Porsche Bus

I'm not generally much of an air-cooled guy, and although I do really respect the cars, they're just not really my thing. It's odd, because way back when I never wanted anything other than a Beetle or a Bus, (my Uncle has always owned some kind of VW Bus for as long as I've been around). I have just never really taken the plunge. One of these days I suppose...



At any rate, there are plenty of people who live and breathe air-cooled VWs like it's food and water. There are plenty more who live and breathe air-cooled Porsches, so I suppose it's only natural, with the shared genes of the two brands, that these people are often one and the same. My buddy Robert has a friend of his who is one of these people, and it just so happens he is in the process of melding a classic split-window bus with a 911 drive train and suspension. The aptly named PorscheBus has just got off the ground, but the content is already flowing freely and I'm sure it will remain very insightful and informative to say the least. This is after all going to be a full-on restoration and build up, with all the proper parts, and the proper attention to detail, and from the looks of it, none of the rust currently in hiding in the 1965 13 window VW is going to remain hidden.



I can't say I would have sold this cherry 1981 911 SC to embark on this journey, but then it's not my car either. I suppose it's like I said: I respect them, (and they're arguable cooler than any water-pumper ever will be) they just aren't my thing. If they were I'm sure I'd be filling this space with all things air-cooled and bus related. I'll be keeping an eye on it, and updating from time to time to keep everyone in the know....as I'm sure it'll be one of the cooler (and obviously faster) old split windows around.

_WRS

VW Motorsport in talks with...NASCAR?

It has come to my attention that the good 'ole boys have been in talks with the one and only Hans-Joachim Stuck, who is apparently the head of VW Motorsport. That fact alone (that Hans is the head of VW Motorsport) is news to me, but the fact that they are in talks with NASCAR of all things and people, is doubly so.



First let me say that I'm absolutely ecstatic to have, the one, the only, Hans-Joachim Stuck at the helm of VW Motorsport. He is quite literally my favorite race driver of all time (along with the incomparable Allan McNish ) and it pleases me to have someone as accomplished and respected in that position.

HOWEVER. What the hell are they thinking? NASCAR? In the article, it states that VW is more inclined to move to a series that highlights technology over anything else...presumably to show the benefits of direct-injection gas and diesel engines. While I know that the Sprint Cup has probably some of the most valuable exposure in dollars spent versus market exposure, but the millions upon millions that VW would spend there to back-date themselves to old-school V8 race cars which are fast but far from technologically advanced or fuel efficient makes no sense.



What does make sense is to perhaps consider a series that DOES feature technology over equality of architecture. That would naturally be the American Le Mans Series. Let's see... Diesel allowed? Check. Alternative fuels? Check. Multiple classes, tight racing, world-wide respect and fan base? Check. Consider the fact that the small-ish ROC France team ran a VW turbo 4-cylinder back in the LMP 675 class (aka P2, etc) with good results, winning their class more than once in the world's most prestigious and well-known 24 hour event. Why not do something similar? Maybe they can leave the TDI technology to be run by Audi if they so choose, but the massive number of vehicles powered by the ubiquitous 2.0t FSI / TSi engine could certainly make a race motor based on that block fairly easy to work up, toss it into a capable Lola chassis for running in the P2 class, develop, and enjoy the fruits of your labor.



I know I'm in no position to make calls on worldwide or even country wide marketing plans involving more money than I shall ever make in my life, but I feel like I do know the USA market. No-one who watches NASCAR is suddenly going to buy a Passat because there is a completely unrelated silhouette car raced in the Daytona 500. On the other hand I feel like people who may be more of an Acura or Mazda person might be swayed by seeing a VW Prototype out on the track. Lets all hope when the time comes, Stuck, and the rest of the VW Motorsport get their heads straight and make the right decision.

_WRS

Video Post: Mk1 2.5 5-cyl In-car

The Rabbit that sounds like a Quattro...UrQuattro that is.



Damn. Gets through the gears quick! Josh an NLS sure has been busy the past few weeks.

_WRS

The slow season...

I don't know if it's general winter malaise or what, but there seems to be a real lack of things catching my eye to post about. And with nothing going on with my Corrado project I'm not doing much to help the drought. I'm sure it's just me glossing over the details of some very fine winter builds, but for some reason nothing is really screaming out for attention.

