1968 Beetle. What's left of it. Plus some tubes and 350bhp.

I forgot to list THE MOST VITAL, GROUNDBREAKING PERFORMANCE MOD EVER!



Knocks 10 seconds off the Zero-to-StrongEnoughToTarnishTheSpoon time for most good* teabags:

*Yorkshire tea, obviously

Anyway, hub got anodised, fitted, and the new calipers mounted after fabricating a new bracket:



Engine loom got modified for a better main connector that has removable pins and is rated to work under 6ft of water:



Thousands of miles and plenty of trophies to it's name, but that abused old Peugeot 106 steering wheel is finally retiring from it's life of misery and pain (Ed's taking around the back and having it shot*).

Of course, that means an adaptor is required for the new one. The remains of my 306 got butchered for a column spline to use for spinning a new adaptor up in the lathe - thankfully it hasn't been disconnected to sell yet!
Lightening scallops courtesy of a Mr A.Grinder...

Due to having to TIG the old centre spline in it's all in steel, so no shiny anodised ally things today for you all. Terrible, I know - I'm sorry.
I think that's -5bhp for lack of anodising and -8bhp for not being able to say 'Billet Ally!' when talking about it.





(*KIDS! I'm joking, the wheel has gone to a home for retired steering wheels, it's getting leather food every day and frollicking in fields with other wheels, it's in a caring, happy place - and definately hasn't been violently butchered by an angle grinder wielding maniac requiring the steel spline out of the centre.)

A barn door appeared:



And the spars are being 3d printed at the moment:



Roughly what it should end up like when it gets made and mounted:

Just waiting on some parts coming back from plating, and some fuel hoses from a local hydraulic place, but barring a few odds and ends it's going back together now to be fired up. We need to clean and check the engine over this weekend - remove all the blanking plates we fitted to stop anything getting in while working on the car and alter some of the timing gear - then hopefully get it outside next week.

1 step forwards and 96 steps back today with a load more issues discovered whilst reassembling - but working through them, and the front is finally together on shiny new alloys. We've even got a Christmas theme going as it looks like someone based the wheel/centre cap design on Rudolf...

Dem sure is some puuurty brakes mistah!

Is the front beam home made?

Yes, T45 tube, although the centre was the original VW part but with adjusters welded in, as were the old shock towers, albeit much modified - the adjusters are gone now though, weight saving


The discs are shaped like that as they help shed water and debris from the surface, and the extra working edges also mean harder/higher temperature pads can be used without sacrificing low-temperature bite. Also leads to a lighter disc for the same pad area and brake torque - I used to run some vented version on my 306 daily too, there's an old thread on here somewhere, meant I could use high torque endurance race pads without worrying about warming them up on a cold winter morning:



Anyway, I need to update this thread a bit, it's running now

Right, trying to remember what was after that, but I think it was the bodywork, so, to take the heat away from the engine bay around that large manifold, the lower panels became louverly (see what I did there, eh? Good wasn't it?):



Skidpans went on too - 6mm thick aluminium plate for the transmission - which goes forward under the beam tube/seats and is overlapped by the main floor for a while so it's even thicker there.
The transmission plate also overlaps the engine plate when that is fitted so there's no leading edges anywhere to dig in - making the underbody armour half an inch thick in some sections - it still takes a beating mind, but it stiffens the overlap laterally to stop it bending upwards too.
The front beam and front section of the floor gets it's own piece of 6mm plate too which wraps up around the front beam and up a few inches to prevent the beam digging in on a nose-hard landing/drainage ditch crossing.
Unfortunately it doesn't look this shiny for long!



You'll have to excuse the rear of the floor, one of the helpers thought a hammer was a good substitute* for a sheet metal folder....
[small]*It is, but not how he uses it! [/small]

Couldn't afford a CAT scan to check the discs for flaws, so went for the cheaper alternative:



He said they were a bit Ruff.

Rerouting some piping before Christmas, along with some other changes the eagle eyed might notice - basically the hoses were a little close to hot spots for comfort, even with heat shielding, mainly because they'd been made few mm long by the supplier but with such short, wide hoses getting rid of the extra length meant routing at quite an angle into some of the fittings, and it also meant the dry sump belt was difficult to access - not something you want in the field!
Anyway, chances are the hoses would have been fine but after this amount of time an oil fire is not the way you wish to discover that they weren't...

That knocked on to shifting a few bits and pieces (exhaust relocated by removing the right rear frame support tube, and shuffling of the oil filter mainly - although then I decided I didn't like it anyway, so then it got moved again to completely under the engine now there's room due to the exhaust shift) and then it meant remaking panels that were already done:



Welded up awaiting the top rolling over the tube:






This was probably posted after finding some decent whisky in the back of a cupboard:



And some louverly (Yeah, I did it again, sue me) new vents.

What a teaser...
Mental build anyway, I was thinking earlier today that I do need a sandrail and this thread convinces me even more....

My father killed numerous splits, ovals and T1 transporters in his youth by building sandrails, of course never anything close to this one but it is always fun to bring up in VW crowds today.

Nope, afraid not.

I think you're supposed to race them at some point too.