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The RICHARZZZZ team crew in Hockenheim 2007

Parking Lot

And that's how the parking lot of an F1 race must have looked like 30 years ago :-)
Fiat Abarth 1000 TC Nürburgring, NSU TT, NSU TTS with Spiess setup, Ford Capri 3, some BMW 2002 tii (not the one on the picture), lots of Porsches, Ford Escort RS, BMW 2500 CSL, etc., etc., etc.

Jim Clark Revival - Yeah !!!!

Those were the days ! Real racing for real men !

Happy Easter

Happy Easter Egg !

Thanks for 4000 visitors

Did you know, were the charateristic shape of the front bonnet was stolen from? Now you know it. Thanks for 4000 visitors



Please check out my current project@work here: http://westy78.blogspot.com

Thanks for 3000 visitors

Tour d'Alsace

The last sunny days in October were spent with a tour in the french Alsace region.

Sneak Preview

Guess what: the Bitburg Rolling Home impressed me a lot. Here's a sneak-preview of what to expect by next spring.

1978 Champagne Edition Westfalia. Lot's of welding and paint work but very solid interior.

DAS Drag Day - Rolling Home

Cooooooooooool !!!

Old-Style cars with big engine and modern rims. Our Style !


The orange Wets ist a 1979 Wetsfalia Helsinki of Jens. It's equipped with a 2,1 ltr water cooled flat four out of a T3. Therefore pulling the trailer was no issue for that machinery.

DAS Drag Day

DAS Drag Day #5, 20 -23.9.2007

Welcome to my Blog

You have found my blog, thanks a lot. This blog is about my 1956 Oval Window beetle and how the restauration process went over the last couple of years.





Some data on it in short:
Body: 1956 ragtop beetle (mostly stock)
Modifications: Dashboard with Porsche Speedo and Tach, strengthening elements in the door area, wooden Raid steering wheel, battery under front bonnet, seat heating, Webasto air heating, hidden stereo mounting with a total of 1200 Watts, modified front bonnet lift ups, weld-in air inlet under rear license plate, etc.

Engine: 2176 ccm Type 1 engine (~ 160 PS)
Porsche cooling system, 44 IDF carbs with central air cleaner, Oettinger 78,4 mm crank shaft, Mahle 94 mm Pistons, 044 heads (heavily modified), mild compression ratio, 215 mm clutch, Ahnendorp Road Racing exhaust system, Mercedes Oil cooling (in front of the car below the battery modification to the body), Engle Cam shaft, Melling Oil Pump, Gene Berg Oil Sump

Chassis: 1969 chassis
Modifications: 7x16 Porsche 993 rims in front, 8x16 Porsche rims at the back (under stock fenders !), changed from Swing-Axle to IRS setup, drilled and ventilated disc brakes in front with Type 3 calibers, stock drum brakes at the back, 15 mm anti-roll bar in the front, 14 mm Porsche 924S anti-roll bar at the back (including adjustable camber), Porsche 944 spring plates in the back (adjustable ride height), adjustable front beam with Udo Spiegler front beam support, 1303S gearbox with super diff and gearbox support, Porsche 944 torsion bars at the rear, lowered spindels at the font

More Pics

Videos from Bitburg

Thanks to Salva and Richarzzz, here are some videos from Bitburg from the various runs. Enjoy !

First Run

Second Run

Third Run

Fourth Run

Race Day

ok, ok, a 14,8 best time isn't really perfect but at least I got better with each run. And a R/T of 0,042 secs isn't bad either. But for the street eliminators, that was far too slow. The bumbspot was a 13,2 secs and in the SE field, you'd better have a 10 secs car if you're looking for the win.

Travel to Bitburg

The new tow-bar on my Passat worked just fine. In here you can see my style: original car (no body modifications and big wheels (also on my Passat)

Crazy Frog Racing

Stance 'bout right

Lookslike the stance front/right is ok now. That's how I like it. Bye the way: some body a good idea on how to paint the rims?

