Do you like VW‘s? Then you’ll love to visit http://bandwagen.wordpress.com. This is a great looking bug!!! I’m glad he didn’t turn it into a drag car.
This blue Cal-look beetle was in my life for twenty two years. I purchased it with a friend back in 1988 with the intention of building a drag-car to enter the recently formed VWDRC. The basic plan was to weld up the doors, cut off the roof, fit a roll-cage and run a more or less stock 1600 engine on methanol and nitros oxide… this was back in a time when you could pick up as many used and running engines as you wanted, for around £50 each! The car only cost us £100 so we figured as long as we got a few quarter-mile runs out of each engine before they blew, it would be fairly inexpensive but fast fun!
As you’ve probably guessed from the pictures, the plans changed drastically when my friend lost interest in the bug. Thank god he hadn’t got around to hacking the roof off! I bought his share in the car and decided to use it as the basis for a Cal-look project. Over the next couple of years I started collecting parts and in 1990 it went into the body shop to fit the early panels, some de-chroming and a respray in Ford electric blue.
Once painted, I rented a small, two-car barn on a local farm with another friend who was also working on a project beetle. The bug slowly came together over the following eight years. I’d work on it when time and money allowed which wasn’t too often – I was in my 20s and money was tight so there were usually other things that had to take priority, like paying the mortgage and food!
After a final push it was all together and driving in 1998 and I made it along to the Stonor Park VW show that year. Things have been updated and changed over the years including the addition of the 4″ narrowed beam in 2009 which was just before I decided to sell it. This beetle only covered 8,500 mile in the 22 years that I owned it which must be some kind of record! It’s still fairly local to me and owned by a friend of the guy who bought my ’72 Bay-window camper, but as they say, that’s another story…
Body:
Pre-67 front and rear valances, early wings and lights (US-Spec fronts containing orange indicators)
Long-bonnet and glass W-decklid.
Cal-look window rubbers.
De-chromed with smoothed/hidden catches on front and back lids.
Grey tinted one-piece door glass and matching rear side glass.
Stainless-steel blade bumpers.
Bodywork and paint by Paulespury coachworks in 1990 (still looks great!)
Running gear: New front suspension set-up fitted by Sayed @ Batts VWs in 2008 comprising of:
4″ narrowed and adjustable front beam, custom built by Gavin @ Trailer Queen Restos CB Dropped spindles
New KYB Front shocks
Long-travel ball joints
Rear…
Adjustable Koni shocks.
New IRS gaiters
Type 3 IRS Gearbox
UVA Adjustable rear spring plates.
Copper brake pipes fitted throughout
Standard drums and disks re-drilled to Porsche 5-stud (VW 4stud fitment still retained as well)
Wheels & Tyres:
Fully-polished early Porsche fuchs, 5.5×15 fronts and spare with 185/55R15 Continentals
Original deep 6×15 rears with 185/65R15 Nankangs
Engine:
Built by Sayed @ Batts VWs and fitted in Feb 2000 (only done 6K miles!)
1641cc fully balanced.
Twin 36 IDF webber carbs with hex-bar linkage.
Engle 110 Cam.
040 Cylinder heads.
Hi-volume oil pump.
Remote oil filter with braided lines.
009 Distributor and Bosch blue coil
Polished, louvered stainless firewall.
Engine tinware painted electric blue.
Interior:
Grey vinyl/velour high-back sports with matching side panels and rear seat. Grey carpets.
Grey cloth headlining. Short-throw T gearshift. Custom painted speedo. Grey sports steering wheel. Fire extinguisher. 80s Pioneer cassette player with 4x speakers on custom rear parcel shelf. Auto-watch Alarm & immobiliser. Billet dash knobs and door handles/window winders and buttons. Additional oil temp gauge.
No this isn’t going to be one of those talks and no we aren’t going to run out and hung a tree, ok…if you must…go ahead I’ll wait…..(insert bored whistling)……(more bored whistling)…..Ok…are you done?!!
