Education

The John Muir Mechanical Idiots Guide to repairing and maintaining your VW is a great place to start.

--Dan E

...well the Haynes manual, and the Muir manual are two good ones for a beginner to have onm hand. If you have a little more money to spend consider the bug-me videos.

...you can read it 20 times and still never get as much understanding as watching the work being performed....as for a quaife differential....well its kinda similar to "posi " reareend in american metal. Basically what it does is make it so both rear wheels drive instead of one. This leads to superior traction....it is a very expensive...yet virtually indestructible item usually used only in severe duty high performance transaxles. Here is a video of a gentleman by the name of Mark Herbert trying his best to destroy one in a far from stock VW. (its kinda large so it *will* take a while to load..

....HTH,\

,,,Gareth

Gareth is right, those things are bulletproof. Dodge has added them to the SRT-4, too. If they can contain that little rocket's power, they certainly should be able to handle a dub. ;)

On Fri, 21 May 2004 19:12:46 -0600, psy ran around screaming and yelling:

230 hp in a 3000 pound car isn't really that much...new to automobiles? JT

Thanks for all the info. Shaggie, went straight to your Amazon link and ordered the book. At 17.00 it's a great deal since every place around here wants 25 and up. Will also check into the other books mentioned.

Thanks again, Susan

74 Std "Betty" (hope to have my web page up soon ! )

Very cool, but now I wanna watch "The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly." :-)

Sorry, I was excited when I got the call that it arrived.

The damn thing weighs like 40 pounds! If you're interested in finding-out more, deep detail is @

Susan, Guess what? The" Club" has the entire Bug Me Video series and you can check them out for your viewing pleasure. Email me .

"Wild" Bill and "Blondie" Tucker

President and First Lady Rare Air VW Club Pensacola, FLorida

'78 VW Bus ( "Old Rusty" )

'76 Bug "The Grape"

'69 Squareback , Arizona car, Automatic, "Blondies' Car"

'67 Squareback

Rare Air VW Club Website:

or

Oh Yeah !!! I had forgotten about those videos !!! I will get in touch with you soon about snapping some up !!!

Susan

74 Std "Betty"

They certainly could be. I believe the 230 rating was for the HP of the '03 model. I'm too lazy to look it up right now, but the power (particularly the torque) has been increased since then for the '04 and the upcoming '05. My point wasn't really that it *has* a high HP to weight ratio, but rather that the Quaife can handle at least that car, which is consistently given high ratings for it's bang to buck ratio, and often given "props" due to it's high torque output for a 4-banger. There are many other cars that have a higher power to weight ratio, indeed.

Motorcycles have been doing that since the eighties. About time cars have caught up.

My old `85 Honda is a hundred HP per liter bike:

Current sport bikes are about 130hp/liter, I think.

On Sun, 23 May 2004 15:29:12 -0700, David Gravereaux ran around screaming and yelling:

yep...my GSX-750 is a 1993 model and it was rated at 100 HP....not bad out of 749cc's JT

I've always fancied putting two of those Goldwing 6-cylinders in my kit car. Oops. Watercooled. Never mind.

So when is someone going to make some real 4-valve OHV heads for our famous flat-four? Those trick looking Scat split-port one look nice, but still 2-valve and I heard the cooling on them is lame.

Silly me.. that would be whole new animal in itself..

.................Porsche tried to figure out how to cool a 4-valve head with air and finally gave up. That's one of the reasons that the current generation 911 is watercooled.

I'm pretty sure it's been done and raced already.

Dunno how they could be any better than the right heads, but what do I know?