Hey Kidd...

When my email was dreamed up 6 years ago I had a 65 beetle baja. I have a 68 convertible now.

Kidd

Kidd Andersson wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@individual.net:

Cool. I learned to drive a stick on my friend's mom's '60s beetle. Awesome cars.

My brother owned one once; its nickname was the Baja Basher. I ended up inadvertently driving it into a lake. We pushed it out and it ran just fine.

My baja was ZugMaschine. Zug was a sad case. Some college girl had him chopped and turned into a baja, beautiful (though a bit strange) paintjob and all. When she got out of college she got a new car from her parents and parked the poor baja in a field by the house and there he stayed for eons. Then he went to my best friend and sat at her father-in-law's house for eons. When he finally came to me, he was in terrible shape. It took a lot of work but I can remember the first time that engine came to life. I put tractor tires on the back. "Mud? What mud? I don't get stuck in no damn mud!" He never made it to his final paint but he was close, damnit!

The 68, Gothzilla, is something else entirely. It had, until a couple weeks ago, a 912 Porsche engine tweaked to make it kick the hell out of any modern little jack-dick compact car. Pristine, no rust, at a garage in Finland getting a makeover at the moment, which includes a brand new custom top. I'll have to get the specs on the new engine that went in this week. From what I understand it's going to blow doors off, which is exactly what I asked for. "Build me an engine that can blow the doors off the ricer kids and leave them in the dust." I can't wait until it's done and comes home. Yay! Once here, he'll get his final paint job and a new interior. I'm so exciiiiiited! I was GOING to give Goth to my niece for her 16th birthday, but you can't put an inexperienced driver behind the wheel with that much power behind her. She'll kill herself in a week so she's going to get a stock Charger instead.

Now if I can just pin down the issue with the 'Stang's engine, I'll be in good shape. She's got A LONG way to go but it sure is fun to play with! I finally got to inspect the gas tank and to my surprise, it's not rusted. Thank God. The carb has been rebuilt and now the million dollar question is, is it still going to flood? Time will soon tell.

K.

The good thing about horsepower in Beetles is it doesn't have to be a ton to get the speed. Double what I have in my car, and that's how much a Civic would need to get in the game. It's the weight that I'm loving. Gothzilla weighs half of a modern compact and can kick their asses with half the hp. Of course, you know this already. :) The engine that was just slipped into Goth isn't the completed thing as my vision entails. Once he comes home for good he'll get a complete teardown of this new engine for better heads, bigger crank, bigger cylinders and 1.25:1 (as opposed to the stock 1.1:1)rockers. Yes, a lot of work and the engine case will have to go to a shop but to easily slip past the 200 hp mark is worth it to me. Goth's purpose for me was to gain as much speed and power as possible. The engine that just went in is still good, even if it's temporary. The breakdown is a tall order for the new parts when he gets home so it's going to take time splitting the money between 4 cars. The current engine is what's going to make me happy until that tall order can be filled.

Here are my specs as they are now. I'll just paste them from the email my "mechanic" sent me. Sorry if you don't give a damn but I'm freakin'

*thrilled* :) Pretty fancy for a Beetle since most people don't beef them up at all. They're to make pretty and putz around in but not mine. 79,3mm stroke 90.5mm bore = 2040cc

Longer than stock rods

310 degree cam, 10.8mm lift at cam, 12mm at valve 10.1:1 Compression ratio

Dual 45 Dellorto DRLA

009 Centrifugal advance distributor 40mm x 35.5mm valves, ported aftermarket heads, flow benched to roughly 170hp at 12mm valve lift, that should be close to what the engine makes as the heads are clearly the bottleneck.

Revs past 8k, don't know how far, that's where my tach scale ends. Jumps up there if you give it 1/4 gas in neutral.

K.

Kidd Andersson wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@individual.net:

Very cool! Putting a Porsche engine in a bug is one of the coolest mods you can do to those things.

Indeed. Baja bugs are basically large go-karts. Bugs with full bodies are enclosed go-karts.

Sounds very cool. That motor should be more than adequate until the new one's done.

I agree. I always wanted one with a 911 motor... ;)

You might consider getting a decent tach so you don't spin it to oblivion. With all the good stuff, that motor should put out 210 hp easy. Good luck with it!

Joe Calypso Green '93 5.0 LX AOD hatch with a few goodies Black '93 Dakota 5.9 R/T CC

Thanks. I just keep thinking of the Cat In The Hat... "I'm so EXCIIIITED!" I was sent a video clip of the engine running on the test bench before it went in. Dayum it's cool!

K.

Kidd Andersson wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@individual.net:

How big's the clip? Can you either send it or post it?

It's not bad. Email me, and I'll email it back to you. I don't want to post it and slow everyone's shit down.

K.