Bitburg Roll-Out - CU There

19.5. - 20.5.2007, Bitburg, Toyo Tires Street Eliminator 2007 Shootout



The very last moving out of the garage of the Oval was back in 2004 at the DAS Drag Day #2. So I thought, why not have the roll-out after finishing it again in Bitburg in the 2007 season. So here we go:



http://www.street-eliminator.de/DRAGRACER28_SE_Shootout2007.pdf




In the 2004 weekend, the throttle cable broke. So I fixed it at place (rela race mechanics stuff :-). After being back in the garage at home, I had to replace the cabling anyhow. I thought: "it would be much easier with the body lifted off the pan". So that was the igniting factor for starting off with the full restoration.

Sound Design

Guess where the music will come from? I started building the sound board.

New Garage

A new garage is just a like new life ("Eine neue Garage ist wie ein neues Leben" :-)
Finally my new two door garage is in operation. Enough space.

More Pics

First time Gassi

We took it for a little Gassi going out to the woods of the Schoenbuch (between Stuttgart and Tuebingen). Everything worked fine: no leaking just a little high on the back-end (needs some lowering over the winter; but that's easy thanks to the Porsche 944 Trail Arms) and the front end torsion bar gets contact to the rim. So I'm more than happy that the machinery made it out of the garage for it's 50's anniversary.

Some more progress pics

First Time Out

Today it left the Garage for the first time in 2 years on its own wheels. Engine is fired up and needs some fine tuning.

The 'Zielgerade'

Some more progress: windows are in, front-end bumpers etc. are mounted. electrics are done and the heting electrics are done (incl. seat-heating). Please note the semaphores also: the can be activated by a switch and the lamp is blinking together with the driving direction lights. BTW: thanks to my Dad, the semaphores are 12V (no resistor, just simple modification for 12V usage)

Back-end Work

Dashboard finalisation. As it seemed impossible to get a good warn-light switch. I created one of my own.


Rear bumpers installed

More Puzzling Games

Looks way cool, but there's only one word for that: "Schweinearbeit" :-)







AArrgghhhh !!! The first scratch !!!

Finally some progress

Believe it or not, after weeks of no operation, I finally have made some progress. And you know what? This is thanks to terror ! Here's my personal story of terror and the benefits I took out of it: I was scheduled for a trip to the US last week. The trip was supposed to be via London. So I entered the Biritsh Airways Flight Stuttgart -> London and arrived at London on 2006/08/10. Yes the day with the big thing at Heathrow. No way of continuing towards the US, so I decided to return to Germany the next day. And my personal benefits out of that are:

1. I did get to visit down-town London (I've never been there). I only can recommend this city. It is by far the most international feeling city I've ever been to. And I have seen all of them: New York, Paris, Tokyo, Chicago, L.A., San Francisco just to name a few.
2. Finally my bedroom is painted terracotta. Maja and me decided to use the rainy sunday for some paint jobs in the bedroom (I said paint jobs !)
3. The fully cleaned up calendar allowed three days of full garage work :-) Results are below

By the way: good job, Scotland Yard ! Thanks a lot.




Cable work is fun ! all black cables :-)

Puzzling III

To all readers of this: I'm sorry, but due to the current job situation, progress here and on my oval is pretty slow.

Puzzling II

The fuel line is now running through some bulk-head fittings so it gets out of my way and there's more space for other stuff in the engine compartment.

Puzzling I

The big Puzzle game starts ! Started to put the pieces back into place. Good news is, that other than for real puzzles, I don't have to make up my mind, where the part might fit :-)

Marriage

Pan and Body are united and married again. After being together for 13 years, then being separated for almost 2 years they married now again for the second time. Whitnesses of the marriage were Jens (Mr. Richarzzz), Joachim (alias Salva) and my Dad. Thanks a lot guys for your great help !

Coming Home

The babe is coming home finally. After some traffic jams, huge rain and enormous consumption of fule (can you imagine the wind forces on a trailer large as that one?), we got the body back from the paint shop. Thanks to my Dad for lending his car and joining me on this trip.

Paint Job is done !

Finally the color is on the car ! Heinz and his crew have finished doing their magic. Now it looks like as if the ball is back in my field and I have to put the puzzle pieces back together.

How it looked once upon a time

The green one is mine. The blue one belongs to Mr. Käptn Blaubär (check our license plates !) and the white one is the one of Gunns.

First Paint work done

It is getting ready for the final paint works. Interior is already painted !

