Buying Beetle,info wanted

"Tim Rogers" wrote

I agree with the old fart. Get the '66.

-- Scott

My thoughts exactly! besides, i dont really like how the beetle bodys look after 69'

On Sun, 02 Nov 2003 05:05:23 GMT, "Exille" scribbled this interesting note:

It depends on what is important to you. In some respects the pre '69 Beetles are a bear to work on. If that isn't so important to you as the appearance of the earlier cars, then that is your choice.

What do you want? Therein lies your answer......

-- John Willis (Remove the Primes before e-mailing me)

I realize I'm not Howard, but my first bug was a '66 with the 1300 in it. Keep in mind, that no (stock) bug is fast. It's a fact. The 1600DP is faster than a 1200 25HP, but neither one is fast compared to anything out on the road today. When driving a bug, you have to let it take you. You can't really force it.Sure, you can hammer the pedal down. About all you're doing is making a lot of noise, while getting from A to B about a half second quicker (exaggerated, of course. It's really about 1 second

.................Good post Andy. You pretty much confirm what I've heard about the 1300 SP. So long as you're not trying to flog the crap out of it from one entrance ramp to the the next exit ramp on your local expressway, it's supposed to be a real nice running engine with a good driver-friendly personality (yes....engines have personalities just like cars.......at least for me they do).

From whast my dad told me about 2 hours ago(if i understood right), the engine case for the 1600 and 1300 are the same, so i can just go out and get the cyl heads and cylinders & pistons from a 1600 and plant them onto my

.......................I'm not the one to rely upon for this question but I think that some of the head studs will need to be changed to put DP heads on a case that had SP heads originally. I'm sure that you could get some more reliable advice from here:

snipped-for-privacy@aircooled.net

Cheers Tim! :-)

Yes, the '66 1300 engine is a real nice one. To be honest, I've never actually driven any other aircooled VW, but I have very good impressions on the 1300. Firstly, it's lovely and smooth, accelerates nicely through the gears. Top speed I've reached is 85mph, although I usually never go over 65. It can cruise all day at 55, which is the best speed for fuel consumption too - I get around 30mpg (British - can anyone convert this to US mpg?).

The 1300 isn't slow, but it isn't too fast - kinda "in the middle". It's reliable, will go on forever if maintained properly (I always do

Even when some complete idiot (to put it lightly) drained out 80% of my oil when I was at work, it still drove me home with no problems. Unfortunately, I didn't notice about the oil as they cut my oil sensor too >:-(

Since rebuilt as-original (still in orig. case), and runs even better!

Where did he mention the '66? His post states '70?

If it is a $600 (£400) '66 it really is a complete bargain!!!! Buy it ASAP!

What's the 1300 spares availability like in the states? IIRC, it was a "one year only" engine over there, whereas over here in the UK we had it until the mid '70s...

Original engine for a '66 1300 should be numbered between F0,000,001 and F0,940,716.

That sums the 1300 up perfectly! When you drive a car with a 1300 engine, you don't want to go fast...

You *can* convert the 1300 to a 1600, but the barrels are really thin and are prone to burn out.

Remember, the 1300 engine was created by taking the 1200 engine, and adding the 1500 crank.

All 1600-converted-1300's I have known have been prone to unreliability.