Steve Carter's 1303 Beetle.

Date of last update, June 14, 2008

I previously owned a 1972 1302 Beetle to which I had fitted a turbo charged water-cooled 2.1 litre Transporter engine, you can read about it here. I have now sold the 1302, so now I'm building a 1303 or a Volkswagen L as they are known in Australia. John Polden the original owner of the my "new" 1303 and I worked together for some time at a Sydney performance VW shop called Powertune. We have remained friends over the last 25 odd years and when John decided to move to Queensland Gold Coast I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. The was sold to V Force and stripped of its goodies then Richard at V Force gave me the rolling shell.

I've kept a lot parts from my 1302, brakes, suspension, seats, cooling system parts etc. Rather than use the water-cooled Transporter engine again, I have purchased 2003 Subaru WRX STI engine which has only done 13,000 kilometres to fit to my new project. 195 kW+ from the factory should make for an interesting ride. In place of the modified Type 1 box I'm now using a G50.

I got tired of turning up to VW events without a VW, so I bought this 1974 1600 Beetle or 1303 as they are known around the world.

Some photos of John competing in the bug, in the 1980s.


Line-up at Amaroo Hillclimb pits in the early 1980s Peter Perazza's White 71 Superbug My old yellow 72 Superbug The blue 1303 Bug I have now.		John Polden the original owner of my 1303 competing at Amaroo and Silverdale Hillclimb in the early 1980s, it was a street car then, running a 2180 cc Type 1 motor with 48 IDAs, it gained many FTDs at various speed events and it used to do the 1/4 in mid 13s back in the early 1980s. John later fitted a Mazda 12a rotary motor that first saw duty in a Group C touring car, John then ran the car as a sports sedan. The Beetle was put in his shed in 1985, when John decided to move to Queensland he sold the car to V Force, then I acquired it from V Force.

Picking it up from V Force, April 2003 I then took it to friends shed in Picton. The 1303 is in very good condition rust wise, just few holes drilled here & there.	Just got it back to my place after being in storage in a friends shed at Picton. 1st wash for 20 years. September 2004	Previous owner John Polden had used the car as a rotary powered sports sedan and had fitted a rack & pinion from a 1975 Beetle.	He went to great lengths to make sure there was 0 bump steer.	2003 WRX STI engine, has only traveled 13,000 klms

Fitted a single tailpipe rear apron	I bought a Hella Audi A3 Xenon light conversion kit, I'm going to fit these into some 911 headlight shells	The light modules will be removed and fitted behind some clear Porsche 356/early Beetle headlight lenses.	They even came with headlight levelling ECU. Got to love EBay.	This is what the Xenon lights should look like under clear early Beetle headlight glasses, the Aero mudguards use early Beetle headlight apertures, which are also the same as 911 headlight apertures.


I'm going to use a GT2 style wing from V Force. Here is the 1st one made fitted up to Dak to the Future. The air intake will direct cool air into the air cleaner, this was one of the main reasons for using wing on my new car. I will again be using "Aero look" mudguards.
			I've also used some alloy 944 trailing arms, they move the CV flange on the axle out 125 mm per side, this will help with my 930 CV angles, as I'm moving the box forward 100 mm
Cut out in the rear parcel shelf, for the top of the motor and for the transmission to come through.	The G50 gearbox is sat on floor so I can determine where the chassis needs to be cut. I have been working out CV angles by drawing with chalk on the floor.	Chassis has been cut-out roughly to take the G50, used a 9-inch angle grinder and a saber saw. Before the measuring for fitting the G50 I made the car level front to rear and side to side. Now I will put the G50 back under the car, level it gain and work out if any extra needs to trimmed from the chassis.


This is the hole I made to mount the G50 shifter, needs a bit more welding and grinding to tidy it up. I will do this after the chassis & pan are separated.	The stock G50 shifter mounted on the tunnel.	The stock G50 shifter & linkage. Rather than bend the shift rod after shortening, I'm thinking of using a flexible universal at each end.		Comparison between a stock Beetle transmission and G50

				I've bought a Saab hydraulic slave cylinder from Albins Off Road.

