Perhaps its something to do with the air down here. Or it could be that our petrol is usually cheaper than in Sydney. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that Club VW lllawarra members have achieved a reputation for being petrol heads. Name any VW racing event and chances are that the lllawarra boys are there in force, and the forced induction boys are here in the lllawarra. You see, down here we've been playing with Turbocharging our air cooled VW's since 1985..
The first of these lllawarra Turbos was my own Kombi which I turbocharged with much enthusiasm and little knowledge starting in '85 and finally hitting the road in 1986. Back then the few turbo shops that were around didn't offer any information or help and there weren't many books around on the subject. So designing a turbo system that would work on an air cooled motor was a real "seat of the pants thing".
1 remember back then the turbo guys in the know used to think that a suck-through system with an SU carbie on a Torana was a pretty neat thing. A blow-through system was unheard of and an intercooler? Hey isn't that a thing they put on a truck between the motor and gearbox to cool the clutch?
One mechanic in the lllawarra who had a reputation of being able to extract ungodly horsepower from red motor Holdens with his turbo system was Bill Wilhelm. Towards the end of '85 he was about my last hope of finding out some of the secrets to allow my Kombi-Turbo project to start. He was friendly and helpful and agreed with the other guys who would talk to me that suck-through is the only way to go. If you use more than 6 lb boost you need a super water system to stop it pinging. He showed me a whole row of Holden cylinder heads cracked one end to the other from those of his turbo engines that really worked. Why did these crack, Bill? All turbos crack heads after a while, but they go great while they are going..
I got out of that place, jumped in my Kombi and went away camping for the weekend to clear my head. Being more relaxed I started thinking logically and decided to look a how some of the factory turbo's were set up. Using the Mitsubishi Starion as a guide I decided to go Blow-through, not Suck-through, use ignition retard under boost, low compression, an oil cooler, and a special Weber blow-through carby. I didn't know then how good a choice 1 had made, and it was a pretty brave choice as it was contrary to what all the turbo-wankers were preaching.
Finally up and running in Oct '85 the Kombi was AWESOME. On a cold day in winter it cooled adequately, but in warmer conditions it ran hot, pinged, and spat off four pairs of cylinder heads in 24,000 kms. If only we could have known then what we know now, is how the saying goes, I abandoned the turbo in '87, but not before another lllawarra clubbie was bitten by the Turbo bug.
Enter lain Hall, owner of a 69 semi-auto bug and looking for a power upgrade. At the time Iain was just about to build a 1835 with twin 40 DCN Webers. He'd just bought the Webers and was chasing extractors and a barrel kit when we met. We went away for another camping trip to the Snowy Mountains to talk VW's and on the way I offered him a drive of the Kombi. I didn't get to drive again that weekend and he was so taken with the smoothness and quickness of the turbo not to mention that cool (whine) as the turbo comes up on boost, that he sold the Webers as soon as we got back. His turbo project got under way.
About the only things I helped Iain with were getting his compression right, setting up a pressure-retard distributor and helping him build up his engine. He chose 1776, not 1835 as the barrels were thicker and 041 heads as they had larger inlet valves. We built up the engine quickly and the nightmare started soon after we bolted the engine into the car to see where the best place for the turbo would be. Iain wanted to mount the turbo outside of the engine bay so that it wouldn't superheat the air going into the cooling fan, but still had to mount it high enough to get a gravity oil drawback to the engine sump. I crawled under the car for a day and decided it was impossible. Iain wasn't daunted. The next day he came over after having dreamt of the ideal location at 3.00 am in the morning. He came up with mounting the turbo on the LHS of the gearbox, and it worked! He also decided that the reason my Kombi had run hot was that it didn't have an intercooler. He wanted his bug totally reliable. He found an intercooler in the trading post off a Saab. After fabricating some brilliant brackets and air ducts he mounted the intercooler on the RHS of the gearbox. It was beautiful! Opening the engine lid the engine appeared stock. All the serious pony producing hardware was underneath out of the way.
As with all good projects we finally got Iains turbo going the night before the VW Spectacular at Nambucca. We drove it up at 6 lbs boost and gradually turned it up to 11 lbs. The word awesome lost meaning. If my Kombi was awesome than Iains bug was something else. There are still stories circulating about a street drag between Iains turbo and certain 2180 sunroof beetle at Nambucca that year.
