , but that narrowed white axle tube looks familiar!!! Good luck with the project chaps.

[PiL]

Jim

Your guess is probably right...The rear end is from Bugcatcher. Glad to see it being put to good use.

Paul

I may be wrong , but that narrowed white axle tube looks familiar!!! Good luck with the project chaps.

[yeti]

cool cheers for the info! will have to have a look for some pics? i bought the kit from a nice bloke called james, who was sitting on it with the intention of using it on a drag buggy, he also imported the turbo kit from the states, sold it to my mate lee who intended to use it in a cool old sweedish rat look oval and he eventually sold it to me, although sadly the turbo header wouldnt work with the rest of my plans so its been moved on and the drag style header has taken its place!

steve

[Jim Smith]

yeah remember now, i narrowed those tubes about 15 years ago, with a huge great sleeve i think. I used them a few times before i found out the best way of narrowing them!! Always took them with me when racing as spares, never needed them but Cliff Watkins (Bugcatcher) managed to damage one of his, whilst changing a bearing in the pits, thats how they came to be on the catcher.

[yeti]

ah cool nice to know a bit of history behind them! cheers!

steve

[yeti]

ok well finaly found the time to nip back to the mother in laws to pick up some bits from the garage so we could have a bit of a mock up session! always a bit of a boost to see a teaser of how it'll look! even if i know i've still got to tear it all down again!

thankfully its all pretty good news, the tyres fit under the stock arches, JUST! its fag paper territory but it'll go! tempted to ease the inner lip a little just to give me a touch more space but tbh i think i'll see how it goes.









also slotted the motor in quickly for a mock up, god its so much easier without all the rear metal work!

i wanted to mock up the turbo system so i can work out the route for the exhaust pipe, im still a bit undecided, its going to remain street legal so im tempted to run a pipe down to the vallance and use the 3" borla muffler i have, but at the same time i love the no nonsence look and sound of an open pipe straight out of the turbo to the side of the engine bay! will maybe have a bash at both and see what works.





only bolted in loose but its nice to have something to aim towards! really pleased with the stance too! next choice is black, silver or duck egg green wheels like the front pair! choices choices!

and before anyone points it out i know the rear lights are too high! it will be rectified dont worry

steve

[jamiep_jamiep]

Looks great Steve.

I vote black for the wheels....

[Jesus]

I agree with Jamie,

Looking tough with that stance!

[Duck]

Looks great Steve.

I vote black for the wheels....

Definitely black rims, bugs looking hard as

[yeti]

well its been a while since i've been able to get online long enough to keep everything updated but im online again now and the cars been moving on slowely since xmas!

sadly i missed the start of the race season at york raceway but i'll hopefully get to one or two meetings over the course of the year, im going to save racing propperly untill next year when im a bit more prepared with a car and trailer allong with a bit more money for the inevitable breakages!

anyway back to the car, since last time ive been working on it when i can find the time, the gearbox was fixed by john walket of the renwagens, and a top job he did too! it turned out to be nothing more than a loose shift fork because a washer broke and the nut came loose  he installed a cromo pinnion nut at the same time too so thats another weak spot sorted out. next year i might be able to afford the full pro drag box but we'll see.
john also hemi cut the heads for me so i can get the compression down on the motor, heads now work out nicely at 64cc and the compression comes in at about 8.4:1 which is about what i was aiming for.



so the next job was to clean up the new rear end, since the salt had already started to eat through the etch primer daz put on to help give it at least a little protection, everything went back to bare metal, then got a coat of rust inhibitor, then primer, and paintable stone chip to help protect it! the gearbox was then re fitted, the shocks fixed up propperly and the brakes put back together.

theres another couple of pics showing the cage a little better.





the car was then moved round to my mates drive and the rest of the works been carried out there since the garage was a tempory thing while it was made rolling again.
the engine was then mocked up in the car so i could make the exhuast pipe, which is just a basic 3" stainless one, there were a couple of small changes to the plans too at this stage, the wheel colour changed to a really nice ford aporto red colour, which i think is the same colour as the new fiestas etc come in, the pics dont show it very well but its a nice cherry red/burgandy colour which i think gives it a little bit of a hot rod twist, eventualy i want to swap to some centerlines but at the moment id rather get the car moving and concentrate on the details later on!



the vallance was just proped in place to get an idea of where the boot will sit at this point.

next the motor came back out for the final bits and bobs and went back in for hopefully the last time! got to admit im loving the extra space now theres no inner wings to fight with!



my mate ben helping out with the motor

the new fuel lines all went in too, i decided to do them right this time and have gone for a new holey blue pump, with a -8 line from the tank, and a-6 line to the regs and carb at the back, all in nice stainless and black alloy fittings. just a pitty the regs are giving me problems at the moment!



we then charged up the battery, put some fuel in it and gave it a bash at starting! which it did without too much trouble! the biggest problem has been keeping it running, or stopping it flooding the carb. it will now idle at least but the fueling on the mains seem need a little altering because it chokes the motor as soon as its reved! but its nice to hear it run at least! and it sounds pretty mean!



still got to make the wastegate pipe up, make the oil lines to the inlet which i never really counted on needing, and mount the oil filter head, plus a hundred other small jobs but its coming together at least!

oh and dont worry theres gonna be a lot of tidying up in the engine bay! it was a case of lets just see if it runs and bugger what it looks like for the moment!

