Ep 354 Super Beetles Only John List

Happy Friday guys and welcome to another episode of Let's Talk Dubs. I'm your host,

Bill T. Well, this one's getting out a little late for you on this Friday,

but just wrapped up a podcast with John List. John List is the guy that started

Super Beatles only, the original website back in the day, him and a buddy.

And we get into talking about Super Beatles. People heard that I picked up that sport bug.

And so I've got some emails back and forth and decided, you know what, let's get you on the

podcast and let's talk about Super Beatles mods and cool things to do with your Super Beatles.

So that's what's coming up on this podcast. So don't forget to support those that support

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I'm getting excited for that. You guys will see that the beginning of this week coming out. So

looking forward to seeing all you guys out there also during this podcast, you'll hear what the

plans are for the sport bug that I got and probably just going to make the thing a giveaway

beetle. So anyway guys, looking forward to it. Appreciate all you guys for listening. If you

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are going to be supporting us. So without any further ado guys, let's get into it this week.

John List, one of the originators of super beetles only.com and super beetle enthusiasts on this

week's let's talk dubs.

Lights.

Okay, everybody. So on today's show, as you guys know, we have, we get a lot of

listener emails and stuff like that. And I did receive a listener email from one of our listeners

that actually started a website back in the day called super beetles only and that listener's

John List and he's out in Modesto, California. So on today's podcast, we're going to be talking

about super beetles and all the different cool things are about super beetles. So

on today's podcast, I'd like to welcome John List. John, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, sir. Hey, so we, we exchanged a few emails back and forth and I know you're listening

and you heard about me picking up the sport bug and some stuff like that. So I know you've been

listening, you've heard a couple of podcasts about super beetles and stuff. And so you were

filling in on all the work that you were doing back in the day with super beetles only and

the super beetle that you had. And so, you know, the way we always start the podcast

is what's your VW story and how did you get into Volkswagen's?

Okay, this, you'll have to bear with me a little because this might take a little,

it will sound not like it's not multi related for a minute, but when I was in high school,

I had a 64 Chevy pickup with a Corvette engine in it. And I,

my dad was like a hoodlum hot rodder in high school and he was kind of living vicariously

through me. So I was always street racing the thing. Now I, I'm not proud of that. I'm not

something, not something I would encourage, but just, it's just the way it was. But when my wife

and I, who's my, I've been married 35 years, we were dating and we were out on the date and

I was, I pull up next to a light and I look over and I, you know, I street raced everybody. I mean,

if I sit in the first, it was the first car to light, I always was racing. I mean, like I said,

it's not something I should do or encourage, but I look over and there's this little economy car

sitting there and I'm like, eh, no big deal. So I didn't think anything of it. So the light turns

green and I take off and it's like, you know, the horse race thing where a horse, the horses

always want to be the first person while I go and I look over and it's still sitting there.

So I step on the gas a little and I look over and it's still sitting there. So I floored it

and finally start pulling away. And then when I let off the gas, it went sailing by and I looked

and what the heck was that? And it was a VWGTI. So this was in probably the early, very early 90s.

It was just something I made note of and I thought, huh, that's kind of cool. And so

years went by and a couple of cars later, I ended up purchasing a 86 GTI and I absolutely

loved the thing. Well, I, and I owned that car for 14 years. And in that timeframe, I also made

my wife become a Volkswagen person. So I kept buying her Volkswagen's water quilt, of course.

But over the over the years, I would go to car shows all the time and I started collecting

European car magazine, which had originally been called Volkswagen and Porsche magazine.

And so it's in one of those old magazines, I was looking through an article and I found

an article about about someone who had converted a beetle using a water-cooled GTI engine. And so

I thought, huh, that's something I might want to do. So, and I didn't know super beetles from

standard beetles, you know, like most people don't, they think super means it's fast or something.

And so it just happened that the car in this article was a super beetle. So I started researching

that and then looking online, this was, like I said, the internet was brand new. And I found a guy

who had a beetle that happened to be also a super beetle that he had already converted

to a GTI engine. And this is guy James Dunn from Lake Charles, Louisiana. So we spent several years

talking back and forth and comparing notes and ended up thinking that we'd like to start a car

club so online. And like I said, he was all the way in Louisiana, but we created super beetles only.

