Aircooled VW South Africa

I haven’t been back to the site for a long time, mostly due to being to busy at work but i will start visiting and posting details.

My ride is a black speedster fitted with a SJ20 2 liter turbo charged Subaru motor. The conversion was done by Signature performance that did a fantastic job. Marius has lot of experience in engine conversions not just into beetles. He engineered the adaptor plate, flywheel adaptor in fact the entire conversion in house. Give him a call on 0760777342 and tell him "black Speedster" sent you.

Other mods that I have done include rear disk brakes from goldwagen (drilled to take 5 x 100 wheels and a custom front disk brake setup. We used disks from a seven series BMW, machine the centres out and turned up spacers and hats, we used the front hubs from the goldwagen diskbrake conversion and mounted a set of beautiful Porsche 4 pot calipers (964 if I am correct) This setup works brilliantly, the pedal is quite firm but very easy to modulate. I thought I might need to put a brake biase adjuster in but it is not necessary. Am I allowed to mention suppliers on this forum?

With the first motor installed (yes it has gone on to where dead engines go!) it made 183KW on the wheels and 285nm of torque. Not bad for a car that weighs 850kgs!
Needles to say it goes like stink! Ask the driver of the new BMW M5 (V10) about the little black car that gave him a hiding!

The wheels are TSW splits with 225/40-18 all round. Traction is just amazing with almost no wheel spin. I have installed a custom flywheel with the water cooled 2.1 kombi pressure plate and standard clutch and it seems to be coping quite well with the power.

I have a perfect power engine management system installed, the XMS4 with sequential injection and wasted spark ignition. A lambda sensor is fitted to correct the fueling. Helps a lot when setting up the car.

Back to the motor, on a beautiful evening dragging between two circles (long way home!) I uncounted a small electrical problem, the number one rod went through the alternator. No not really the alternator is just fine however the rod bolts snapped and sent the rod through the block. You have never seen so much smoke! I nearly shat myself. By the way the motor still ran just fine on three but I was to chicken to drive it like that! Coming back to the smoke I was standing there with my brand new fire extinguisher just waiting for the oil to ignite on the hot turbo and or exhaust fortunately it never caught fire.

I replaced the motor with another JAP import and this one lasted about 5000kms before it ran a bearing. I have now stripped the motor and found that the crank is still perfect. I will be putting a nice set of rods and forged pistons in soon. I will also fit a new oil pump, water pump, cam belt, cam belt tensioner and new pulleys (going to cost a buck).

for good measure I am going to install a bigger turbo and aftermarket waste gate. I want to run about 1 bar of boost and the previous setup seemed to top out at about .6 - .7 bar boost. Should be good for about 200kw. I want to be able to rev it to about 8000rpm, which I am told is doable.

I remember you posting before yes. You seriously need to post some pics and videos if possible.
Also what gearbox are you using? Standard beetle wouldn't last long with that power and hard launches.

There is a suppliers section on the forum where you can post the details of your providers for the benefit of others.

Now come on.. get out that camera

The future plans for the car include fitting the Porsche 911 guages, fitting a new steering wheel (porsche). I have already installed reclining buckets seats and four point harnesses. Once the guages are installed i will have the interior redone in red,black and grey leather. I guess eventually i will do something about some saound but at the moment the sound of the motor is pretty awesome.

That reminds me I installed a second free flow box as i felt it was a bit too loud. It sounds more like a beetle motor at low engine rpms. You have been warned!

All of the boost pipes have been polished, the intake manifold and the alternator have received the same treatment.

I will get around to finding out how to load pictures sometime soon

Hi Eben.

I am using the standard beetle box. Changing to a different box is probaly not worth it, I also feel that trying to beef up the stock box is not worth the effort. With the amount of power that I have I don't need to abuse the box by taking my foot of the clutch sideways to get of the line in a hurry. By slipping the clutch a touch on take of and then planting my foot once the clutch has engaged works very well. The same goes for snap shifting, I am not looking for tenths with the gearchange I don't need to! By the same token I have another box lined up should this one fail or should i say when it fails.

Maybe the forum can point me in the right direction to some gearbox mods

How do I post a Pic?

Bugger can help with the gearbox mods and stronger gears etc.

I'm really keen to see pics of that braking system, it sounds like a pretty nifty conversion
sounds like you have a lot of fun with your toy.

Sorry guys it seems I am just Stupid!!!!!



i give up!

If this is what i have to go through to post a pic its not gonna happen!

I fixed it for you. Just follow the instructions:
You are copying WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more than just the second line.

Thought I help too

so many helpful people

Can we see some pics of the engine now

Lets try again



and now for the brakes



How do I get the image to show bigger. The pictures are 3.2megapixel and they show quite well on my PC? or do I have to use a huge picture from my digital camera?

My kind of speedster, Very nice.

black speedster wrote:Lets try again



and now for the brakes



How do I get the image to show bigger. The pictures are 3.2megapixel and they show quite well on my PC? or do I have to use a huge picture from my digital camera?

Try setting the resolution up on your camera

use the picture just as it comes from the camera