Some years ago a fellow racer was in the middle of a new race car build while still racing his old car, and realized that in order to get the new car finalized it would help to get rid of the old one first. “It is just so fun to drive the old car, that the new project is neglected.”
I just realized this applies to me too. I have had my ’65 bug for over 22 years but recently I have been thinking that maybe I should try to divest the car so that I would be forced to focus on my project car.
The only way to test the water is to put out an ad. If it doesn’t sell, I will store it somewhere out of sight…FOR SALE: 9 SECOND STREET BEETLEFeatured in Volksworld, winner of SCC supercharged street tire class 2010, 2nd/3rd in Cal-look.com top-10 several times, among the quickest VWs in the world on dot tires…
I bought the almost rust-free Northern Finland all original ’65 (sound familiar
) in late 80s. In the beginning it was a driver, and later after a pan-off restoration a sort of a street racer. In the 90s the evolution of the car saw the second-by-second steps down to 11s. The first serious engine was built and the first 9 ran in 2003. 2004-2005 the car ran high 9s when the stars were aligned. 2006-2009 the car rested in a garage, and was taken back to the track in 2010 with some new upgrades.
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Here are the specs / a detailed long list of the stuff in the car as it is now:
The car
’65 Bug with a sunroof from a ’58
- road legal with lights, wipers, horn, muffler…
- NHRA legal to run 8.50sec with a valid chassis cert
- very nice registration papers (turbo, IC, ladder bars, roll-cage, 10.5” tires etc) and valid annual tech inspection for the Finnish buyer candidates
Fiberglass one piece front end, doors, rear fenders and deck lid
Professionally painted in early 2000s
- garaged, no rust (I guess this goes without saying?)
- paint is still good; only a few very small scratches in the paint
Lexan windows, except windshield
Gene Berg 40% shifter
Kirkey seats and Simpson 5-point harnesses (preferably not included in the sale)
Mild steel NHRA-legal roll-cage with extra bars, professionally welded
Simpson window net
Fuel cell, two Bosch (044?) fuel pumps, Aeromotive Fuel Pressure Regulator
AN hoses and fittings all over the car, oil and fuel, everything is braided S/S or teflon
Hurst line-lock
Optima red top battery (3 years old, has failed me once this year on a cold morning at a race, but now seems to be ok)
High torque starter
Narrowed K&L beam (everything re-built and driven less than 300km since)
Adjustable Koni front shocks
Back-half rear suspension
- CrMo 32” ladder bars with over-sized Aurora joints
- Strange dual-adjustable coil-overs + extra ±50lbs springs + limit straps (preferably not included in the sale)
- adjustable upper mounts => fits also other length coil-overs
- raised transmission
- fits up to 10” wheels inside the std width fenders
Gene Berg wheelie bars
CB wide-5 disc brakes and dropped spindles in front (everything 300km since new), wide-5 German 40mm drums in rear, Moroso CrMo press-in ½” wheel studs
Erco/CMS street-weight 0.190” bolted wheels:
- 4.25”x15” front with 24” MH front runners,
- 8”x15” rears with 10.5”x26” MH dot tires (front wheels and tires 20 passes / 300km since new, rear wheels and tires 10 passes / 300km)
- extra set of new 10” rear wheels with new 11.5”x26” Hoosier dot tires (10 passes, not driven on the street)
The car weights around 840kg without driver
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Engine
ARPM 3-piece case, 6 CrMo studs for each cylinder, std/T4 middle, dry-sump-style, blue-printed. Very nice! (100 passes)
Gene Berg vintage 84mm crank , std/std, T4 center main, pristine condition, magnafluxed ok, wedgemated flywheel (crank bought in late 80s, maybe 4000km on the street and 50 naturally aspirated and 100 turbocharged passes in total?)
5.6" H-profile Bugpack rods, ARP bolts, Porsche journals (100 passes on rods, 20 on bolts)
JE 94mm custom turbo 8.0:1 pistons (20 passes)
HD cylinders made-in-Finland out of Mahle diesel blanks, 6-studs each. These are very nice! (100 passes)
Engle FK-45 / 112 LC and CB lightweight lifters (10 passes)
Magnum straight cut gears
Kennedy clutch + RLR Black Magic
Dry sump system based on a Pauter Gerotor 4-stage pump (100 passes / 500km)
C/E heads, ported, new 45.75x41mm S/S 11/32” SD valves, K800, titanium retainers
- I would say this is the only part in the long block that is not in “like new” condition. Never damaged / never welded, the seats are not moving, everything is nice and fresh, but after almost 10 seasons and 120 passes you can’t say they are as good as new..