And so from there at the time that you get so your first super beetle, like you don't know,

you just bought the bug. What year was the super beetle? It was a 75 75, which is which

in hindsight, which I still had it because I didn't know then that 1975 was the only year

of the sedan that had rack and pinion steering, which is, you know, the, you know, something

that's really desirable now and unbeknownst to me. Well, it's funny how you, how you, you pick up a

beetle. Now, how soon after you picked up your super beetle, did you start running into other

air cooled people and kind of felt like you were on the fringe? Cause that's kind of a typical

thing that happens with some of the, some of the super absolutely correct. Um, well, so, so

I started, I started getting on shop talk forums. And then I looked into the Samba because everybody

talks about the Samba would immediately, I felt like the super beetles were the redheaded stepchild

of the Volkswagen world. And so I really, even though I joined, I completely never, never went

on the Samba at all because it just wasn't the scene I was, I was looking into. And so in doing

a lot of research, I had discovered their, um, K for cup racing in Germany, which it was difficult

to find much about it, but I kind of had the main idea that they were, it was, you know, they

essentially made race cars out of these beetles. So that's kind of the, the pattern I was going for.

Yeah. And then, so you get this beetle and so you can't really go in the Samba,

because it's not really like cohesive to what you're doing. And everybody's getting information

from, I mean, I remember when I was doing my bus in the early 2000, it was like, um,

on and door was a website that sold German look stuff, you know, the stainless steel exhaust

for the type fours, all that kind of stuff. What websites, what websites were you able to go on if

it wasn't shop talk forum stuff like that? I mean, were you, was there anything on the vortex for

you guys? Uh, no, no, not at that time. There's stuff there now, but there was MBT, um, which was

a German company and there was Kerscher. That was the only two I really knew about. I didn't know

about CSP back then, although it turns out that in my looking for, uh, um, conversion parts and

things like that for my, for my beetle, I had, I purchased, I was starting to go on, um, the eBay

from Germany, even though I didn't, I just used Google translator when it, you know, trying to

figure out what things were. And I started looking for an adapter and it turns out I had a really,

I bought a super rare, um, adapter that CSP sold for a period of time. It was noted by having this

really weird, iridescent green color to it, but I picked that up off of journey eBay. And I mean,

it was always taken a chance because, you know, it's half a world away ordering stuff, but I never

had any issues. And I, for a while I had this, um, I had this strange looking adapter and I just

started following, you know, what the stuff that you would, you know, read about what K for cup

racers had done. So I looked for coilovers, I put, um, the torsion bars out of a Porsche 944,

which all fit. And so to just clarify for some of our listeners that might not be familiar with

Super Beetle. So the Super Beetle has like a single lower A arm or an I arm in the front.

That's just pivots like control arm, like a lower control arm similar to a 914, right? So it's got

torsion bars that go that mount parallel with the running boards that lock into the front arms.

Well, they, they, they index into the front lower arm and then they have a lock point back in the

chassis that creates the tension. Is that right? No, no, no, that's that for a 914. Yes, that's

correct. But on a Super Beetle, what you have literally is you have a free floating lower

control arm that's on, uh, attaches up by a pivot on either side of the, you know, the center tunnel

comes out at what's called the hammerhead. And then on right in the center of the hammerhead,

there's a pivot on either side and the arm itself is free floating and it's attached on the end

to the, the ball joint attaches to a spindle and then the spindle attaches to a strut.

And that's what makes that, that's what's unique about the Super Beetle is that

it's having the strut suspension. Okay. Yeah. So it doesn't, so it doesn't,

so a Super Beetle doesn't run off of the strut. I mean, it doesn't run off a,

oh, a torsion bar. It runs off of a strut suspension. No, torsion bars in the back. I was

referring to 944 torsion bars. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. Cause it's just like any other beetle in

the rear. So, okay. So, and the 944, so now we're kind of going to get into the different

torsion bars and stuff because the torsion bars, the density of the torsion bar or the amount of

spring in the twist dictates kind of the weight load and stuff that they'll carry. So, correct.

As you get this Super Beetle and you start running into other beetle guys in, in Modesto,

which isn't Modesto, is Modesto where they filmed, um, American graffiti?

