Bugging out at Bugorama

As a another step in the search for the perfect Beetle and also in keeping with our family tradition, the kids and I hit Bugorama #71 in Sacramento over the Memorial Day weekend. Bugorama is a long running series of events with multiple venues in the West including two stops at our local drag strip Sacramento Raceway Park.

The event has three basic elements: a show-and-shine competition, bracket and eliminator drag racing, and a huge swap meet. The swap meet folks mostly show up on Saturday evening to camp out and snag the best deals early in the morning but the show and drags don’t happen until Sunday.

We rolled in on Sunday morning and the event was already in full swing with the show paddock full of beautiful VW’s of all vintages, the drag folks lining up for some practice runs, and the swap meet humming. We managed to get out to the swap meet first where we saw our friend Jeff Lain from the Kaddie Shack (www.kaddieshack.com) doing a good amount of business selling roof racks, his specially tuned Kadron carburetors, and some other goodies. Jeff also told us one of his crew members had picked up a ’73 Beetle the night before for the princely sum of $500. It was pretty rough, but it was a great base for a project and set a nice benchmark for what good starter cars cost. The Kaddie Shack was also campaigning a drag car in the brackets which ended up winning its class so they had a pretty good weekend even if they did have to drive the drag car home while the new purchase took its spot on the trailer.

 

 

We then watched the drags for a little bit and the kids’ favorites were the insane turbocharged Bugs running high 8 second quarter mile times and the two dragsters that dipped into the 7’s. It was amazing to see the sophistication on the fastest cars with awesome fabrication work and obvious attention to detail.

 

 

The final stop was the car show where we checked out all the sanitary pride and joys lined up together in the sun. After looking over all the cars, my direction has changed a bit as the Supers just didn’t do it for me like the Standard Beetles did. My favorite was this blue ’70 Cal Looker sitting on 2-liter Porsche 914 Fuchs style rims. It ticked all the boxes for me so the hunt is on for a ’69-’72 Standard as I am not a huge fan of the later taillight and bumper treatments on the ’73-up cars.

We left the Raceway full of greasy track food and with a huge sack full of swag and t-shirts to enjoy. Great show to attend and next year we will certainly be back with a Bug of our own on either the show field or the drag strip.

More great cars from the show field and the paddock:

 

Live from the Long Beach Grand Prix

Jeff Lepper and the crew from the Pirelli World Challenge interviewed me at the LBGP. Great times and many thanks to Jeff for getting me a little air time! See the video at http://www.world-challengetv.com/#/races/648

It's Super to be a Bug Bezerker

The second car I owned was a 1971 VW Super Beetle which I bought from my neighbors the Buczko family in 1987. I have been a Bug guy basically since birth, so the Super was really a dream come true for me. The Super got me through my first two years on the road but was sold in 1989 to finance a brandy new ’89 Mustang 5.0 that I talked my far-too-generous parents into helping me purchase. The 5.0 was a joy with its romper stomper horsepower and it led to me owning a string of three more 302-powered sons of Fairmont, but in the back of my mind the thought of fixing up a Beetle to the spec I could only dream of when I was 16 lingered.

The Super before the “One Day Paint and Body” $199 Corvette Yellow paintjob:

Me and the Super at my high school Flintridge Prep:

Fast forward to 2013 where I now have two sons of Beetle sitting in the garage in the form of an ’87 Porsche 911 Targa and an ’87 Porsche 930. Both are lovely and nearly sorted which has led to the desire to scratch that old Beetle itch so I decided to find and restomod an old Beetle.  Sacramento has an impossibly active and fun air cooled VW community which made the decision that much easier as it will give us a great family project to enjoy during the coming “outside” months here in Davis.

I began my search by spending enough time on The Samba and Craigslist that it began to border on the sort of thing that mandates an intervention of concerned local Porsche Club members. After thinking at first that I wanted a ’58-’66 Standard Bug, I went and looked at a basket case ’65 with see-through floorboards and a way too nice ’63 that was far too cherry to monkey with. Both had their charm but I found the interiors way tighter than the ’71 Super I used to have and I also was not in love with having to work around the limits of the chassis with the swing arm rear suspension, the shorter wheelbase, and some other foibles.