The big difference between my Kombi and Iains beetle was that with the simple addition of an intercooler, the motor cooled perfectly and was totally reliable. Iain did 130,00O kms on that motor before the beetle rusted away and the rego man informed him that it would take a miracle to get a pink slip and he was no miracle worker. Iain parked the dead beetle in the backyard of another lllawarra clubbies house, Dave Becker.
Iain decided he was finished with the beetle and was already dreaming of his next car a Wasserboxer 2110cc Karmann Ghia with twin sequential turbos, so when Dave asked Iain to sell him the motor out of his old beetle, he said YES. Enter the now famous Becker turbo Oval beetle.
Dave rebuilt the motor with a new case mild cam (just a little warmer than stock) and he built a larger exhaust system. Dave even fabricated a brilliant 4 into 1 collector up to the turbo (an engineering feat when you see how little room there is up there) and fitted the new motor to his bug. He has since dragged it in the 1/8 and 1/4 mile, Hillclimbed it, taken it shopping, taken it to Nambucca many times and it has always been super reliable. Who says turbo's run hot? At the moment he is fitting a proper turbo cam and Haltech fuel injection The result should be interesting!
By this time you've probably formed the opinion that the lllawarra crowd
is a little eccentric when it comes to turbo's. But all of the characters you've met so
far in these pages are mild grannies in comparison to the Illawarra Turbo God, Chris
Fraser.
Chris bought a clapped out '73 1700 Kombi which had a total loss oil system. You see when valve guides come out of heads the result is some interesting noise and more exhaust smoke than you ever thought possible. And so it was that of the Illawarra's annual event VW event at Logbridge Farm Chris wowed the crowd when doing his turn in the motorkhana paddock not only did his Kombi disappear, but also the crowd, buildings and car show were engulfed in his oil cloud of smelly fog.
I believe this single event is where Chris got the taste for being a crowd pleaser. He built the motor up to a 2 litre with Webers and a cam which gave him 130 hp but after a couple of years of that he wanted MORE. He decided turbo was the way to go after seeing how the other lllawarra turbos went.
Being a fitter, Chris fabricated most of the turbo system himself, and together with Michael Tait produced a exceptional turbo exhaust system. His raw material were a 2 litre type 4 Kombi motor, some Shimo modified heads a Pauter machine turbo hydraulic cam a Garret TO4 turbo, a huge B.A.S. intercooler and fan, single throttle body and Haltech fuel injection. After a few teething problems he now has a truly fast car. And the sick part is that his 1250 kg Kombi blows away many "fast" beetles that weigh only 800 kg. You see Chris's Kombi is reliable, runs cool and produces 270 hp at the rear wheels! and while many magazine stories apply poetic license to quote unreal horsepower figures this 270 hp is no idle boast.
In setting the E6 Haltech up the Kombi spent 6 hours on and off the Doctor Tune dyno in Wollongong. After applying correction factors to take in such variables as relative humidity, barometric pressure, ambient temperature, height above sea level and vehicle gearing the horsepower figure came out at 270! At the wheels! Which is about the same as Boris' (from Vintage VeeDub Supplies) amazing turbo drag beetle. Chris doesn't use an especially bullet proof gearbox. It's just a standard rebuilt 2 litre Kombi box. Therefore he just runs standard street tyres so that at the drags they will just spin and not break more expensive drive line components. Even so, at Eastern Creek he spun wheels madly through 3 gears and still pulled a 14.5 second 1/4 mile pass. But its even more impressive on the road and I speak from experience as I've been a passenger in it. Chris and I were travelling at 80 km/hr in the left lane and a young hoon pulls up next to us in a Ford Cortina with all of the options. You probably know the type-flared guards, ten inch mags, V8, twin exhausts with chrome tips, P plates, the whole works. He smerks across at us, goes back a gear and attempts to leave us behind in his dust. Chris goes back to 3rd, twists the boost control knob up to 24 lbs., floors it, instantly pulls 7,500, top gear, instantly pulls 7,000 speedo needle is hard up against the stop on the other side of zero, Cortina is one suburb back. This all look place in the Northern Territory of course. Why not come and see him race at the Nationals. In his new Type 3 fitted with all his Kombi running gear.
Reliably turbo charging an air cooled engine is no longer just a theory, and there are enough lllawarra turbo's on the road to verify that. With turbo charging you get the best of both worlds-all the quietness and smoothness and good fuel economy of the standard engine and all of the awesome torque and horsepower of a RADICALLY modified race motor. If you would like some free information on setting up a turbo in your Vee Dub ring me at HELLBUG ENGINEERING.
SHIMO