Beetle Challenge

The 2010 Beetle Challenge season starts at Brands Hatch on the 27th March, then the cars head up to the Volksworld show at Sandown Park on the 28th.

For more information visit beetlechallenge.com.

Urban

Some pictures by the old Elizabeth Shaw chocolate factory in Bristol, UK.

Oil leak

I had a bit of an oil leak yesterday. I got onto the motorway, and suddenly I had a huge cloud of white smoke behind me. :( I knew it must have been oil on the exhaust, so I turned round and headed home, keeping an eye on the oil pressure gauge. At one point it started to dip a little so I stopped and topped it up with oil again.

Anyway, the cause was this:



As you can see the gasket decided it wanted to be the wrong shape, and oil escaped out from under it. So now with a new gasket it should be ok. I have used a new rocker cover clip too, just in case. Not sure if this was the cause or not, but at some point in my rocker cover's life, someone used a silicone sealant on it. That's stupid for two reasons, one its quite slippery and might cause the gasket to move out of position (did that happen here?), and two, bits of it might end up in the oil system which is not good (although they will be filtered out). Anyway I cleaned it all off. NO sealant should be used at all, only good gaskets and clips, and clean dry sealing faces.

Previous development

A few development shots. Here you can see my garage, and the front wheel and strut without the wing (fender) on.



More shots of the removeable rear section, and interior.

Germanlook Forums

www.germanlook.com was a great source of information on the Germanlook VW scene. A lively forum packed with a huge amount of quality content with sections on engines, suspension, brakes etc. However it did recently disappear, for one reason or another. The good news is its all back, at a new url: www.germanlook.net.

Horray - new content!

So my last update was back in may 2008. Oh dear.

Quite a lot has happened since then. Basically the car is finished to the point where I got it MOTed, and am now driving it around! Here are some recent pictures. Note that its still missing the front airdam, and running boards.

The next job after finishing the front brakes was to fit them, then plumb together the brake lines, and fill it with brake fluid. Unfortunatly this didn't go totally to plan, as when I filled it with fluid, it leaked out of most my connections. I worked out that the brake pipe nuts i had used were incorrect. I had used 10mmx1mm nuts, but the threads covered the entire length of the nut. What was happening was when these where screwed in, they were running out of thread before they had suficiently squashed the flair on the end of the pipe. I basically had to replace all the fittings with new ones, that weren't threaded to the end. Once filled and leak tested, I could test the pedal travel. I am using the stock master cylinder, and with the much large piston area of the brakes there was the possibility that the pedal would not be able to pump enough fluid and would run out of travel. However its fine; travel is a little more than stock, but not a great deal more. Some road use has shown it to brake very well, although the rears are getting very hot. That either means that they are binding, or doing more work than they should be doing.

I hope to post some more posts in the future on how i got to this point, but just needed to get these pics up so you can see that the project is still alive!

Front brakes finished

I have now made the calliper mounting plates for my front brake assembly. Ages ago I made a template out of an old drum brake backing plate. Then I transferred that to a cad drawing. I printed that off, and made an MDF version, just to check everything was in the correct place. Then I made some steel versions. One of the things I was nervous about was cutting the central 70mm hole. I bought a hole cutter, but wasn't sure it would get through the plate without the teeth wilting! However it did cut though quite easily! I used a friends pillar drill with a nice slow speed, plenty of oil to keep it cool, and it worked fine. The mounting bolt holes where drilled, and the calliper mount holes were drilled and tapped.



As you can see I painted it all black to protect it all, and I am very pleased with the final result. When I filled the system with brake fluid I had a few leaks. Well every joint on to the Goodridge brake lines leaked. I eventually worked out that I had used the wrong fittings. I had used the fully threaded nuts instead of the partially threaded ones. Once I had re-made most of my brake lines, I had no leaks and was able to bleed the system. Now bled and the original master cylinder looks like it will be ok. Pedal travel is obviously further than stock, but its not too bad, and has plenty of reserve travel. Can't wait to try them!

**Edit**
Here is the caliper bracket cad file in .3dm format.
caliperbracket.3dm (42KB)