RayJay!

[Bruce]

Last week at a local VW show, a nicely restored 71 1302 was parked beside me out in the car park. Other than the hideous chrome wheels, nothing on the outside said anything unusual.
The owner was nearby and sparked up a conversation. It turns out he just acquired the car and arrived too late to enter it in the show. It's significance?  It is the very first Beetle equipped with a RayJay turbo! Formerly owned by the engineer who designed the kit at RayJay, this was the test mule.

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The owner said this car has been featured twice in hotVW's. He had a very bad photocopy of an article written by Jim Wright. I don't recall the issue. I bet there's a magazine collector on here that can find the article.

[Bruce]

Gauges by RayJay.

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[Bruce]

I think the EMPI nerds can confirm if those are period lumber pieces.

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[Stephen schmidt]

Whose car was this? Never seen it in Vancouver before!

[nicolas]

wow!!! I like that car. I would drive it just like that.

[Rome]

I remember the HotVWs article on the Rajay (correct spelling); I think it was from 1970. My dad had a subscription via his office. The Rajay engineer was shown to be an "older guy" (maybe late 50's, old to me as a young teenager) with glasses and wearing a suit. I'm certain that the Beetle was a '70 with a single-port engine. I also vaguely remember that the HVWs article only had B&W photos but the Beetle had a light color- such as ivory, beige, or pale yellow. I just went thru my old issues from '69 thru '71 but did not find the specific Rajay article, though unfortunately I don't have all issues from that time period.  

In 2021 at a large VW meet in Connecticut I spoke with a young man displaying his father's beige '74 Standard Beetle. He said his dad was a mechanic at a VW dealer and installed a Rajay kit onto the brand-new Beetle after hours before it even left the dealer; thus a 1600 dual-port engine. It was a "time capsule" engine modification which survived all these decades. I asked him if he knew the correct spelling of the company, if it was Rah-Jay (per the spelling and it's plausible) or Ray-Jay (because it rhymes and is thereby more popular)- he did not know.

Differences in your photo to mine is that the original was using a stock Solex downdraft carb; the one on the '74 was likely an updated design with a side-draft Bendix carb which obviously shortened the intake mixture path compared to the Solex. Also the fabric exhaust wrap instead of bare pipes. I remember early Rajay photos having aluminum-foil type insulation on the pipes.

Here are a few of my shots from theSamba on the engine-