First Primer work is done

So I just recently got some pics from the paint shop, showing where we are at the moment. Basic Primer work is done on body and its almost ready for some paint work.

Some Chassis impressions

Some impressions from the chassis






And the fully polished Porsche Ventilation

Arriving at the Paintshop

Finally, I got rid of the body and moved it to the paint shop, so that those folks can do their job

Front Oil-cooler ventilation

Air-cooled engines need all the cooling they can get. I have mounted an oil-cooler instead of the sapre tire. Above the cooler, you'll find the car's battery. Here are some holes in the front sheet, that allow air to flow to the hidden oil-cooler. The holes are in a perfect straight line. I have no clue, why they look so funny on the picture. Once the front bumper is mounted, there will be a plexiglas between the bumper and the body, that prevents air from flowing under the bumber and then up in between front hood and bumper (it really is a problem). I already had discovered that issue and if you don't believe me, check out German Kaefer-Cup cars.

The rear hood needs some work

I was in need of a new rear W-decklid. I got that one from a friend of mine (thanks Gunnnns). The decklid was in perfect condition but there was no mounting hole wor the handle. So I had to build a handle whole.

Check out Gunns Blog at: http://narrowedbeam.blogspot.com/

I did build the handle fixing from sheet metal

As the Porsche cooling is in desperate need of fresh air, I did build in some ventilation, that will be hidden behind the license plate.

Get the rest of the color stripped down

Kids: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME ! Your neighbours will kill you. Two days of grinding results in a lot of noise and a lot of dust.

The body is now paint free. The doors and hoods will under go chemical de-painting later on.

Sandblaster in Action

The next step after the body works were done was to sandblast the body. Sandblasting was only applied to lower portions of the body. For all folks out there: never ever do sandblast the outer and visible body parts. That will kill the body and you can hand it over to the guy of the junk yard ! And don't do this at home !

The body work starts

Some hard to find and real expensive stuff: original NOS front sides. Obviusly the last ones, that were around in Germany. I did call everybody who is into Volkswagens and only got that pair ! Luck !



Serious Body Work starts:

Back into place:





Rear left side:

And looks like a car almost again

Getting it down there for Body Work

Getting it to the Body Shop

The great Richarzzz himself.

Watch out his Blog under: http://richarzzz.blogger.de/

The Pan is left over. Engine and Tranny isn't removed

DAS Drag Day 2004

Racing it for the first time: the 2004 DAS Drag Day in Bitburg. Ended up with a 14.7 on the quartermile. It didn't get the point on how NOT to spin the wheels and just get grip and get it going. Next time better luck. At least I got the Golf !









!!! The other cars around are proud members of the GROUNDSPEEDPILOTS !!!

Two weeks after the event, I was in my garage, had some garage beer and said to myself: "Well the little ol' one did well. It deserves being in better shape." So I started to pull it apart the very same evening.

Step 4: more power, wider Rims

Here's how it looked back in 2001:

It features now a 2165cc Type 1 engine, Kerscher ventilated and drilled brakes, new gearbox mounting and Porsche Cup wheels (16"), 7" on the front, 8" on th rear. Yes it fits under stock fenders, but we did a hell lot of stuff to make it fit (and I won't tell here, what needs to be done). The exhaust is an Ahnendorp Road Racing, carbs are 44 Weber IDF, central air cleaner unit (for noise reduction), etc.

The picture below is actually one of my alltime favourites. Jens and me were working all winter long in parallel. It's his garage, as I didn't have a garage to work on the machinery at that time, so he did get me back into action by lending me space in his holy halls of fame. For those of you who are all-time readers of german VW Speed magazine, Jens is "Käptn Blaubär".

Having learned from the 1776cc step 2 desaster, I asked somebody to build the engine who really knows how to build that stuff: this is Mr. Don Hott of Kramasa ("Kraft Maschinen Spezial Anstalt"). We came up with that KRAMASA name at 4:00am while working for the second full night over week-end on the engine. The engine is just a dream, thanks Don Hott ! And by the way: it is completely street legalized in Germany. And for those of you who already dealt on such things with the german TÜV, you might know what I'm talking about.

Step 3: even more power

On old saying goes: "Power can only be replaced by more power!"