			Starting to reinforce the chassis where it has been cut to make way for the transmission. I used part of a chassis fork. it's just tacked in at the moment, ran out of gas. Because the centre section of the chassis has been cut away, I will be using some 1500 Beetle/40HP length 26 mm torsion bars. When I picked up the torsion bars and adjusters from Richard at V Force, we talked about the best way to mount the adjusters. Richard did this drawing for me.
Welding a piece of chassis fork from an old car on the right hand side fork to give it bit more strength.
		Welding some 1 inch x 2 inch tube reinforce both chassis forks, another section will come across the top from the trailing arm pivot box to join it.
		I made a jig to position the G50 on the frame horns. I positioned a stock Type 1 trans in the correct place but 100 mm forward. As I wanted to the G50 to mount 25 mm higher I welded some 25 mm tube under the jig. The higher mounting will help with sump clearance for the motor and also gives me enough clearance for the 930 CVs to clear the frame horns.
The G50 is very hard to keep stable on a jack, so I made this bracket to hold it on my jack.
I have made a top mounted Berg style mount. The reason for this is to support the gearbox when the motor is removed. I'm planning to use the factory Subaru mounts to support the motor near the bell housing.				The yellow thing you can see in far left of this picture is a fence post level, ideal to make sure that the car level, east to west.
The hardest part was making sure that the G50 was centred properly on the chassis and was level.
I've used the stock G50 alloy mount, I welded some tabs onto the chassis for it bolt onto and I had move the mounting slightly using some aluminium blocks.
Well, I have finally found some time to work on the bug again, I last worked on it just before Easter 2006, its now late August 2006
I cut the centre spline from 2 chassis and the had Dave Stocker at LMS make up an outer sleeve so that they could be slipped down the torsion bar tube an welded in.
I welded the splines in with "rose bud" welds so that 40HP / 1500 Beetle length 26 mm torsion bars poked out the correct amount to mate up with 944 spring plates.
Did some reinforcing today on the torsion bar housing. More welding needs to be done, I will do this after the body comes off again.
Today, I widened the engine bay area around the bumper bracket. I'm going to do the 1st trial fit of the engine soon. I'm leaving my options open, as to whether I have a removable rear apron or not, but I have built this feature in if its needed, I hope its not needed. As my motor has variable valve timing there is a huge lump on the left rear cam cover that I had to be careful to make room for.

Oh well, I had to make the rear apron removable, these motors are real tight fit and are also a pain as they want to fall off the jack all the time, that's why I made motor dolly with wheels, even when the motor is sitting on the floor it wants to fall over onto the flywheel. You will notice that I have jack stands under the engine dolly, this is to prevent the weight of the motor tipping the car over backward, might not happen, just being careful, it actually did happen to me while fitting a motor to Notchback that no front-end in it.

I made up a bracket to keep the transmission centred while I fit the motor, I had to remove the Subaru motor mountings as they bumped into the chassis fork ends. I think I have a simple solution for this problem. I want to use these mounts as G50 has no supporting mounts in this location, what I plan to do is make a bracket to attach the Subaru mounts to end of the chassis fork.
Got some work done this week. I'm going use this Bay Window Kombi transmission frame that I bought at the Valla swap for $5.00 to give some extra support for the transmission, this will also be useful to keep the transmission steady when the motor is removed.
I couldn't use the stock Subaru engine mount locater as it made the mounts foul on the chassis horn, so I made these units up.
I have added some extra braces to the chassis fork supports
Here you can see how close the cam covers come to the rear apron, even with the motor 100 mm forward.
I'm thinking that I might use a Wasserboxer header tank, a new one, this is the old one from my 1302..			This is how I think I will integrate the Wasserboxer header tank with the Subaru system.
I've made this rear mount, utilising the Subaru mounts, the middle of each left & right section bolt in. (Far right.) The Bay Window Kombi transmission frame in place, I nearly made myself a major headache with this unit, when I didn't leave enough room for the starter to be removed with the transmission in place, lucky that I realised this in time.
Started looking at rest of the car today, found a little bit of rust in the rear of the front guard, it has been repaired before. I'm pretty sure that this is the only rust in the car.			Its fixed now.
I'm debating whether to mount the radiator like I did in the yellow car. I see 2 advantages here, 1. I know it works, 2. I have room for future inclusions, I may need fit an oil cooler and I want to run the radiator for my air too water intercooler in the front.
This is the way a few other local WRX bugs have their radiators mounted. It has a much lower profile and Jak and Paul from the Aussie Veeddubers forum seem to have had no problems so far.
I was contacted the other day by friend who had a PWR air 2 water intercooler that he wanted to sell, as it was too big for his project. Its a 6 inch by 10 inch unit which is rated to 650 hp. Needless to say, its ideal for my car. I have mapped out the charge air path with green arrows.
1303 or L bugs as they are called in Australia, have a history of body damage being caused when the circlip that holds the bonnet/hood falls off. To overcome this problem I drilled out the original circlip stud and fitted a bolt instead. This is fairly easy on passenger side, but on the drivers side I needed to cut a larger hole with a hole saw.
I recently started do some work on gas struts for the hood/bonnet, I will need to bolt a support for the gas strut into the boot area. I welded a 8mm stud into the hinge pivot.
I finished the intercooler pipe work today, Brad a Westside Mufflers in Padstow did great job with aluminium welding, I will only need to plumb in a blow off valve now. Now I can concentrate on getting a firewall made up to cover all this stuff up. It made it much easier working with everything exposed this way. The back seat will need to have a bit of a hump in it. I will be using the Grocco water pump from my old yellow car and a Subaru RX intercooler radiator in the front of the car. As you can see the charge air will have a very short path.
This is the Grocco water pump from the yellow bug, which I will be reusing to circulate the water in the intercooler system.
This is the old radiator from the yellow bug, in front of it is the condenser for the air conditioning and the Subaru RX intercooler radiator.
I haven't mentioned it before but I'm going to fit air conditioning to this bug, this is roughly where the evaporator will sit behind the custom dash I intend to fabricate.
Nothing much to photograph at the moment, I've been working on my backyard a fair bit and at night I've been doing some seam welding of the shell.
I had some spare time so I made a graph to demonstrate the difference in gear ratios between a stock 1303 VW trans and the G50 at 6000 rpm shift point with a 25.315 inch tyre (235/45x17)
I have finally been able to get back to doing a bit on my bug. I have finished some of the seam welding around the fire wall and inner rear mudguard area. I'm making a frame out thin wall 25 mm tubing.