As I get closer to getting the heads on the Mustang, I’m going to have to begin picking any changes I want made to the CJ heads. While cruising the web checking out options, I ran across this piece (Corvette related but springs are springs as far as an engine is concerned) and there are some good tips here.
Quick! What the fastest moving component in your engine? If you’ve taken a hint from the title of this article, you probably guessed correctly – it’s your valve springs, those tight little bundles of joy that open and close your engine’s valves.
Beehive springs come in a variety of shapes and sizes. The benefits of moving to Beehive springs where possible (and today few situations are not Beehive compatible) are many.
Beehive springs, such as those offered by COMP Cams, offer a huge number of benefits over stock-style cylindrical springs; reduced valve spring mass, faster valve acceleration, increased valve train rigidity, reduced valve train component stress and a whole laundry list of other positives.
Best of all, the word has gotten out and folks all over the country are using them for a wide variety of applications from street performance to extreme racing endeavors. That’s a really good thing.
Along with their success has come some confusion over exactly which beehive is right to purchase. Currently there are over a dozen beehive spring styles out there, each offering some unique take, be it in the seat pocket diameter, ovate wiring diameter, pitch or internal spring “frequency.” Regardless increased selection has bred some minor confusion, albeit easily cured.
Beehive springs are conical shaped springs that employ this powerful shape in the creation of a spring that can deliver both excellent performance and lowered seat pressures. With lower seat pressure, valve train components (especially the pushrods, rockers and lifters) are less stressed to perform the same work.
This beehive spring weights in at 99 grams, while a comparable conventional spring is 121 grams.
The difference between beehive and conventional cylindrical springs is obvious especially when you compare them in this manner. Note the dramatic difference in retainer diameter equating to less valve train weight.
According to COMP, effective beehive springs can support an additional 700rpm over stock cylindrical springs. How? It just stands to reason that the smaller coils at the top of the spring don’t require as much force to get the valve moving quickly, much quicker than conventional style springs. The higher rpm potential equates to better durability and performance.
There are some very knowledgeable engine builders who don’t understand how a single coil spring can be better than a dual conventional spring.
“Its like watching a race car running 60-foot elapsed times on the drag strip,” stated Bill Godbold, Chief Engineer for COMP Cams. “For example, take two identical cars with equivalent 500 hp engines.
“One has stock suspension and the other a sophisticated racing suspension. The car with the race suspension will get going more quickly and achieves better 60-foot time. The same principle works with beehive spring mechanics.”
I ran across on ton http://www.corvettereport.com and thought I pass it along. If only they made some of these!!! You got to check out the 1991 C4 body.
Hot rodder Shinoda teams up with Bill Mitchell and defined the “Corvette look.”
Perhaps it was “in the stars” that Larry Shinoda was in the right place at the right time. If you strictly look at Shinoda’s resume in 1956, you might ask, “How did this guy get in the front door?” As a young man, the only thing Larry ever graduated from was high school, Army boot camp, and the School of Hard Knocks. Twelve-year-old Larry had his life turned inside out when along with thousands of Japanese-Americans, he and his family were sent to interment camps for the duration of WW II. The experience had a profound effect on his personality. A self-professed “malcontent” Shinoda could be a little difficult to work with.
After his Army tour of duty in Korea, Shinoda attended Art Center School of Design in Los Angeles, but truly hated being there. He could see no purpose in taking the classes in design and the various art mediums, such as watercolor painting. He was a car guy/hot rodder and he wanted to draw and design cars! So he left Art Center without graduating and based strictly on his car illustrations, landed a job at Ford, then Studebaker/Packard. Just a year after starting his career, he landed a job as a designer at General Motors.
The rest is the stuff of legend. Street racing and blowing the doors off of Bill Mitchell’s souped up Buick and quickly being taken under Mitchell’s wing. Things like that happens, but rarely. There was obviously some chemistry between the two men, perhaps it was because both men could be brash and had strong opinions.
