It had been two and a half years since we had turned a wheel in anger in the mighty little Beetle and I was itching to get back into hillclimbing. The CAMS newsletter had just arrived in the mail and there was an item on the upcoming Australian Hillclimb Championships at Grafton in six and a half weeks and not being one to procrastinate, the decision was made then and there to go for it. The only problem being that companion Jo' Smiths car had sustained a huge prang at Bathurst back in 1990 and desperately needed some attention. On that occasion, the fan had exploded at 8000 rev's, taken out the accelerator cable tube and jammed the Dellortos flat out as she was approaching the Dipper
Well, what can I say, fate was really kind not to roll her over, (the car that is) so there was no body damage but three corners of the suspension were badly bent and the right hand front shock tower had put a 50mm deep dent into the inner guard.
The car was then retired to a relative's farm at Binnaway, and suffered the indignity
of sitting in a barn there and accumulating a solid layer of bird poo while it sat
forlornly in the farm shed. l took a quick trip to Binnaway one day and loaded the very
bent Bug onto a trailer and then took it home the next day - all without incident. I was
very lucky to have three untiring helpers in the form of James McKinnon, Grant Camper and
Shimo .
Previously we had raced the "Bug out of Hell" in the Road Registered class and later as a Sport Sedan. Times had changed however and with the introduction of the Group 2E Silhouette Class, i.e. 60 series tires, no 'glass guards and a maximum seven inch rim size for cars up to 3000cc.
This formula posed a couple of problems. Firstly our old gearing was too tall (the 3.88: I cliff, 3.4:1 I st, 2.21:1 2nd, 1.48:1 3rd and 1.125: I top were nowhere near close enough) and secondly, we had no 60-series tyres because back in the '80s we used 50-series.
As it turned out we had bought an old drag race gearbox earlier in the year so we had a few extra ratios to choose from (this included 4.375: I ring and pinion and 3.8:1, 2.06:1, 1.58: 1 and 1.21: I gears). In the end we came up with a great little close ratio 'box using the 4.375:1 cliff gears and 3.4:1,2.21:1, 1.58:1 and 1.21: I gear ratios which worked in really well with the 20560X15 tires.
There was a huge list of chores to complete before we headed to Grafton. This included stealing the front end out of the old race car, replacing wheel bearings, tie rod ends, ball joints and control arms, recondition the callipers and fit new metal pads. Other tasks undertaken included replacing steering box and damper, fitting a race seat, harness and half cage.
Next we rebuilt the entire rear end including arms, bushes and brakes and then stripped down several gearboxes to salvage the required parts to make up one good unit.
The 1904cc motor was stripped and freshened up ready to be raced. we then went over to East Coast Suspension for a four wheel alignment and then back home to fit the sway bars (20mm front and 22mm rear) .
We then packed all the spares and headed off for Grafton (a day before practice started while Jamo and Grant drove up and met me there on Thursday morning.
Grafton's track had been lengthened, resurfaced and was lot tighter than what I could remember from five years earlier, so I returned to the track had the car scrutineered early to be one of the first cars out on the track. Even though the track was a bit green (leaves and branches littered the track and no rubber had yet been laid down), I was still quite happy with how good the borrowed rubber was gripping. I was only about three seconds off the old record.
A quick check of the tyre pressures and off I went again, this time really getting the feel back again and throwing the car around like a Formula I car when suddenly the oil light came on. turned her straight off and coasted down the return road. When the we pulled the Oberg filter apart there were parts of a big end bearing staring at me. It appeared that we should have put the oil surge gates back in from our old Hellbug motor as now the sticky tyres were generating the same g-forces as the soft slicks I ran before.
There was a fair bit of disappointment in the camp. In fact, Grant and Jamo were shattered. I ended up driving to Kempsey, taking a 1916cc motor out of a buggy and fitting up our exhaust and Webers. But alas the off-road motor had an inappropriate cam and didn't really go. We managed a last-in-class finish and the distinction of being the only vehicle unable to spin the wheels off the line. At this stage, I must thank Mark and Luke Pell for their help with all our problems over that weekend. It was their motor that was so generously lent to me.
Back to the old drawing board.
Not to be put off by such small hassles I had the motor rebuilt in two weeks (this time with all the baffling in the sump and competed in the show and climb at Canberra winning the class, being 2nd outright and the fastest Group 2E bug. Now we were cooking and then competed in five more 'climbs before Christmas managing class wins in each of. So the poor little motor was owed a bit of work by the time the year's racing was complete.
Upon disassembly some very interesting observations were made: 1: The tunnel of the case had worn out allowing the centre main bearing to move and the crankshaft to flex. 2: Some evidence of oil starvation was still present in rod bearings #1. and #4. and three, the breather system had not been adequate because the 2.0-litre catch-tank was always filling with oil at the end of each day's racing.
After a meeting with Shimo and Peter Gonad, a complete revamp of the breathing and oil system commenced. This was a two-pronged attack to ensure I had adequate breathing as well as adequate oil in the pick-up area (deep sump centre).
I had purchased a really late-model AS21 fuel injection case (with the huge oil galleries throughout) from Gene Berg in 1989 as a back-up for the 2213cc motor. This already had all the machining done, i.e. decked, bored for 90.5mm barrels fully flowed, eight millimetre case stud nut lands spot-face for the 15mm head nut conversion and die ground to fit a Washington Antishocker.
To increase the breathing of the internals, a 32 mm hole was machined where the fuel pump hole should have been (Pl case :: remember!). I then fabricated a baffled breather tube and fitted a motorcycle air cleaner to stop dust getting in.