This brought me to considering ’69-’74 Standards to get the good IRS rear suspension while still avoiding California smog laws which would cause me no end of grief. As I dug deeper, I looked at more cars and the one thing that kept sticking in my mind was how I was going to tune the torsion bar front end and also adapt some other neat parts to the chassis.

After spending yet more time surfing the bytewaves and dreaming, I stumbled upon the “German Look” which is a companion genre to such established styles as the “Cal Look” of the ‘70’s and ‘80’s.

The German Look:

 

 

As I dug deeper, I noticed that most of the cars in the galleries online were in fact Type 1303 Super Beetles like my beloved ’71 and that there are some pretty awesome low buck hacks you can do to make them really handle. Porsche 944 brakes and rear suspension arms are near bolt-ins which will get me some advantages in strength and geometry while allowing me to run some nice wheels from the Porsche 911 side of the family. The MacStrut front end will also easily accept trick adjustable coilover setups and there is a pretty decent knowledge base on how to tune the cars’ handling.

So, looks like I am headed down the path to once again have myself a really “Super” Beetle. We are going to hit the Ranch Run events this weekend and then spend a little time at Bug-o-Rama here in Sac towards month’s end to get some more education and fondle some fenders.  Hopefully we will find our next family member soon and get to do some swap meet diving to get “Super2” on the road to being dialed in.

 

Two Weekends + Two Tracks = Big Fun

Now that I am the Gearhead Tourist instead of working actively on the administrative side of the racing world, I am able to visit events and not be tied to a radio or a specific job at the track. While I do really enjoy being an official at the track it is a pure luxury to now be able to simply enjoy some weekends as a fan.

I began April’s race track tours with the famed Long Beach Grand Prix which takes place on the streets of Long Beach, CA. PWC has a great concept with open paddocks and driver autograph sessions where the fans can really get up close to the cars and the drivers to really get into the series. We found the crews and drivers to be amazingly friendly with a special nod to Tim Bell and his CRP/Hawk Performance crew who spent a great deal of time explaining things to us and chatting about the cars and the series. I managed to run into many old friends around the paddock and also thankfully got to sample a few King Tacos which are the signature treat at the LBGP. I honestly came away from the experience with a new set of eyes for the sport and I encourage you to hit a PWC race when they come to town near you. Who knows-they might need a new crew person and you might find yourself with a front row seat for what is arguably the most relevant and approachable pro series around for serious road racing geeks. See the schedule and more information at www.world-challenge.com and you can watch some of the races at www.world-challengetv.com.

The next weekend found me headed back to my old Ohio home at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course which has been a multi-year host of the NASA Championships presented by Toyo Tires. In the past, I had the pleasure of calling some of the races on Speedcast TV along with my compadre Rob Klepper but this time I was the lone cowboy to do the play-by-play for the NASA Great Lakes “Super Series” race on Saturday.  I worked with a new crew headed by Daryl David from Belle-1 Racing Communications and we had a great time working together calling the NASA Super Series drivers around the course with some much needed help from old pal and NASA Great Lakes Super Series Director John Graber. The playback for this race is available on http://new.livestream.com/accounts/3771332/nasaracingtv/videos/17502608 and we will be live again on July 27th and August 24th from Mid-Ohio. The schedule for those days will be up soon at www.nasagreatlakes.com and you can also sign up there if you want to get out on the track yourself with NASA’s easy to access programs. It was a great weekend to catch up with more old friends and see some great racing with NASA Great Lakes.

May is going to be Bug Month for the Gearhead Tourist so plan to be “hella bugged” for a bit!

The Pirelli World Challenge paddock at the LBGP:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 My office for the weekend and the view out the window at Mid-Ohio: