Air-Cooled GB: '66 Beetle

[Whumbachumba]

I figured I would start on this right away since it's probably going to take me a while to finish it. I'm starting with the Tamiya 1966 Beetle 1300.



From there I might go a couple different routes. Right now it is set up for a out-of-box build. However, i am either going to rat it out or swap in a 930 Turbo motor. Luckily that motor is also air cooled and no-one said that the motor had to be factory. So right now I'm building it as if it were OOB but am not going to make any chassis/suspension assembly until I make a decision on how to build it. Luckily my roommate owned a 50's oval window Beetle with a Porsche 1800 motor swapped in so he will be able to help out on a lot of decisions and potential problems.

Now enough with all the text, it's probably boring you anyways and I could be saying pretty much anything and you wouldn't know cause you are just looking at the pretty pictures. Aren't you? Yeah you are, cause I do it too.













The transmission, air boxes, and axles was painted with a mixture that was something like 12 parts Chrome Silver and 2 parts Black. It gives it a really nice used, old look to it. Once the engine is put together I will weather it a little bit to make it look more rustic, maybe some "rust" too.



Haven't decided on a color for the body either. Once again it depends on how I'm going to build it up.

[Whumbachumba]

Some more engine work done.

[slk320]

nice work on the engine bits - are you brush painting?

[Whumbachumba]

Yeah. I don't have all of my paints here so I hand brush most of the stuff. Tamiya paints seem to thin out as they dry giving a fairly consistent finish. As for the silvers, they are a little dried out.

[Ferrari TR]

nice start.
I 'm gonna see if hobbylobby has this kit on my way home. like i really need another kit. lol

[MPWR]

Cool, I hadn't seen that anyone had already started on the group build!

Nice work on the engine- if that's hand-painted metallic, I'm amazed! This really is a great kit, and the engine is terrific. Classic old style Tamiya, on a classic car.

[Whumbachumba]

Ferrari TR, if you haven't picked this kit up you must. Al the Tamiya kits I've had are really nice, but this raises their bar even higher. I never expected this much detail within this kit.

Thanks MPWR. That means a lot coming from you.

I'm going to lower it without a doubt, but I don't know how to do it with this kit since the suspension set up is really weird. If it was just shocks and springs I could do it, but it has these weird control arm/leaf spring things that I don't know how to describe. If anybody can give me any insight on how to lower it I would appreciate it very much.

Some more progress done to the engine.

[Ferrari TR]

Nice progress.
A 40% off coupon and a couple of nearby hobbylobby's can be hard on the old wallet. I picked up one, i just need to decide how to build it now...

[MPWR]

Originally Posted by Ferrari TR

A 40% off coupon and a couple of nearby hobbylobby's can be hard on the old wallet.

I can imagine.

Originally Posted by Whumbachumba

I'm going to lower it without a doubt, but I don't know how to do it with this kit since the suspension set up is really weird. If anybody can give me any insight on how to lower it I would appreciate it very much.

It's certainly not the easiest kit to lower, but it does look possible. Unfortunately to lower the rear, you may need to undue some of what you've already done on the engine.

For the front, don't mess at all with the trailing arms (C10)- if you cut this part up, you're going to have serious strength issues with the front suspension. Instead, you can modify the uprights a bit (C42 and C45). Grind some height off of the top pivot points, and replace that amount by building it up with sheet styrene on the bottom pivots. A set of digital/dial calipers would help alot with this kind of modification, to make sure you've removed and rebuilt the same amount on each. It may not drop the front end much, but you should be able to get at least a scale inch, maybe two. Maybe more? -depends on your skill.

For the rear, obviously the trailing arms (C15 and C8) need to be sprung upwards. The problem is that the kit uses the drive shafts (C9) for structural support of the trailing arms. C9 already has a nice bend to it- if it were to be mounted in the transmission halves upside down (and C15 and C8 were to be mounted to it as such), it would probably drop the rear end a fair bit. The alignment lug on C9 would have to be removed. The points where C15 and C8 attach to C11 would have to be modified slightly to allow the arms to be mounted in a deflected position- and then these points should be solidly glued with epoxy or CA for strength. I'm not absolutely certain that there would be no fit conflict with other parts (that's for you to find out), but it looks like it should work. Also, 180deg reversed might not be the perfect position for C9, but a bit of test fitting should tell you what would work best.

Make sense?

[Whumbachumba]

Looking between what you wrote and the instructions it makes sense. I'm sure if I heated up C9 carefully I would be able to bend it as needed after I change the rear suspension. The flipping of C15 and C8 might work. Looking at the pieces however it seems that what would originally be the top mounting point of the shock would become the bottom. I foresee this being too low too the ground and causing problems. So I might have to adjust the shock angle or make some shorter shocks.

The front doesn't look too hard, just a lot of measuring, grinding, measuring, sanding, measuring, building up, measuring, drilling holes as needed, measuring, sanding, measuring, test fitting, measuring. Maybe a bit more measuring just in case. Thanks again MPWR.

[Whumbachumba]

Picked out the wheels I'm going to use for this kit. I don't know where they came from, but they look awesome under the car. Only problem is the bolt pattern and number of lug nuts.



I've also ordered the Fujimi Porsche 911R 1967 model so I can take it's engine and maybe some suspension parts for this build.

[Wishmaster]

One WIP to watch for me. Got the kit twice, one started by a friend (and partially f****d up) and a brand new one.

Keep it up

[Whumbachumba]

[Whumbachumba]

Got my 67 911R model in today, so it's time to get back to work on this thing.

[thadude]

Oh jolly can't wait