Clementine: Theory vs. Reality

I really thought that I had everything planned out just right to get Clementine sitting low and mean on some pretty snazzy looking rims. I read some threads on discussion forums that said what I had planned would not work but I figured I was smart enough to MacGyver my way around them. Boy was I wrong.

My original inspiration for the final appearance of the old girl came from seeing some really snazzy looking late model Beetles riding low on Porsche 914 “2 liter” Fuchs rims. Some of the cars had replica rims instead of the real deal Fuchs but being a Porsche dork I really wanted to go with the original forged goodness that the Fuchs forge had produced as OEM quality goods nearly 40 years ago. I did pick up some static on the forums that suggested the offsets might not work well with the drop spindles I had on the car which lower the spindle and ball joints in relation to the rim in order to drop the car down but most folks said they were able to easily clearance everything or had no problems at all.

With that in mind, I hit Craigslist to search out some rims and I finally found a set that belonged to a guy named Yogi who lived up in the Sierra foothills. After getting hilariously lost after not being able to understand that Yogi told me to look for Pammy Way instead of Tammy Way, I finally got to his place. Yogi explained that the two sets of rims he had were from an old project 914 that he sold a while back and that the rims had been under his house for 25 years. They looked pretty scruffy but they were very straight and I picked out the best four to throw in the back of the family Porsche once we cleared out the black widows from the rims. I figured they would polish up quickly and look very slick. First mistake-never believe it is easy to make old grungy stuff look pretty.

I got the rims home and set about to stripping off the old anodizing with oven cleaner and then going after the rims with varying grades of sandpaper and polishing compound. After six hours of finger straining work, I had one quarter of one rim polished. I gave up and took the rims to a rim repair joint where the guy quoted me something like $1200 to polish them. This seemed silly so I took the rims to a blasting house where for $100 they proceeded to completely destroy the finish on the rims to where they looked rough and awful.

At this point, a sane person would have given up and just spent the money on the repop set, but dammit I don’t like to lose so I took the rims over to my go-to paint and body guys at Anderson Brothers in West Sacramento. They usually don’t do any work like this but the owner Troy Anderson is a hot rod guy and set one of his guys to work on making the rims pretty. After a few short days, they were ready and simply gorgeous in a Porsche silver that positively gleamed.

Now, if I was smart I would have waited to get the rims painted until I had mounted some tires and made sure they fit right. Unfortunately, like a kid with a new Christmas toy I got them all pretty, slapped some new tires on them in the appropriate sizes and then bolted them up to the car with great glee. The euphoria lasted all of about thirty seconds which was when I noticed the ball joints where damn near flush with the rims and even with the car up in the air on the jack stands were scuffing the beautiful paint off the inside of the rims. No matter, I thought, it will all be perfecto when I drop the car down and the ball joints rotate away from the rims.

BZZZAT. Wrong answer. A quick spin around the neighborhood resulted in horrible grinding sounds and generally awfully noises coming from the front end. Indeed the ball joints were smacking the beejezus out of the rims and needed some help. More research suggested 3/8 inch spacers might solve the problem and it looked like I had more than enough thread to work with on the lug bolts to make it happen. I bolted on the spacers and the scraping pretty much went away with only a light self clearancing happening on huge bumps and sharp turns. Feeling pretty smug, I installed a snarky new set of billet center caps on the rims in the front and moved back to the rear wheels to do the same…which is when I found out the center caps did not fit on the rear wheels as they were too shallow for the axle nuts. Another trip to the parts store and another set of wheel spacers for the rear got everything back in business.

So, Clementine is back on her feet and ready for some more tweaks to get her little 1600cc dual port motor back in shape and cure a few other little problems so we can get started on some chassis shakedown miles until I am ready to throw down for the big thumper motor. Time to sharpen up my valve adjustment skills, stock up on Band Aids, and take another read of the “Complete Idiot” VW manuals…

 

Clementine: The Curse of “While You’re In There” and “That Don’t Fit”

Whenever you start into a car restoration project there are always two specters in dark robes hanging around in the shadows waiting to strike. Their names are “While You’re In There” and “That Don’t Fit”. Your day gets much more expensive and difficult when they decide to show up.

