Date: 9 Jan 95 15:37
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From: L.S.Griffiths@physics.salford.ac.uk
Subject: 911-Samba update
hey bus freaks,
If any of you dudes remember, a while back I talked about a friend
of mine who's carrying out the coolest project of ALL time. Let me
remind you: He's called Martin and he's puttin' a 911 engine in a
23-window Samba - coooeel.
The story so far...
The Samba had been involved in a nasty head-on with another vehicle
when Martin bought it. First thing was to put a new front on which he
did with his usual expert skill. The chassis looked a bit tired and I
remember him telling us about how he "kicked" it off the body. Since
his intention was to fit a late ball-joint beam up front and IRS on
the rear Martin was on the look out for a '73 onwards bus with a good
donor chassis. One was located and the body "kicked" off it.
Then came the tricky bit. How do you fit a '74 chassis to a '61 body ?
Answer: get out the angle grinder,plasma cutter and MIG welder. I few
mods later and the chassis fits snugly the body. In the back of his
mind this sucker was gonna have a big power plant, and it had to be
air-cooled. There's only one solution to that problem. In comes
Volksworld November 1994 and in the classified ads. a 2.4 911TV engine
for sale at a bargain price of 600 pounds! - can be heard running.
A few days later and it's in Martins possession.
Next problem: what tranny should be used. After playing around with
various bus trannys the most suitable appeared to be one out of a
'80 2.0 Aircooled vanagon with hydraulic clutch and side mounted
gear selection lever. Oh, and it bolts straight onto the 911 engine
block!
Question: How do you stop such a fast bus. Answer: fit disks all
round. Ok no worries, the disks will go straight on the ball joint
front beam and you get some AUDI disk brakes for the rear IRS setup.
Well this is gonna be one mean Samba this summer, so I'll keep y'all
posted.
Lee.
'64 Samba
http://146.87.136.48
l.s.griffiths@physics.salford.ac.uk