[jamiep_jamiep]

Great to hear you have it running Steve. I'll dig out my jetting notes from when I ran the siderdraft and email them over.

[yeti]

cheers jamie that would be really helpfull! david jetted it as close as he could before he sent in down but it still needs a bit more fettling

tbh i've had it running again today and its been running pretty sweet, had problems with the float needle valve again and found some debris from the new fuel lines in there but now i've blown it through it seems to be pretty good! i've swapped from the custom tapered emulsion tubes david supplied with the carb to some spare ones that came with the origional 48mm side draft and it seems to have made it run a bit cleaner on the mains, but tbh i cant be sure the needle valve wasn't stuck before and causeing problems with the tapered ones, so i'll give them a bash again next week and see whats happening!

decided im going to fit the 3" borla muffler to the car too, so next week it looks like i'll be chopping up the new exhaust to alter it and mounting the muffler under the rear vallance, i bunged it over the exhaust pipe today when it was running and tbh it wasnt much quieter but it had a nicer, rounder exhaust note which is a bit more pleasing to the ear! just wish i could run the bootlid closed but will have to work out another turbo system next winter!

steve

[thejohn66]

Great to see its all running now! Will hopefully see it on the track latter in the year, Alex

[yeti]

well had a nice productive day today! decided i definately needed to alter the exhaust system (if you could actualy call it that!) so i ordered another stainless U bend and set too making a new one today!

i had 2 options, 1 bring the pipe down and mount the silencer transversely accross the back of the car, that was the easier option but it was going to cause problems because the rear vallance would have to be cut and it would weaken it, meaning some sort of a brace would be needed.

the second option was to take the pipe back out towards the front of the car and route the pipework round and under the engine, it was a bit more complicated but it resulted in a nice neat and more profesional looking job i think!

well to start with i chopped the bend off the end of the origional pipe, turned it by 90 deg on the turbo flange and mocked up roughly where the muffler wanted to sit...



then i chopped up the new U bend and worked out how best to get from the muffler to the remaining pipe! took a bit of sorting out because i didnt have a lot of pipe to work with but i got there in the end! i tacked it in place to make sure it all worked and trial fitted it again...



then when i was happy i removed it all again and started seam welding all the pipes up. im not a very experienced welder so its not pretty but it'll hold!, i've not gone mad dressing the welds up because im going to wrap it all to keep the temps down a bit so theres just no point!



then finaly i put it all back on the car, and tweeked the muffler a bit so it sat back far enough, chopped off the old mounting bracket, welded it back on the other side so it now fixes to the j tube flange and job more or less done! just need to chop the old flange off the muffler and make a couple of slits in it, the pipe i've used just slips inside the pipe out of the muffler so i can get away with a slip joint rather then having to bugger about welding another flange onto the pipework!



back on the ground and sitting quite nicely! tucks up behind the wing/vallance nicely and it should give it a nice bark! sadly couldnt start it because the bloody battery was dead!

also this week i got my new throttle linkage for the carb which works nicely, only problem is its a bit big! and needs even more of a stand off! meh!

steve

[Jamie]

Looking good Steve

Is it gonna be out this year??(Drag Day maybe??)

Cheers

Jamie

[yeti]

hey up fella, yeah hopefully gonna make the york leg of the drag day, think were gonna try and hit bugjam too, never been to one of the bigger vw shows and since i cant afford to race propperly this year it'd be cool to do that one instead! hopeing it'll be on the road for the last weekend in may so i can get a few runs in at york then too!

steve

[Jamie]

hey up fella, yeah hopefully gonna make the york leg of the drag day, think were gonna try and hit bugjam too, never been to one of the bigger vw shows and since i cant afford to race propperly this year it'd be cool to do that one instead! hopeing it'll be on the road for the last weekend in may so i can get a few runs in at york then too!

steve

Excellent, look forward to seeing it, am in the process of building a '62 at the moment which should be ready for next year(hopefully ) would be good to have a look around your car for ideas/inspiration!!!!

Keep up the good work fella

Jamie