With Clementine, my vision has always been to make her into a fast daily driver that can do some drag strip work but still be civilized enough to take on cruises or errands around town. The idea of a complete nut-and-bolt restoration seemed a bit much to me as I did not want to worry with creating a 100-point show car. However, as I started taking parts off for restoration or replacement, ol’ “While You’re In There” started running the bill up to darn near the cost and complexity of a full show car build and “That Don’t Fit” began to ruthlessly bloody my knuckles and furrow my brow. Regardless, I have refused to go too nuts or give up but damned if I am not learning how to take apart Beetles in a hurry and my first aid skills have definitely improved. My shed is now full of old Beetle parts and the trash can in the shop is home to a pile of bloody Band-Aids and empty Neosporin tubes.

The first priority was to get the car to where it could run and drive safely and reliably so I decided to tackle the chassis first and leave the drivetrain and body work for later on. Clementine’s suspension consists of a torsion beam front suspension (the “beam”) and an independent rear suspension (IRS) that connects up to her transaxle. As I got the car up on jack stands and began to poke around, it became very clear that not much had been done to the suspension in a very long time and that the brakes also were pretty tired. The shocks were Sears brand dampers that probably were new somewhere during the Carter administration and many of the lines, bushings, and hard parts were clearly original to the car. The previous owner had attempted some freshening in recent times but pretty much everything else had reached the end of its useful life.

So, I called up good buddy Jeff Lain at the Kaddie Shack and we started putting together a pretty impressive shopping list of gear to get the old girl back up to speed. Jeff and his crew put together a new height adjustable front beam for me with drop spindles, polyurethane bushings, KYB GR-series shocks, a bigger sway bar, and Karmann Ghia style disc brakes. He addressed the rear suspension with height adjustable spring plates, the same KYB’s as used on the front, new bushings, and an add-on rear sway bar to really tie down the handling of the car. I also sourced parts to redo all the brake hard and soft lines, change out the master cylinder and brake fluid reservoir, freshen the rear drum brakes, and refurbish the rear control arms and axle bearings. Unfortunately, “That Don’t Fit” was in the house and the rear control arms refused to get along with the trick spring plates so I had to go old school and just dial in the ’71 vintage stockers with an angle finder and plenty of swearing despite Jeff’s best efforts at remote tech support. “That Don’t Fit” also sprinkled magic dust on the new brake hard lines with leaks galore and a janky fluid reservoir which refused to fill correctly that took up two days of fiddling, two rolls of paper towels, and two of the economy size bottles of O’Reilly’s finest DOT4 fluid before I finally got a hard pedal with no dribbles.

Of course, ol’ “While You’re In There” came calling too which added in a new fuel tank and lines since I had to remove the old crusty stuff to get to the beam, rebuilt drive axles, a new hood release cable, a rebuild of the pedal cluster when it came out to fit the new brake master cylinder, and some paint work to repair some damage caused under the hood by leaky brake lines. I also couldn’t help myself when my OCD kicked in so I ended up getting $100 or more of new bolts to replace the old nasty ones that were holding together some key components. The guys in the loose hardware department at the Davis Ace know me by name now and I have nearly earned enough in rewards points to buy that smoker in the leisure department that I have had my eye on.

Next up will be an upgrade to Clementine’s rolling stock with some wheels from a Porsche cousin along with dialing in the alignment and height settings to get her just low enough to look cool but not so low that I end up stranded on every speed bump in town. Get ready, greater Willowbank, 45 horsepower of sheer Teutonic fury is about the hit the streets…

 

Enjoying some Quail in Monterey

Every year in August, the Monterey peninsula in California turns into a mecca for anyone who is into cars. Technically the week is just for vintage cars, but the major OEM’s put on big bashes and test drives for the well-heeled folks who tend to buy high-end vintage cars which of course results in an amazing variety and quality of cars on the roads around the auctions, golf courses, car shows, and of course near Laguna Seca which is the site of the Rolex Motorsports Reunion which is one of the premier vintage racing events in the world.

This year I was lucky enough to purchase a couple of tickets to an event called The Quail. The Quail is held at the Quail Lodge golf resort out in the Carmel Valley and it is something very special indeed. I also managed to finagle a test drive in a Porsche Boxster S at the Porsche Zentrum at The Quail so it was shaping up to be an epic day of fun.