Shinoda got his first big break when Mitchell tapped the 28-year-old to translate the body design of the ‘57 Q-Corvette on to the mule chassis from Duntov’s aborted Corvette SS project. The finished car became Mitchell’s 1959 Stingray Racer, which formed the styling theme for the ‘63 Corvette. From there, Shinoda got one peach project after another. It’s worth noting that the design of the Stingray Racer is held in such high esteem that current Corvette chief designer, Tom Peters (C6 Corvette and late model Camaro designer) is on record stating that his ‘09 Corvette Stingray Concept (aka Transformers Corvette) was influenced by the ‘59 Stingray.
During his almost 13 years at GM, Larry designed numerous special Corvettes, Corvairs, and several race cars, as well as his usual duties working out the styling details of various production cars. Presented here are Larry Shinoda’s most important Corvette designs. Later this week, we’ll take a look at Larry’s very slick Corvairs, and race cars, including the body design for Pat Flaherty’s 1956 Indy 500-winning Watson-Offenhauser.– Scott
1959 Stingray Racer The 1959 Stingray Racer is still a stunningly beautiful car design. The idea of a “broad, flat top surface” was to create a reverse airfoil that would pull the car down. The problem was that the sharp leading edge was too high and at high speed, more air was knifing under the car rather than going over the car, causing a serious front lift problem. The production Sting Rays and even the Grand Sport Corvettes all had the same trouble. This could have been corrected with a slight forward rake, if the nose had drooped down a n inch or so, and a chin spoiled was added. The Grand Sport replica cars from Duntov Motors use these corrections and front end stays where it belongs at high speed – DOWN.
1963 Sting Ray Concept Art The road to fully worked out new car designs was littered with concept art – most of which was probably thrown away. Here we see a headlight treatment study. Sorting out the production car’s rotating hidden-headlight design was a brilliant but challenging project. Note the absence of hood lines and windshield wipers. It also looks like they were considering scoops on the back edge of the doors.
1961 Mako Shark I Showcar – AKA “The Corvette Shark”
With the basic Sting Ray design approved for production, Bill Mitchell had Shinoda design an exaggerated version for a teaser show car. Known today as the Mako Shark-I, the car’s original name was simply, “Corvette Shark.” 1961 was still the “Jet Age,” so the car was originally shown with a plexi bubble top. It was kind of “Jetsons” neat-looking, but would anyone really want one for their daily driver?
1963 4-Seater Sting Ray Split-Window Coupe
The XP-720 4-Seater Corvette Sting Ray was an exploration into the possibility of the Corvette competing with the much better-selling Ford Thunderbird. Ed Cole, head of the GM car and truck group, thought it was a pretty good idea. After all, GM is in the business of selling cars – LOTS of cars. Since the public bought 73,051 Thunderbirds in 1961, compared to 10, 939 Corvettes, it seemed like a no-brainer. The story goes that a tall executive got stuck in the back seat and needed quite a bit of help getting out. The 4-seater concept was quickly dropped. Good!
1963 Production Corvette Sting Ray Split-Window Coupe
Look at 1963 cars from America and Europe and there’s NOTHING like the Corvete Sting Ray. The split-window was one of Bill Mitchell’s pet design elements and was a one year deal. Although the design concept of a “split rear window” wasn’t new with the Sting Ray (the 1950 VW Beetle had a “split” rear window), the overall presentation of the Split-Window Coupe Sting Ray looked like NOTHING else.
1964 XP-819 Rear-Engine Corvette Engineering Study
The Corvair was the only production car to come out of Ed Cole’s ‘57 Q-Chevrolet initiative and was considered very exotic when it came out in 1960. But trouble quickly set in and it wasn’t just Ralph Nader’s doing. The early Corvairs were not good cars. But the “rear-engine” concept was very alluring to Chevy engineer Frank Winchell. Frank insisted that with the correct size tires the inherent oversteering problem could be corrected. Winchell envisioned a rear-engine Corvette and Zora Duntov said, “No!” To prove his point, Winchell had Shinoda design a pretty body to cover the big V8 engine hanging out behind the trans-axle. Upon seeing Shinoda’s rough full-size drawing, Duntov asked, “Where did you cheat?” Where he cheated was that there were no real rear bumpers or crash zone on the back end. The concept was quickly dropped. it was also discovered that the car did excellent wheelies!
