Aircooled VW South Africa

Hi guys,

I'm new here. I bought a Porsche 718 RSK replica yesterday. The car was built by a friend's girlfriend's dad. He never got round to racing it (his original intention), and can't afford racing it now so sold it to me. I've been looking for one for a while.

It's a space-frame chassis, unlike most RSK replicas that use the Beetle chassis. The 1600 dual port single carb motor is mounted in the middle, in front of the rear wheels with the standard 4-speed VW box mounted on the back ala Formula Vee style.

The car doesn't have doors, the chassis strengthening making an X where the door should be instead (was built for racing).

Suspension wise, the front is standard Beetle ball-joint type suspension with Bilstein shocks with a custom rear suspension running with coilovers. Front brakes are '67 Beetle disc brakes and rears are standard drums.

I bought the car without ever having driven a replica of any sorts or a Beetle for that matter. I'm not new to cars having owned a string of Alfa Romeos (145, GTV 3.0 V6, 147, Alfetta, Supercharged GT Junior) and I also race a Toyota Conquest while I have a '66 Austin Mini 1000 as a classic.

The handling on the Spyder is awesome, but I need to replace the old tyres it has on. Also, how high is a safe redline for a stock Beetle 1600 dual port motor? I'm used to close on 9000rpm in the race car

I want to take some nice pics of the car over the weekend, but for now, here are two pics when I picked it up yesterday.

Wow cool car, man.

A stock twinport motor redlined somewhere around 5500rpm.

If you plan at any time to follow the old mans dream and race the car, there are a boatload of parts that can help lift the rev limit up to where you are used to having it.

Stunning, gonna follow this

Thanks missioner,

I will look at racing it in the future, but for now it will only be a weekend cruiser around town and such. It doesn't really go all that quick, and I'm not pushing it till I can get new tyres fitted. Luckily the Beetle motor has lots of torque so it is easy to drive around town!

It's an extremely fun car to drive, even if it's quite intimidating being so low that most people don't see you on the road.

Nice car

BTW, stock redline for a stock 1600 is 4200rpm. They can go higher but you are doing damage at those points.

Very Nice looking RSK.

I drove it to my mom's place this afternoon, and as I stopped at her gate, the clutch went. Grinding noise when pressing the pedal. Friction plate? Thrust bearing? Either way, will take gearbox off.

Sorry to hear about the mechanical issue, its most likely that the release bearing collapsed and is now grinding away at the diaphragm spring on the pressure plate.

The box will be out by tomorrow. Seeing as I didn't build the car, there are things I picked up today while taking off all the random bits so the gearbox can come out. The exhaust will be changed to a twin-pipe setup. At the moment I can't get the bootlid off cause the exhaust is in the way.

Also, some of the rear suspension bolts were a tad loose. I'll replace them the locknuts. Few other random bits and pieces I need to change as well, but luckily all is simple enough!

Got the box off today, one of the pins securing the thrust bearing onto the fork came off. So it dislodged off the fork and ground the fork onto the pressure plate. No damage really. Will just replace the thrust bearing, it sounds a bit worn.

Should have the car back on the road by the afternoon.

And it's all back together and driving again. R118 for a new thrust bearing and a few hours of hard graft

Now it's raining and I can't take it out. lol

Ah, at last an RSK with the engine in the correct place! It makes working on the gearbox so much easier too
Alfaquad, I'm building a 550 and would like to know what type of gearbox linkage is used. I cannot recognize anything in the photo in that regard?

How do you get the engine out? Unbolt the front of the car?

Piet wrote:Ah, at last an RSK with the engine in the correct place! It makes working on the gearbox so much easier too
Alfaquad, I'm building a 550 and would like to know what type of gearbox linkage is used. I cannot recognize anything in the photo in that regard?

I will take some pics for you, but it's basically a single rod from the front that hooks onto a bush just behind the seats which goes onto another rod with a 90° that is welded onto that which then hooks onto the selector.

I love 550s! Would love to see your build.

Tony Z wrote:How do you get the engine out? Unbolt the front of the car?

Lol, gearbox is the engine's mount. With the gearbox off the motor is completely loose. So an elephant jack will work just fine to get it out!

Believe me, I have to pull the motor out my race car cause I ran bearings on the stupid 20v. That is a lot more work than what I managed to do in a day here...