I have always thought the Boxster was probably the purest sportscar that Porsche has made in recent years and this year’s drive proved out that thought. I took a great drive down Highway G16 to Laureles Grade and back with minimal traffic, which resulted in maximum grins. It did not hurt that my chaperone Lonnie was a massive Rodney Dangerfield fan and we spent most of the time popping off quotes from such classics as “Back To School” between the apexes. However, even though the Boxster was indeed brilliant at everything I asked it to do and even snorted a little like a GT3 Cup racer when it popped off PDK upshifts, I found myself still longing for the twitchy steering, road noise, and oil stink of the older aircooled Porsches. Guess I am just not a new sportscar kind of guy because Porsche has baked the new Boxster just right.

After the drive, I met up with my pal Tom and we headed into The Quail. The first thing that struck me was the stunning quality and history of nearly every car on the field. Within a span of 20 yards, I saw Steve McQueen’s Jaguar XK-SS, a selection of Ferraris from the glorious years of the ‘50’s and ‘60’s, and a display of incredible new supercars from Pagani, Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini, Galpin Auto Sports, and McLaren.

As Tom and I walked around we had to stop every few feet to soak in the excellence and history spread out before us. We listened to some fascinating interviews onstage, saw a skydiver in a wingsuit swoop over the precious metal to a perfect landing, and then literally almost bumped into Formula 1 Champions Sir Jackie Stewart and Michael Schumacher having a  chat with former Ferrari team manager Jean Todt.

The final joy of The Quail is the food and drink spread they laid out for folks attending the show. There were a number of buffet style options to choose from and everything we sampled would have been just the sort of plate you would expect to get from a joint with a Michelin star out front. We ended the day stuffed with prime food, full of wonderful memories, and slightly sunburned. As a good friend of mine used to say, “not too shabby at all”.

 

Enjoy the pictures below and try to get down to Monterey during car week in August 2014-hope to see you there!

Gearhead Smorgasbord: The Goodwood Festival of Speed

We are blessed to live in a time when nearly anywhere in the world can offer up a pretty enticing calendar of automotive events. However, there are certain special gatherings that really truly are unique and capable of popping the circuits clean out of your average automotive enthusiast. The Goodwood Festival of Speed held on the grounds of the Goodwood Estate in the Sussex Downs region of England is one of those flat-out amazing events.

The Festival of Speed is the brainchild of the current Earl of March, Charles Gordon-Lennox who is a massive gearhead. The Earl put together the first Festival 20 years ago as an effort to provide a venue for car fans to see rare and significant cars in action and also up close. The first event saw a fairly small amount of cars on the roster, but the concept was proved sound when 25,000 people show up to enjoy a day in the English countryside. The Festival has now grown in provenance and popularity to the point that it sells out every year with 150,000 souls through the gate and the line up of cars, drivers, manufacturers, and teams reflects the top echelon of the automotive worlds. The auction held on Thursday during the event by Bonhams even managed to net the highest ever sale price for a single car when Juan Manuel Fangio’s Mercedes racer crossed the block with a final hammer of nearly twenty million pounds. The Earl also hosts the Goodwood Revival in the fall which is dedicated to vintage races and other period activities, but the Festival is open to all eras of sporty cars.

 
To really appreciate how huge this event is you need to take a survey of all the different types and eras of cars and motorcycles that show up. I managed to see modern and vintage Formula 1 cars driven by world champion drivers from five decades, drag racing cars and bikes, versions of the world’s fastest sports cars from the earliest to the modern day, rally cars from many different eras racing through a forest stage, a great selection of competition motorcycles, and other significant cars up close and personal with only a stack of hay bales separating fans from the racing surface or with no separation at all in the paddock.

 The event also included huge multi story outdoor displays from all the major auto manufacturers, an airplane display area, flyovers by Vulcan and Typhoon war planes, and paddocks full of interesting things to look at. As noted above, Bonhams holds an onsite auction on Thursday where you can take home a very nice souvenir if you can swing it. There is even a “moving motor show” on Friday where ticket holders can try out the latest offerings from dozens of manufacturers on test drives around the estate.

To try and describe everything I saw would take pages and pages of droning on, so I will let the pictures and video below do the talking. If you truly love sports and competition cars, you need to find a way to make it to this event at some point as it is truly nirvana for gearheads. There are many fine tour companies that organize all-inclusive trips (I used Grand Prix Tours www.gptours.com) so save some bucks, block off a week to head over the pond, and prepare to have your mind completely blown when you visit the FoS in 2014.