Or was it? Actually, George Lucas went to my high school,

County High School. Nice. So, yeah, it's, it's got a semi-famous. And in fact,

that's what I'm hoping to get my car ready, um, for the graffiti cruise this year,

which is like the end of May. Oh yeah. That's what I'm, that's what I'm shooting for.

Nice. Even though I've had the car for seven years, but I finally,

so my point is Modesto is kind of a hot rod area, right? Like beetles aren't real popular

in that area as much as. People, honestly, super people aren't popular

anywhere. They're starting to be simply because I think that the older cars are just starting to

rot away and, and people are having to buy newer and newer cars to have something that's functional,

but they were, I mean, when I got into them, they just, you would say, say a Super Beetle,

people just like roll their eyes and like, oh yeah, no, that's, they weren't interested in all.

And I've, I've always liked the curved window ones. I'm kind of a, kind of a snob about it,

even though there's nothing wrong with the flat window ones, they actually look,

they're very photogenic in my opinion, but as far as functionally, I think of the round,

the curved window as more aerodynamic. It's just, I mean, you know,

it's like pushing a rounded off brick through the air, but still, I just look at it that way.

Well, and so you have a, so you have a Super Beetle and you realize that you're not really

part of the classic vintage VW guys, because they're all into something else. And so you kind

of lean the way of the K for cup cars. And then you guys decide you'll start this website called

Super Beetles only. And then that'll be kind of a forum, a platform for you guys to have and post

pictures and do that kind of stuff and not get bashed on by all the guys on the song, but they

like to just do nothing but bash on people. So you guys get this going. And now, and now obviously

with the Super Beetle, right, for some of those people that don't know, it's got the McPherson

Stratford and typically the curved windshield. It, the seats sit on a completely different

pedestal mounts. It's got a full dash with the curved windshield. So it's got a full padded dash.

And a few other, it's got the elephant feet, tail lights and, you know, a couple,

like, let me, let me clarify a little bit. Yes. So the Super Beetle run was from 1971

on. So they, but they only made sedans from 71 to 75. Every convertible from 71 on is a Super

Beetle, including the first two years in the first two years of Super Beetle, 71 and 72,

have a flat windshield just like a standard Beetle. The dash is literally just like a standard

Beetle. They had the nose is slightly longer. And if you look at the, the cowl on the, the curved

window ones, the cowl has vents in it. Whereas on the early, the flat window ones, the vents are in

the hood and it's a slightly longer hood. So they, the hood, they absorb some of the,

the space from the, the more the windshield protrudes with the curved window by, by shortening

the hood on the rounded round windowed cars. Right. And then you're, so when you have this car,

obviously you're kind of more performance minded. You come from like the, the water cooled

scene where it's kind of everything. I was crossing for years and everything's kind of

Euro inspired, right? So correct. You kind of start going down that road. And then obviously,

you remember any particular magazines or any cars that were like, you saw this car and you're like,

that's my goal with my Super Beetle. Basically, it was just, I didn't know, you know, I didn't know

about cars being named or like, you know, cause I, I hear on your pot when you, I listen to your

podcast, you talk about, you were talking to a guy, I think the last one I was listening to

where he introduced these cars at shows and they were, they were kind of a named car,

you know, really super done to the nines kind of thing. I was, I've never been to that level.

I'm, I'm like a functional, my car, I don't really care so much about how it looks. I mean,

I want it to look good, of course, but, but it's more about the, the functionality of it. And I

think that came from the, the K for cup guys, although those cars are all, you know, high-end

race cars. But yeah, there's a thing I watch that comes out every year, the Treppen Volkswagen

Day or something like that. They run it, looks like they run it in old, it's in Germany and they

run it in old. The track is literally adjacent to an old nuclear facility. So you see the big

stacks in the background when they go around the track, but they're all painted in super, you

know, like all these guys come out with these really well-tuned cars. So, oh, another one of the

thing I wanted to clarify, you would ask, you mentioned about the elephant foot tail lights,

those literally only started in 1973. So the first two years of Super Beetle have a lot of

similarities to a standard Beetle. The only, literally the only difference is, is the having

the McPherson straight front suspension, which is the, a style designed after the type four cars

that Volkswagen introduced in 1968. So it's got the same triangular, which I was wanting to

clarify with you on your car. I've never owned a sports bug, although I'd absolutely love to, but

I don't know if the sports bugs have the early style suspension or the later style suspension.