The rocker cover breathers were increased from 3/8" i.d. to 3/4" i.d. and a small baffle plate brazed over the breather outlet hole on the cover. This then necessitated enlarging the breather pipes on the Berg breather box-cum-oil filter to take the larger hose. Another motorcycle air filter was used on top of the Berg breather to stop any restriction in the system.
As far as the oiling went this was somewhat more perplexing and a lot of testing and rethinking was needed before the final tolerances was initiated. A deep sump already had a quadrangle set-up with flapper valves so that the oil in the sump could only ~-find its way from the four outer corners into the central pick-up area. The only thing that could possibly stuff this up would be if the oil wasn't returning to the sump fast enough.
As the oil pressure had always been adequate (when the oil was there to suck up) at 700 kpa at 7000 rpm with a 30 mm Berg pump. When fitting a larger oil pump you not only get a higher pressure but also a much larger volume. Therefore, if we cut down the volume being pumped then it will take longer to drain the 3.5 litres in the sump giving us a few extra seconds of supply before we run dry. A 26 mm oil pump was fitted as a result of this logic.
How to get more oil into the deep sump?
Once again a two-pronged attack was required. A new oil pick up was bent with open flowing bands so that there was no added weld-on parts that picked up the oil in the sump. The hood that normally went over the oil strainer area was also not used so that the oil in the engine sump had a much larger area to fall through.
As I always ran the oil level at the top mark on the dipstick, and already used windage pushrod tubes, the premise was that a fair bit of oil was sitting in the rocker cover area (because we could not stop the oil from running up the push rods on very hard cornering). A quick look at Col Mathews' Porsche to see what "Big Brother" was using gave us the answer. Two 0.75in. oil returns were fabricated on the bottom of each rocker cover going straight down into the top of each of the deep sump's four corners. Viola!
As it turned out this system has worked perfectly with the main bearings and the cam bearings being changed only annually and the rod bearings at half yearly intervals.
Now that the engine reliability problems had been solved we went about a full revamp of the steering and suspension set-ups. It's funny how the fickle finger of fate changes from the 'you beaut' thumbs-up of success to the heavenly pointed middle finger of despair in a matter of seconds.
Friday night's trip to the first round of the Hillclimb Championships at Bathurst was miserable; lousy weather, rain, sleet, fog - everything you'd expect going to Bathurst. When we got to the top of River Lett Hill doing about 80 clicks around an 80-rated corner while flat-towing the bug on an A-frame behind the Ute, I felt the tail of the Ute come out. After a big correction I thought I'd saved it only to then pirouette 360 degrees followed by a 1 80-degree turnaround and finish up against an embankment. In the Olympics that stunt would have gained me a series of 9.5's from the judges as it was all we achieved was some battered suspension and sheetmetal.
The left-hand front wheel from Joe's car had come around and hit the left-hand rear wheel of the ute. I had to disconnect the buckled A-frame and flat tow the Beetle into Bathurst with a wire sling. By ten the next morning we had a wheel alignment done, tyres changed over to some non-buckled wheels and a trip to the panel beater to have the bumper and damaged guard knocked out so that I could race.
Meanwhile, the right-hand rear trailing arm was still bent with 2.5-degrees positive camber instead of 1.5 negative, but we still managed to take the class win and set a new record on the day.
This last little adventure was probably the main turning point that helped me change the handling set-up of the car forever. As the beam was bent a tad I did the first of our camber restorations on the top arms and dialled in a two-degree negative per side and the car loved it.
I then got to thinking, "How much negative camber can a Beetle take before it gets totally out of hand?"
They say nothing improves the breed like racing and after one full year of hillclimbing I now have all the formulas for setting up and making a car handle straight out of the box. By "handle" mean being able to take on just about any street car on the road today and wave goodbye to them when you come to corners. We started off the year 35th outright at Bathurst and peaked at 10th outright at Huntley in 1993 and to say the team is having a ball is an understatement.
Once the handling and braking has been taken care off you can then concentrate on more engine development. The motor now sports 44 x 37.5 Berg race heads and extensively modified (by Henry Spicak) 48mm Webers. The big change for 1994 had been the fitting of a GB 315 (FK87) camshaft as opposed to the old GB 311 (K10) on 112 lobe centres which were set-up retarded. This one change took .6-second off our eighth mile drag racing times (8.9 to 8.3-see) and added 9 kmh to the terminal speed.
This yarn is being written just before the Parkes Hillclimb championship round, so the motor is once again apart but more for a freshen up and re cam to a GB 316 (FK89).
All these changes have made the Bridgestone 610s unable to cope so a change to gumball Dunlop 781s should help us to stick. And it will keep on going like this, trying to screw that extra little bit out of the Bug. Because one day it would be nice to go to South Australia to run the class at the Australian Hillclimb Championships and then blow all those twin cam Datsuns away.
We work on the theory that the harder you work the luckier you get.
Jeff Unwin has had a long association with aftermarket Volkswagen parts manufacturing guru, Gene Berg and when he was on a recent visit to Australia he took a ride in the car that he had also driven back in 1988 on its first campaign. So impressed was he with the car's performance that he faxed the following note to Jeff and Joe Smith.
"Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to drive your car in competition during my 1993 trip to Australia One thing that was extremely impressive about the advances from 1988 (the only other time I did this type of racing) to now was the handling. The car has progressed from being manageable to being magnificent. Having a vehicle go in the direction you point it allowed me to concentrate on engine rpm, proper shifting and the road ahead rather than how to keep it on the track when going around corners. Your suspension improvements are incredible. For me to get into a car (with right hand drive, no less) and not only be competitive, but to go faster than most of the best cars in attendance can only be attributed to suspension that works properly. Thanks again for making me look like a professional driver the first time out—I had a great time. Gene Berg"