 
Video can be found by clicking here

 

 

 

Clementine: Kid in a Candy Store

Many years ago, someone coined the term the “Go-Fast Crack Pipe” to give a name to the horrid obsession that grips racers in the quest to always go faster no matter the cost. One of my favorite authors Peter Egan once said that “(r)acing makes heroin addiction look like a vague wish for something salty”.

As I have been poring over issues of Hot VWs, Volksworld, and countless posts on The Samba trying to plan the path for my build of Clementine, that same old feeling of wanting to feed the need for speed is back in my blood. Turns out that there is way more cool stuff to throw at your Beetle than there was in 1988 and the state of the art is pretty impressive yet remarkably affordable when compared to my days trying to campaign two racecars in competitive amateur series. I probably will be able to get away with the full build minus bodywork for less than I spent on tires for my AIX Mustang “White Lightning” in one season. Sheesh.

Of course in order to get your hands on the good stuff, you need a reliable quality dealer who will get you only the best uncut finest grade hop-up parts. Although I have bought a few things from my local Bug shop to address some small problems, I needed to find someone to advise me on the critical parts of making Clementine go faster, turn with authority, and stop reliably. After some reflection, I decided to engage Jeff Lain from the Kaddie Shack in Pasadena, Calif. (www.kaddieshack.com) to be my guru for all things Beetle.

Jeff and I connected a few years back when I found my high school friend Tonia on Facebook. Turns out she is married to Jeff and she shared that he is as sick on Beetles as I am but even more so. While I am only up to one Käfer in the backyard, he has four including one that he has had since he was 19 years old. Jeff and I met up at the Sacramento Bugorama two years ago and I always had his shop in the back of my mind as where I would turn when I finally got a Beetle of my own.

Jeff started the Kaddie Shack a little over three years ago as a service to rebuild and tune the Kadron (“Kaddie”) carburetors that were standard issue on VW’s during the 1950’s and 1960’s. The business kept growing so Jeff decided a year ago to open a shop in Pasadena and he is now up to five employees and has an impressive volume of business based on the calls he was fielding and the walk-in business when I visited recently. The shop is a bit small but carries a full line of parts including ready to go carburetors, fully built engines, as well as suspension, brake, interior and body bits.

With the grand plan in mind, I headed down to Pasadena to meet with Jeff and also get a demo ride in the Kaddie Shack race car that I saw up in Sacramento at Bugorama running high 13-sec quarter mile times which is around where I wanted to end up with Clementine until we go full race. Jeff’s key man Miguel owns the ’62 shop car and he took me for a ride around Pasadena to show me the wholesome virtue of the motor and also demonstrate the sort of sauce it was packing. To be clear, this is a real racer with license plates and not a slammed “waxer” show car. There is no carpet, no sound deadening, and the car is ready to rock on the street or the track at a moment’s notice. However, despite the noise level the car was very well behaved. It was an easy 90 degrees out when we took our ride and the car idled like a champ, had zero flat spots off the line, and did not show a hint of overheating or stalling while we put it through the paces. I was sold so as soon as we got back, Jeff and I laid out a game plan for a 1968cc twin of Miguel’s motor using an aluminum case that came in on trade and perhaps with a few deviations to accommodate the primary street mission of this engine. This is Miguel’s ’62 along with its very capable pilot after our ride.

The next part to sort out was getting some reasonable brakes and suspension under Clementine so that she would not be a menace to drive with triple the stock power on board. Jeff and I talked over a few strategies and settled on 2.5-inch drop spindles with Karmann Ghia style discs up front as well as a new front suspension beam narrowed an inch with height adjusters to allow me to dial in the ride height to where it needs to be. Adjustable rear suspension arms in the back with new stiffer bushings with let me drop the back end a bit and I will fit new shocks all around to replace the roasted and leaky units still on the car. Here you can see all the goodness crammed into the shop with Jeff manning the phones as well as the guys out back stuffing a rebuilt motor into a ’69 that was in for a transplant.

So, things are coming along quickly and the next task will be to get the stock beam out of the car so Jeff can work his magic on it. After that, it’s time to yank the 1600cc engine and clean up the engine bay in preparation for the new bullet. Fun times and you can almost see the old girl smiling as she contemplates her return to the street ready to tear up some tarmac.