So in lieu of that, it's time for videos. I probably spend way too much time on Youtube and Vimeo searching for new and interesting stuff to check out. VdubNL is a poster of some very fine videos indeed. He said he works for the one and only Jeroen Dik at JD Engineering, and as such has access to some very find machines and very high quality video of said machines in their proper environments. (Race tracks) A lot of the videos are of shop cars or customer cars, such as Jeroen's Mk5, (see below) but this Audi V8 Quattro is one of the more unique and interesting builds. Lots of videos, go check it out and waste some time! This video is from the Time Attack event at Assen. Pedal to the metal and in the rain..



This cool item is maybe a little more interesting. Golf Mk5 2.0t DSG on the 'Ring...



_WRS

Crazy like the Fox! A thorough inspection

A good deed never goes un-punished, and no 1973 Fox which has been sitting in a grassy area under a barn for over 15 years will be rust free. This we expect, know, and well, sort of take as a given. Jason has gotten the chance to do a very complete inspection of his super old, super rare 1973 Audi Fox and the news is both good and bad.



After a complimentary tow to the shop (thanks AAA! totally worth it if you don't have it), and the car was checked over, fueled up and fired up...and RAN we were really hoping for the best once the car was up in the air. Obviously some rust was expected, but things went a bit beyond that.



The first clue was the hood. It is virtually disintegrating in front of our eyes, and is barely hanging on by a latch...in fact the passenger driver's side has completely let go, consisting of more iron oxide than steel I suppose. The tops of the fenders weren't all that much better, and Jason was really beginning to worry about what the underside of the car was hiding.



Well...it was as bad as we thought, but all was not (and is not) a total loss. Although the inner fender literally came out in Jason's hand when he gave it a small tug, the main structure of the strut towers is quite solid and unharmed. Another year or so and it's hard to say, but as is, it's salvageable with some patch work and paying close attention to removing all the remaining surface rust.



Probably the biggest concern is the front subframe area. (no not the floors, although they need some work too)



The whole thing has sort of become one big hunk of rust, lightly sprinkled with holes...and the drive line needs to be removed to repair it. No biggie, but the removal of the subframe is going to be tricky.



This is not an area where Jason wants a broken, stripped or otherwise destroyed or non-removable bolt. The chances of that are pretty high, but with a little luck it won't happen. I'm not a betting man, but if I was, those are not odds that I would take. (What I'm saying is I would bet there will more likely be a problem than not.)



So. What else does the future hold? Well Jason is in the full swing of the Save the 8v™ movement and will be keeping the Fox carb'd and 8-valved. He's eyeballing an old GT4 spec head that once resided on a 1.6 Rabbit race car, along with a nice fat cam and a bigger carb. Naturally that will be down the road, but it's good to focus on the positive when you have so much potential negative on your plate now.



We'll let you know how things go after we tear into project Crazy like the Fox! In the meantime, I'm thinking we're the crazy ones....

_WRS

Video Post: Berg Cup 2009 Demo

Don't mind the melodramatic music....it's the latest demo real for the Berg Cup 2009 season!



Damn I wish I could attend one of those events.

_WRS

Crazy like the Fox! - Teaser pic

So Jason finally got his not so shiny and not all that new 1973 Audi Fox to the headquarters for some work and much closer inspection, and overall it's both better and worse than anticipated. Better, because all it needed was a fresh battery, fresh oil and some gas and it started right up. Worse because the rust is a bit more prevalent than was expected. I'll go a bit more into depth on that all later but the important thing is that the ball is rolling and work is progressing. Jason's managed to keep a pretty level head about it which is important about this sort of thing. Rust is most certainly a downer on any new car, but figuring that 1973 Audi Foxes are super rare, it'll be worth the hard work.

_WRS

World's first 2.5 5-cyl Mk1 - Nothing Leaves Stock

A few months ago I had a quick pipe dream about swapping a 2.5 5-cylinder from a new Rabbit or Jetta into project Scirocco Madness. It was short lived, but I knew it would eventually happen thanks to someone with more time, money, talent and dedication, and that time has already come.



Josh at Nothing Leaves Stock is the man behind the swap, which is up and running, and sounding every bit as awesome as I would have thought. Josh details some of the fine points (hint: this is not an easy swap at all) in his thread on VW Vortex. He even managed to make an 020 transmission work, which is no small feat in and of itself. From the sounds of it he may have some of those C2 Motorsports camshafts in the thing already...a real nice and lumpy idle. But don't take my word for it, check it out right here:



Josh is pretty talented when it comes to big projects like this....his shop is responsible for a lot of really stellar work, particularly in the early cars. Keep tabs on this project, it'll be one to watch.