Still working on the firewall. I received my modified 944 stubs the other day, these will take Porsche 930 turbo CVs
I've been a bit busy on other things. I just got some CNC pedals for the brake and clutch from V Force.
I just bought some replica Porsche 17x7.5 23ET wheels on Ebay. The 23 ET is an unusual offset, I believe that these were made to suit early 911s and 944s as a 7 inch Fuchs or Cookie cutter has the same ET. So these wheels being a 7.5 they protrude an extra 6 mm each side of a 7 inch Fuchs. On my old 1302 I used to run 7x16 23ET inch Fuchs on the front and 8x16 10.6ET on the rear. I know the fronts will be OK, so after adding in the wider track that the rear alloy 944 arms give me and doing some calculations with an online wheel offset calculator, I worked out that these wheels should fit OK. I did a trial fit today with an Aero mudguard held in place and it all looks OK. I have been doing some work on the firewall, nothing exiting enough to photograph.
I've had a bit of time to put into reinforcing on the firewall, now I'm doing some sheet work on it. I made some mounts up for rear inertia reel seat belts.
I planned to put a Beesting radio aerial on the roof from a late model VW, but I was worried about future access to the aerial. On the later VWs it's possible to pull the hood lining down to repair or service the aerial. That's not possible with an old bug, so I came up with the idea making a frame that will sit under the hood lining but will accept a standard Beetle interior light, so if I need to service or replace the aerial I will only need to remove to interior light to gain access to aerial securing nut.
I had a friend make these pieces up to weld into the A&B pillars to give the body some strength. The one that are painted blue are the same units on a friends car.

I've been mounting the header tank and intercooler pump. I'm trying to have everything mounted before the car is painted.
When I started this build up I intended to use the Type 1 gearbox from my 1302, it had 4 Albins gears and a Quaife diff. I worried if it would stand up to the STI motor, so I sold it and bought the G50. I had already purchased a locally made adaptor plate to suit the Type 1 box (VW & Porsche share the same bell housing bolt pattern) along with a 200 mm flywheel and Stage 4 Kennedy pressure plate. I recently bought a replacement G50 adaptor plate, flywheel, pressure plate & clutch plate from Kennedy in the states. The aluminium pressure plate is the Stage 1 model and handles 550 ft lb of torque.
I've been a bit busy on other projects. I just bought an Autronic SM4 plug & play ECU. I planned to use the factory ECU for a while but this unit came up at good price, its completely tunable so it will account for any changes that I've made to the intercooling and exhaust and anything in the future.

Check back regularly to see how its going.