Stupid corona virus, Autocross on April 18th is canceled!
I've got a lot of projects for the bug lined up though, so it will just be that much better next time I get it out. I guess that's the silver lining, if there is one. I'll post more on what I'm working on soon...

Hope everyone is safe and healthy!

Foiled!
Huge thanks to Ethan for loaning me his king pin reamer!!!!
I went to ream the left side carrier, which I bought off the Samba, with some old bushings, just to get a feel for it, and immediately saw this:



Bent all to f**k!
The other thing with this one was, the guy sold it to me as a right side carrier. I honestly didn't look at it that close and ordered a left side carrier from Quixote Racing to go with it. When I got the left from Quixote, I compared them and they were the same!!! So I had to pay shipping back to Quixote for the left I got from him and then pay to have him send a right side one. At this point I was okay with the mix up on the one from the Samba. But then I saw it was crooked, and that was the last straw. I contacted the guy and told him about it being a left instead of a right, and sent him the above pics to show it was bent. He was cool and apologized and is refunding me including shipping.
I ordered another left from Dietmar at Quixote this morning.
Once I get it I will finally start this project. It will be awesome to get a couple degrees of negative camber in this thing, should have waaaay more front traction. Then I'll see where I am with rear traction and go from there.

I've still got other projects in the works for it too, more on those later.

well that sucks at least he refunded your money

Keep showing the progress. Love your car.

Thanks Wayne!
Yeah Ethan, the guy was cool about it, seemed like an honest mistake.

I received the "new" left carrier from Quixote on Saturday and installed the the king pin bushings in both and reamed them out. Thanks again Ethan for the tool loan

German goodness. A little more expensive, but for what a PITA this whole process is, I wouldn't want to take a chance with lesser-quality:


All reamed out. Afterwards I tested the king pins in them and they fit sooooo nice!


I had a couple Amazon gift cards so I decided to splurge on a proper camber/caster measuring setup. I had been using a Craftsman digital level and putting it against the wheel. I decided to go with the Longacre setup with the bubble level instead of the digital version. I feel like the bubbles should be more trustworthy and last forever. No need to worry about batteries dying or calibration somehow getting off.
I have to say I'm really impressed with the machining and finish of this thing, it's really a work of art. Especially the level itself. The arms fold up nicely and are super rigid when deployed. It also comes in a really nice case:


I tried it on a rear wheel for starters. I got about -4 deg of camber, which I was a little surprised by since I had been measuring closer to -3 with the Craftsman:



With the Craftsman and how I'd been using it, reading about 3.5 degrees


Then I tried the Craftsman against the frame of the Longacre instead of on the wheel, much closer at 3.9 degrees!


So, I guess where I was measuring off the wheel is not accurate compared to 3 points off the lip of the rim. Good to know!

I also measured front caster while I was at it and found I'm at 5.5 degrees right now, which is plenty! I had measured a couple degrees less with the Craftsman and was considering another pair of caster shims, but now that I have an accurate measurement I know I have enough! Just goes to show you, you've got to have the right tools!

Hey guys, happy Easter. I hope everyone is healthy and doing well.

I've had a couple little projects I've been working on for the bug recently. The first is mounting a button to my steering wheel to activate an RPM limiter for launch control. Last time I autocross i realized I can shave some time off my runs by launching really hard. Well, duh lol. So I decided to take advantage of the selectable RPM limiter in my Mallory HyFire VI digital box. Only question was, where to put the button? The two obvious choices are the shifter or the steering wheel. Since in autocross you sometimes have to turn pretty much right at the start, I figured it would be better to have both hands on the wheel for launch.
I ordered a push-button with a coiled cable made for this application and designed and printed a steering wheel mount for it.



Mounted to the steering wheel


Checking that it's not in the way during normal driving...


and that I can easily reach it from a normal driving hand position


And with the switch mounted. The cord seems to wrap around the steering column nicely when turing. I still need to wire it to the ignition box, then figure out the best RPM for launching.


I've also been working on stiffening the chassis up. The less flex in the chassis the better the car will handle. The suspension is supposed to be what does the work, not the chassis. For whatever reason, there were a lot of body to chassis bolts we had never added to the car. The rear shock tower to body (under the fenders) and the body to shock tower under the rear seat area weren't there, so I added all those. I also installed the 4 large/long ones at the front of the body that go through the pan in the front corner of the body (two on each side). Just adding all those should stiffen things quite a bit, I would imagine there had been a lot of movement without all those points properly tied in.
To make things stiffer, I bought a pair of chassis braces that are made more for Baja Bugs that tie the beam ends to the pan.
Here you can see where they go, looking from underneath...


But! Nothing can be that easy! I don't know if its cause my car is an early car or what, but these things were like 5/8" too long! Here you can see it hitting the front edge of the pan by quite a bit, where it should slip over it to pick up the two bolts on the bottom of the pan


Nothing a little fabrication skills can't solve though!

First I cut off the bracket, then shortened the tube after taking a bunch of measurements


The holes in the bracket didn't line up with the holes in the car though. The centers of the holes go about where the line is scribed.


Not really enough material there, the holes would be too close to the edge of the material. So I decided to extend the brackets. Luckily I had some mild steel laying around that was the same thickness


Welded up on both sides


And ground down


Next came milling new slots


And finally all welded up, sitting next to the other side, which still needs to be done.



What a pain in the ass that was.. At least I got to put a lot of my tools and equipment to good use. I'll do the other side after my new band saw blades arrive, the old one broke just after I finished the last cut for doing the first side. Then I'll paint or Por15 them and mount them up. They should stiffen things up a bit for sure, but I still think the front torsion arms are flexing a lot, so soon I'll start thinking about modifying a set of those. I'll probably also integrate adjustable sway bar mounts into them.

Holy smokes batman you were missing ALL the crucial mounting bolts. I like the updates!

Yeah, I was...

Between putting all those in, the 6-point roll bar, the rear Eyeball Engineering truss bar, and the front end braces, it should be pretty stiff. For a bug at least lol

I may also make a custom rear traction bar that will clear the Sidewinder exhaust. I've got a Mendeola trans mid mount i need to install still too.

A little bit at a time, the car is coming around. Its nice to finally get the car on the track to be able to push it really hard and benchmark it against a lot of really fast cars, and find its weaknesses, and then come up with a plan to address them. There's tons of room for improvement with this car and it's already mid-pack against a bunch of modern sports cars. Pretty fun!

Love what you've done with the 55 Brian, Goals!!!

It's been a while since an update, almost a month! Life goes on in quarantine... No shortage of projects on the bug to keep me sane. I've decided to add sensors and data logging capabilities to the VW for steering angle, brake pressure, and throttle position. All custom for this car, of course, because: 1) I'm cheap, and 2) it's fun to design and make shit!
Anway, I decided to so something a little different and make a YouTube video with the details, have a look if you're wondering what the hell I'm talking about And yes, my garage IS a mess, thank you!