_WRS

Progress, albeit slow progress. (Corrado updates)

There's some saying, which I don't know the exact words of, about something like "the best laid plans of mice and men." There's another saying, which I am quite fond of, which is, "it seemed like a good idea at the time." I can't say I ever quite got to that point over the past week with working on Carmen, but it came pretty close.

Why? Well despite my previous experience working on 8v motors of all sorts, it had been a while since I had to work on one which was still sporting pretty much all the original accessories as equipped from Volkswagen. What could possibly go wrong?

Well to start, not a whole lot. Aside from some fairly skanky coolant, things were progressing quite smoothly up until it came time to separate the water pump from the O.G. water pump housing. Snap, snap, snap...three of the bolts decided they were just fine where they were and didn't feel they needed to move one inch. Looks like the supercharger and all it's bracketry has to come off...

And so it's just as well. The G-lader, despite being a pretty low mile rebuild, has clearly had oil seeping through the seals, so I took the time to clean things up.

I assume this was from the rebuild? Someone was in there with an engraver at some point. Looks like M.B. 08/21/01. (Like I said, the car was sitting for quite a while before I picked it up)

We'll revisit some time in the future to see if they're still a problem, but for now things are looking a lot better, visually anyway.

After removing the charger, disconnecting the A/C compressor (which still seems to work amazingly enough), and removing the charger bracket, I was finally able to swap out the housing. It's pretty clear that the PG block has been living with sub-standard coolant and not VW G11, as there is a lot of corrosion in there. It makes me a little nervous but we'll see how things pan out there as well.

The other big job was to swap the old coolant hoses for a high-quality Samco kit. Although the top hose had been installed some time before, the rest of the kit was sitting in a box just waiting to be installed. How hard could that be? Turns out, very.

I'd never worked on a Corrado before, and let's just say space is at a bit of a premium. The factory spring clamps, although reliable and strong, are a real pain to remove when you can barely get a grip on them. I took this chance to replace them with stainless steel ABA clamps which are easier to install and won't cut into the silicone. Much time was spent cursing, swearing, and generally abusing my arms and hands trying to get this kit on. No wonder it was still in the box. It took a good bit of effort, but eventually everything was replaced, including the coolant flange on the side of the head, and thanks to a handy-dandy vacuum pump, I had the cooling system topped off and things running again in no time. As long as by no time you mean spending four 5 hour+ evenings after work getting all these little problems worked out.

One other thing I noticed is that Carmen seems to be running a 65mm pulley rather than the 68mm that I assumed was on the charger. The 68mm pulley was stuffed down inside another parts box and after comparing the two, it's clear that the one from the charger was smaller. I also took the time to create a little more clearance for the super wide Bahn Brenner belt conversion, which had done some clearancing of its own, but Chad had some of his trusty metal bits around so it took barely any time to do.

The one thing I didn't get a chance to do was to get her on the dyno. For another time I suppose. The important thing is that the timing belt (which was in fine shape), water pump (bearings felt good!), and a few other key components (the only weak point was the coolant flange I replaced), were brought back to spec and we're at a point where we won't have to worry about those things when we finally are on the dyno. I also sprung for a new crankshaft bolt, as this is a one-time use item and as they tend to back out and wreck crankshafts and motors, I wasn't taking any chances. I also cleaned and re-oiled the K&N air filter, but like I said before, I hope to be going back to a stock air box before too long. I'll dyno it to see if there are any losses, but the extra safety is probably worth a few less horses.

One last final word of thanks to Chad and Pat from NGP, who as always came through with tools, time, and always helpful advice. Without those guys I would not have gotten things done in the time I had. And I'd not have that super fantastic OEM grill with G60 badge if it weren't for Chad either. (chad has a Corrado G60 as well and is stocked to the gills with extra this and that from all his parts cars)

As of right now we're going to have some time before we move any further forward with Carmen, which is perfect since Jason has finally taken delivery of his 1973 Fox sedan and has been cursing his decision ever since. More soon!

_WRS

Physical evidence

What a week it has been. I'm still recovering from working wayyyy too much, with being at work all day and then working on the Corrado for hours and hours each night. As I found out, G60 Corrados aren't the easiest thing to work on, with a lot of stuff packed into a fairly tight engine bay. But that's for later, first I'd like to show the very first Save the 8v™ stickered vehicle, the WRS Golf GTI Mk3.

Special thanks to Brandon and Arno at Baak2basics who printed up the stickers. The first batch is all in black, but white will soon follow. I guess these are best for the more stealth supporters among us. Email wolfsburgrs@gmail.com if you'd like one for yourself, just be sure to send in some pics of your VW sporting it as soon as you get it on the car.

_WRS