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Hey everyone,

It's been almost a year since I've been on here with any of my own projects. Some of you may remember some of my builds including my aunt's dune buggy https://www.shoptalkforums.com/viewtopi ... 4#p1299924

My wife's 62 dubbed Jolly Bug
https://www.shoptalkforums.com/viewtopi ... 7#p1296247

And my volksrod
https://www.shoptalkforums.com/viewtopi ... 2#p1300962

Since I finished my aunt's dune buggy and messing around with the Volksrod I've been doing some chevy work. Got my uncles old 57 chevy that I worked on with him when I was like 12 (he has since passed) my dad gave me his 67 c10 that we worked on together and I fully stripped the interior of my s10 and redid it along with putting a holley sniper on the stock 4.3(the s10 was full of mold and I got pretty sick from driving it) ill through a few pictures of the bowties in even though they aren't vw

So with that being said I'm finally back on my 66 and I realized that I haven't done a build thread on it so here it goes.

I bought the car back in Jan 2011, it had been sitting for 10-15 years if I remember right. The previous owner painted it a custom white/minty green(looks white until you get it in snow then you really see the green) the interior was out of the car minus the headliner but came with it and it was just a roller with the panels lightly bolted on. It was a sweet little jewel in my eye so I bought it and towed it home.


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I'll try and condense as much of the history of this car and what I've done to it to key points but it's been my test bed for different ideas and methods. It's been driven very hard and was a daily driver for a good 6/7 years, pretty much till I got a garage and didn't mind going deeper into building it haha. Anyways back down memory lane.

This was the nicest bug I'd ever owned and I sure was a proud 21 year old! I went thru all the brakes, put the mystery motor that came with it in which ran surprisingly well(ended up being a 1300 sp) Man I thought I had the nicest car in town!

Suspension:

As far as the suspension goes of course I had to lower it down, which first consisted of a cut and turned beam with readjusted spring plates, then drop spindles. Eventually I went with a 4 inch narrowed scratch built beam with drop spindles and adjusters. Had drop plates in the rear then went to drop spring plates in the back from atomwerks.

I got tired of how stiff it was in the front and soft in the rear and ended up putting it on air ride. For the front I loosened the torsions and put air shocks in and the back I made my own bolt in air ride that I copied the design from limebug out of the uk and also raised the trans 2 inches at the bell housingand 1.5 at the nose cone. What a difference in ride quality that was and I learned a lot doing that fab work.

The suspension was great but with a few different upgrades I was doing to the car I needed more room above the trans. I had some more money coming in at this point in time when I started redoing the car again(after completing the dunebuggy a few years ago) and decided to buy a bolt in air ride kit from eva resto from the uk along with a 2in trans raise. It had its own problems that I sorted out (which if your wondering what they are I can touch on that later if ya want to know) which is now in the car. I have yet to drive with the new suspension setup but it's smaller packaging than what I built and lighter as well which is a plus.

Now as far as the trans raise, the first setup I built I used a bus nose cone and made a plate out of 1/4 plate to raise the nose of the trans(pro street with all the goodies from Wright gear box) bolting it to the factory mount location. I also had a bolt in mid mount. Noting that I drove the car really hard I remember finding the shifter getting harder to move and upon disassembly I found that the shifter bushing was up against the torsion housing. That was due to the factory nose cone mount being cracked and bent(probably from hard downshifting/compression slides into corners ect) so on this rebuild I used the eva resto 2 in raised cradle for the bell housing(that I had to modify) and for the front I got a universal nose cone mount for a rail buggy and modified and welded to the torsion housing.

I also made a custom mid mount to stiffen up the rear frame horn assembly (the upper air ride brackets act as a kafer bar) with some 1x2 square tubing and a tail shaft mount for a th350/th400 trans. In my mind it should work out well but we will see

I've got a few other custom suspension items I'll bring up a little later


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I don't know if the brakes should have gone with the suspension portion of the post but I'll just mention it here. I originally had the factory drums that I rebuilt. After spirited driving in my old 64 I found out what brake fade with drums was real quick so I knew I needed to go disk on the 66. Also driving in the rain with drums I would have to hold the brakes for a long distance to get them to grab which was annoying/dangerous.

I ended up going with cb performance wide 5 4 wheel disk brakes with drop spindles. I had to get a little custom with the ebrake cables but they work absolutely great and we're a superb upgrade!

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Drive train:

So after blowing a few sets of spider gears in factory boxes I spent some dough on a pro street box from Wright gearbox and it's been great. It has 4.12 gears, HD covers, super diff and welded 3rd and 4th with a .82 4th.

As far as engines I've had a 1300sp, 1500sp, 1600sp, 1600dp which was my test/abuse motor for 6ish years, 1641dp that was a scrape the floor motor that I ended up fabbing my own brackets and supercharged(probably the funnest project I've done) and my 2058cc stroker that I built here
https://www.shoptalkforums.com/viewtopi ... 6#p1267716

I've ran pict carbs, baby webs, kadrons, idfs, a single Rochester and I fitech 2 barrel efi

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Interior/Exterior Mods:

As far as Interior goes it's kinda changed around over the years, it's always had factory seats with seat covers on them, velour door panels, aftermarket stereo. I've had some bumpin toons in the past but currently the stereo is just filling the hole ot hasn't been hooked up in years I've been enjoying the symphony of pistons!

