Aircooled VW South Africa

Ron&Gill wrote:

1972 wrote:

Man, that is beautiful! Maybe I am just a sucker for red cars, but whoevers building that, is building something very nice.

then im also a sucker for red

Truly is nice, any more pics of it shane?

My pic for the day is the Merc 560SEC (W126 shape)

I've had a fetish for these cars for many years, and hope to own one myself some day. I think that although they are very much under-rated, and there were no less than 74,060 coupés built, they are the next generation of classic Benzes. Yet, still relatively cheap today to buy, but expensive to maintain



Some stats:

Engine: 5.6 16V ECE V8 299 PS (295 hp/220 kW) 455 N·m (336 lb·ft)
0-100 km/h: 6.9s
Max speed (governed): 250 km/h (155 mph)
Fuel consumtion: don't even go there

I know it's a normal person selection (Pine ) but I still love it!!!!

Her is a couple more to add to my wishlist.....

BUGGOFF wrote:Truly is nice, any more pics of it shane?

you get my email with the links BUGGOFF??

Yebo, thanx shane.

Now that are what I wanna do one day

Hey guys,

My no.1



then



and then my daily runner will be....

After seeing Barry's rod, today's choice is.....

Hey Guys

MY Current TOP3
1959 Porsche 356a - good choice Muderick, you read my mind!
Ferrari California - preferably old one, but the new will also do (and I am not even a ferrari fan usually, just think its a beautiful car)
No 3, any fully original pre 70's ACVW! - Notch, Ghia, Beetle, Bus (as long as it has papers ! )

karmakoma wrote:Hey Guys

MY Current TOP3
1959 Porsche 356a - good choice Muderick, you read my mind!
Ferrari California - preferably old one, but the new will also do (and I am not even a ferrari fan usually, just think its a beautiful car)
No 3, any fully original pre 70's ACVW! - Notch, Ghia, Beetle, Bus (as long as it has papers ! )

Sorry dude but it wont come true unless you post the pic's.

Too True Vader

so here we go:

On my wish list for today is a Snow-Trac. It has an air cooled Beetle engine!

In 1954, Lars Larsson, the chief design engineer for a Swedish farm equipment company, AB Westeråsmaskiner, decided to develop a tracked vehicle to take him and his brother on fishing trips in the winter. The company put his snow vehicle into production in 1957. It uses a unique steering mechanism called a variator that allows the steering of a tracked vehicle to use a traditional automotive steering wheel instead of levers.

VW powered Snow Trac, 54hp, 4 manual speed transmissionThe Aktiv Fischer Snow Trac is a tracked vehicle, which was manufactured from 1957 to 1981 in Sweden. It runs on two rubber tracks powered by a Volkswagen flat 4 industrial boxer style engine and is suitable for both deep snow and soft surface use. The engine developed roughly 40 horsepower, but that varied from year to year as the earlier models developed 36hp, and later models developed 54hp. With a length of approximately 12' (3.6 meters) and width of 6'2" (1.9 meters) the vehicle is the size of a small car.

In the standard cabin configuration, only the driver is facing forward. The interior is equipped with side-facing bench seats and there are enough seats for 7 people (including the driver). The entrance is by a door attached at the tail. There are no other entrances, but many are equipped with a large sunroof, which could double as an emergency exit. Unlike most other snow vehicles, the Snow Trac uses a traditional steering wheel instead of levers. Early brochures describe it as follows: As easy to drive as a car.

The Snow Trac is made up largely of off the shelf automotive and industrial parts supplied by Volkswagen including an air cooled flat 4 industrial version of VW Beetle engine, a VW Bus transmission, and hundreds of surplus parts including steering wheels, shift knobs, and lighting components. A proprietary drive variator was adapted to the transmission to allow the use of a steering wheel to control the tracks. The variator alternately transfers increased power to one track while reducing power to the other track to affect a turn. Production of the air cooled VW engine ceased in 1981 in Europe and this effectively led to the demise of the Snow Trac, which ended factory production in Sweden.

Because of the common use of Volkswagen engines, transmissions and other critical parts, the Snow Trac is still a very popular vehicle with many 30 to 40 year old vehicles being used daily during the winter months. Snow Trac vehicles are commonly used as personal vehicles for transport, and often are used for providing tours to tourists in remote areas. The Roughwoods Inn, located in Nenana Alaska, runs a small fleet of Snow Tracs and Snow Masters for tourists in the winter months. The fleet at Roughwoods in is probably the largest fleet in ownership today. Other resorts and hotels also use Snow Tracs and other model snowcats to provide tours of remote snowbound areas.

Snow Tracs in use today are often modified and it is common to find overheating problems plague these machines because heat shield have been removed to make it easier to work on engines. There were 2 primary types of heat shields that were installed in Snow Tracs, a vertical heat shield that divided the engine compartment fore and aft or a horizontal heat shield that separated the muffler area from the rest of the engine compartment. In either case the function was ultimately the same, to keep the exhaust and muffler heat away from the engine. The vertical heat shield seems to have been commonly utilized on the Royal Marines and N.A.T.O. versions of the Snow Trac, it may have also been used on civilian versions. The horizontal heat shield is the most commonly found on Snow Tracs.

I know it is not aircooled, but this has always been on my wishlist....


And it must also be early Christmas, because I went and fetched it this morning