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.
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Mounted to the steering wheel
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Checking that it's not in the way during normal driving...
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and that I can easily reach it from a normal driving hand position
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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.
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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...
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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Welded up on both sides
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And ground down
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Next came milling new slots
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And finally all welded up, sitting next to the other side, which still needs to be done.
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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.