1966 Running Mako Shark-II Showcar
Bill Mitchell verbalized the parameters of the design and Larry Shinoda and a small group of designers and stylists worked out the details. It was as if lightning had struck twice – first with the Sting Ray and a few years later with the Mako Shark-II. The exaggerated fender humps have become THE signature Corvette profile. A non-running full-size version was shown to GM’s management in ‘65 and received unanimous approval as the next Corvette. While the new body and interior designs were being worked out, a second “running” Mako Shark-II was built to keep the Corvette fans stoked. Almost 50 years later, the Mako Shark-II is still a jaw-dropper!
1991 Mears-Shinoda C4 Corvette Body Kit
Larry left GM in 1968, stayed at Ford for one year, then formed his own design studio where he worked on all kinds of automotive and non-automotive design projects. Corvette body kits and add-on parts became very popular though the ‘70s and ‘80s. Three-time Indy 500 winner, Rick Mears teamed up with Shinoda and businessman Jim Williams in 1991 to create and offer the Rick Mears Special Edition Corvette.
Arguably the cleanest full-body-kit ever offered for a C4 Corvete, the coupe version lowered the coefficient of drag on the car from .34 to .30. The complete kit cost approximately $5,200, plus $3,000 for installation, and around $1,000 for a new paint job. With a cost of just over 10 grand on top of a $32,455 new ‘91 Corvette, there weren’t many takers. But, it was a very nice design.
Shinoda C5 Sting Ray Concept
The all-new C5 1997 Corvette was released in the Fall of ‘96 and Larry Shinoda got right on it. Note the date on the rendering, “1-6-97.” Obviously, Larry wanted to see more “Sting Ray” in the new C5. If you’re a mid-year Corvette fan, Shinoda’s concept looks pretty good. Larry died the following November and to the best of my knowing, there was never an effort to make a full-body kit based on what may well have been Larry’s last Corvette design project. Any fiberglass fabricators out there that would like to take a shot at the Shinoda C5 Sting Ray???
No it’s not real Corvette – but the Collector’s Promo Revell Model. In the original box.
All you have to do is guess the year of the Corvette the part pictured belongs too!!! First one to post the answer gets 1 point. The first one that gets 4 correct wins the car.
The 1948 Bentley Mark VI with the wood body was dubbed the Countryman.
1948 Bentley.
The body build by coachbuilder Harold Radford and was aluminum over ash framing with wood paneling on the sides. The rear is mahogany veneer on alloy panels. There were only eight bodies built between 1948 and 1949.
No way I’m going to not mention the engine. Here are the specs:
4257 cm3 / 259.8 cui displacement with advertised power kW / hp / PS ( ) / and Nm / lb-ft / of torque. Dimensions: this model outside length is 4877 mm / 192 in, it’s 1752 mm / 69 in wide and has wheelbase of 3048 mm / 120 in. The value of a drag coefficient, estimated by a-c, is Cd = . Standard wheels were fitted with tires size 6.50 – 16
This blue Cal-look beetle was in my life for twenty two years. I purchased it with a friend back in 1988 with the intention of building a drag-car to enter the recently formed VWDRC. The basic plan was to weld up the doors, cut off the roof, fit a roll-cage and run a more or less stock 1600 engine on methanol and nitros oxide… this was back in a time when you could pick up as many used and running engines as you wanted, for around £50 each! The car only cost us £100 so we figured as long as we got a few quarter-mile runs out of each engine before they blew, it would be fairly inexpensive but fast fun!