A couple of noteworthy things I've done is I was as far as I know one of the first (at least to document) putting in a Brazilian ragtop in my car. It's been a awesome addition and it can be found here
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewt ... order=desc
I also modified a fiberglass center console from glass action to fit all my gauges, turned out pretty good for my first time messing with fiberglass

Ended up back dating the tail and turn lamps and put a fiberglass decklid on it to clear the fitech with my trans raise and of course can't forget I put herbie decals on it. I grew up watching the original herbie just obsessed with it which is what got me into vw's.

I have had a bn4 gas heater out of a bus up in the trunk but ended up switching it out for a Chinese diesel heater which has been great.

Speaking of the trunk, that's where my compressors and valves are for the air suspension. I've always wanted a bug with a v8 in it so I made my compressors/valving look like a v8 as best as I could. It's currently on v2 which I will show a little later. That's a highlight of its past and I'll do some updating on what I've done in the last few months and currently working on.

It sure is nice getting back to work on my bug can't wait to get back behind the wheel!

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So here's what I've been working on for the last few months, ill start from the back and move my way forward.

First picture will be the cracked nose cone mount bracket. I welded that up after I straightened it as best I could and fitted the aftermarket mount. This time I made it a true 2 inches to match the rear.

With the new air ride I got some drop splineless spring plates and put those in. When fitting the kit I didn't like the side load that the bags were experiencing and I also wanted to run slam specialties bags so I re drilled the top and made some adapter plates out of 1/4" plate to move the lower bag mounts inboard roughly an inch if I remember right. It could have been off from it being designed for a non trans raised vehicle but I doubt it.

I also made some custom bump stops to keep the tires from rubbing on the body at full drop out of some pinion snubber bump stops for a 57 chev.

All of this work started because I wanted to fit an auxiliary oil cooler for my stroker. I found the smallest cooler with fan that I could and there was literally no room anywhere so I had to think outside of the box for this one. I ended up deciding to put the cooler in the car on the rear package tray. I cut a hole for the fan to blow the hot air on top of the trans and a larger hole for the oil lines to go thru and also double as a air intake for the oil cooler. I then formed a dog house cover to seal all the outside air out of the cabin of the vehicle.

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Moving my way forward I used to have my -6 ptfe fuel lines running under the pan by the pan to body bolts and decided to run it thru the tunnel. That was a HUGE PITA! I ran bulkhead fittings on the front and the rear, had to make custom wrenches to tighten the lines down and barely could fit my hands in there. I don't have any pictures of that but I have it on video here

https://youtu.be/xYdmloqCXew?si=V_UJ1ypbm0IPVJHB

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Up in the trunk I added a few more bulkhead fittings to go to the new in tank pump. I went with a larger capacity tank and a fitech universal in tank pump for efi. It was previously running a in line pump and I had to have it turned way down so the pump wouldn't cavitate so this upgrade should make a world of difference.

Of course changing the tank made it so none of my air ride stuff would fit back in without modification so I made a whole new rack for it out of steel this time vs the wood it was on before. Speaking of which I got more crap for building the old base out of wood people saying it wasn't going to last ect... it did the job just fine without any issues for thousands of hard miles but it's pro now!

I ended up getting a good deal on a new tank(the old one had a bad weld) so I installed that along with a new switch box

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As far as height control goes I previously had a AVS switchbox that had some issues so I went with a slam specialties controller. So far its been working great in testing.

Another thing I've been working on is the automatic ride height. Previously I had 4 regulators tee'd into the gauge ports for a pressure based ride height. As you could probably guess the ride height (and alignment) would change if I had a half tank or a passenger. My new revision is height based with ride height control valves

They are of course Amazon's finest Chinese made "semi ride height control valves", they had pretty descent reviews and were cheap enough. I plumbed it so the controller can still operate the ride height and at the flip of a switch the automatic ride height will engage. On the video shows how everything is put together, I think I'm going to add a link on the rear control valves like I have on the front.

I'm also planning on adding some kind of flow control to the air from the tank and also to the exhaust. Doing so should help limit the amount of air used going down the road


https://youtu.be/EUyzHa2mMR0[IMG]https: ... ac8de9.jpg[/IMG]

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Next up I'll be fitting the back half of the car to put in the channel for the engine bay seal and fabbing up the new exhaust. I also pulled this out to start fabbing the ductwork for it

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Well that was a tight fit! Got the saab turbo mounted under the rear fender with a factory mounting bracket utilizing one of the fender bolts and an exhaust hanger bolted on with a bumper bolt. I used 2" pipe coming off of the aa performance sidewinder header with a 2"vband.


Coming off the turbo is 2.5" exhaust to a glasspack then out in front of the passenger tire. I was originally wanting to use a magnaflow bit there just isn't any room. I might try and find or make a heat shield for the exhaust under the air bag to help that situation.

The air inlet will be another tight squeeze which i haven't tackled yet but that's up next along with the charge pipe.

Heres a video on it

https://youtu.be/6aXrR1oCxkE?si=Dsc6Int ... cbd5fc.jpg[/IMG]

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