Nice day for a drive…

Well, about 20 meters anyway… Now I have finished reengineering the steering column (see post) I have repainted the steering tube and finished the installation. This has certainly made it easier driving the car in and out of the garage, as previously the steering column was not fully secured and…

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Electrical work

I have combined a months of work into this post, which is all about electricals. Whilst I did a lot of work figuring out and labelling the wiring harness that I bought off eBay, there is still a lot to figure out – largely by trial and error. I have…

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Parking brake

With the body off again, it was time to finish off the parking break setup. All throughout this project, we have tried to make the engineering as close as possible to an original Speedster and to this end, we have also re-engineered the parking brake on the Beetle chassis to…

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New Front Disc Brakes…

As part of the overall vision, we have always wanted to have the original stud pattern for the 356, which is a 5×205 pattern (i.e. 5 studs at a 205mm diameter). The donor chassis came with upgraded front spindles and brake discs already fitted (no calipers), but were the narrower…

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IRS Brakes…

The rear IRS a-arms have now been completed, with the exception of the drums themselves. The new wheel bearings, oil rings, etc. have all been installed, along with the brake backing plate and shoes that we completed the other week. The end result looks really great, it will be a…

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IRS Conversion…

The chassis that we bought came with swing axel, which we were ok with, but having thought it all through, we have decided to convert to Independent Rear Suspension (IRS). The main reason being, without knowing the final weight over the rear wheels (i.e. batteries, AC motor, DCDC unit, etc.)…

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Rear brake shoe assembly

Whilst we are waiting for parts and also figuring out what needs to be done and in what order, we have assembled the rear brake shoes ready for whenever they are needed. The older ones had seen better days and the backing plates were damaged, so have gone for new…

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