GB 160000 psi pushrods + Jaycee tubes (100 passes)
Pauter 1.5:1 (20 passes, cosmetically not perfect; minor damage due to broken studs… the studs lasted for 8 seasons of racing and are now replaced)
Deutz fan + special 911-style shroud and separate alternator
1 ¾” custom header
Custom Holset turbo (60 passes)
3½” exhaust and muffler
HKS 50mm Racegate (20 passes)
Water-to-Air intercooler (a $69 eBay special , seems to work very well)
Meziere water pump (preferably not included in the sale)
Godzilla BOV (preferably not included in the sale)
Motec EFI and dash with lots of options, incl. Drive by Wire TB and pedal, and sensors (preferably not included in the sale)
Bosch 2000cc injectors (oversized for this engine, preferably not included in the sale)
Bosch wasted spark coil
There is also a dry single jet nitrous system installed and wired in place, and two 10lbs bottles (never used, not even tested. Bottles are almost new and full/semi-full)
I will include all my spares (a very small box)
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Transmission
Mendeola MD4-Drag (about 20 passes since freshened, about 100 in total)
- 4.11 r&p
- 3.44-1.93-1.35-1.04 Weddle gears
- Liberty 2nd, synchros in 3rd and 4th
Karpiola narrowed axles (about 20 passes)
A big effort has been done to tune the suspension and today the car runs ‘straight and safe’ from start to finish: on a prepped strip I have not aborted/lifted/peddled a single pass in the past years!!! Please note that the suspension has been set for a prepped strip and on the street the car can lose traction in any gear and at any speed. Previously with the torsion bar suspension it would also wheelie violently, resulting in a lot of bad runs. Since the upgrade to ladder bars, the car runs regularly mid-1.3sec 60ft times, and mid-9s at close to 230km/h in the quarter. Best et to date in full street trim is 9.43sec/235km/h and
out of all passes on a prepped strip during 2010-2011 the worst has been 10.16sec/225km/h (bogged the engine down to 1800rpm at launch, totally my fault, not the car)!
Please note that there is still room for improvement; the total number of passes during 2010-2011 is only approximately 20. The best et has been ran with a 1.35 60ft time, and this year the car has done 1.29 in the 60ft. on the new tires but the et was only in the 9.6s due to “just testing on low-boost”.
Engine produces ~500hp with 1.6bar boost on E85 with very safe tune. The engine has been very reliable, sans some very minor headache with the rockers. The short block has not ever shown any issues in annual or bi-annual check-ups; the bearings have typically not even been replaced. The heads have almost always required lapping the valves, sometimes putting in new k-liners to the exhaust guides and cutting the seats.
Also the transmission has been totally reliable – it was taken apart some years ago to replace 2nd gear synchros with Liberty rings.
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Plusses and minuses:
+ Very consistent on a prepped strip
+ Low maintenance engine & transmission
+ Street and race legal
+ The car has potential for 8s; the car could handle way more than the current engine (500hp is not that much by today’s standards)
- The plumbing and EFI wiring is not esthetically neat in some areas (the current combo of the car was built in stages over a few years, and the ad-hoc changes messed the layout. The loom is professionally built and everything works flawless)
- The one-piece-front in fiberglass is not popular these days – back in ‘92 it was cool
I would really prefer to sell the car ‘rolling’ or ‘stripped’, so that I could remove some stuff from it before selling it (EFI with all accessories, coil-overs, injectors, FPR, BOV, water pump for liquid IC, seats and harnesses). It is also available as ‘turn-key’, but the price would be relatively high since I’d have to spend a good amount of cash to buy new replacements.
To give a rough idea of price levels, I am thinking:
- 15.000 EUR for the car without engine and the stuff I have listed I would like to keep
- 10.000 EUR for the engine with everything except the EFI system
I am not forced to sell, so please no low ball offers.
Even though the car can be sold in almost any assembly, I will not separate unless the body/chassis is sold first. Please let me know the combo you’d be interested, let’s see if we can agree on the price.
The car will be available after SCC.
Jyrki
jyrki dot laune at gsg dot fi
+358 40 743 2391
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