Yeah, I might have to get underneath there and look at it because they're, they, they made them

in 1973. So, which is probably 73 was a year. Correct. So halfway through the year, even though

most people look at it this way, a flat window car is considered a 1302,

which is what the European designation for them was. Right. We called, they were only called

Super Beetles here in Australia. They called them L bugs. And I think they even called them

L ass bugs for the curved window and L for the, I'm not certain on the designation for Australia,

but, but only here were they called Super Beetle. So right. So flat windshield,

1302, curve windshield, 1303. Correct. Okay. So, and so, but halfway through 1973,

so the curve window was introduced in 1973 halfway through the year, they converted to that later

style suspension, which is very similar to a rabbit or in fact, 924, 944. Now, when you say they

converted the suspension, what's the difference between the 73, 73, and it looks like 73 and a

half to 70, 72 suspension. So the, the 70, it's 71 to 73 and a half is it's got a, it's a longer

strut housing with a triangular flange that's on, located at the very bottom of the strut.

And then the, the bulge or the spindle bolts to that triangular flange. And then the ball joint

goes down through straight down and it goes into the, into the lower control arm. Whereas in 1973

and a half, it's got a slightly shorter two with a flag sort of styles connecting flange,

which is two holes that go horizontally as opposed to on the earlier cars, they go straight,

they go vertically. And the spindle sandwiches in between the two, the two.

Between the two flag part. Yeah. And it's just like a rabbit or, or, or a 924, which was,

the 924 was, so this was the thing I thought about when we discussed me being on your podcast.

The 924 was originally supposed to be a Volkswagen. It was commissioned and there's,

there's details that I may miss and there's people who know this story, but

Volkswagen commissioned Porsche to design the car for them and it was supposed to be their first

sporty car, which, and I think I could be wrong, but I think it was supposed to be a

Scirocco, but I'm not certain. And this was before the rabbits came out, but there were no,

no rabbit was coming out too at the same time. But anyway, the gas crunch hit in the seventies

and they decided not to go forward with the sports car project and Porsche designed, had

having designed it and know, knew the project, bought the design from Volkswagen and became

the Porsche 924. However, when Volkswagen was originally commissioned the project, they asked

that Porsche use as many parts, spin parts as they could. So that's why it has an Audi engine.

It's got the rear suspension is literally the super beetle suspension. So because of that,

a lot of those parts will literally bolt directly to any IRS car. So, so, so you're saying that

924 stuff will convert over and 44 not. So 944, not 924.

Both of 924. It's the same. I mean, the 924 is the evolution of the 924. So by the time they hit the

became the turbo Porsche had started changing things enough that they're not direct bolt-on pieces.

However, a lot of the parts from the cars prior to 1986. So the 924 started in 77.

And then in 1983, it converted to the 944, but it was just an evolution. That's why they look

very similar. Yeah, I actually have a 924 s. I think it's an 88. Someone gave someone gave to me.

And so it's sitting on my lap next door. Now you're saying this. I'm like, oh, maybe I'll just

take the struts off that car and put them on the super beetle. So another thing I just know this

is something I've only learned probably in the last two years, even though I've been fiddling

with these things for for many, many years. But so I always I had originally taken a

rabbit GTI strut housing and put a coil over kit on it and made it into a coil over for my one of

my Beatles years back. So and the reason I chose the rabbit GTI strut housing is because the holes

that the holes that mount the flange, the strut to the spindle, that flange there,

the top holes are slotted so it allows you to to adjust the camber. Okay. So when I just the

problem with that is that rabbit struts are literally two and a half inches shorter than

super beetle struts. And so you do get two and a half inches of drop, but you can't that's

you're limited to that you the late super beetle suspension, the practical limit is about three

inches. So for dropping, right. And so I wanted to be able to have some flexibility because

I didn't like that it was static. Once I once you do that, even though you have a coil over,

you really can't adjust it because things start to hit if you go too low. And you can't go higher

because it's limited by the extension of the insert itself. Right. So what I decided when I

after I had done a conversion on my previous car, and when I got this 74 that I have now,

I decided to redo the coil overs and use 944 strut housings as a as my basis. And when I had

literally I bought a set of used ones off the off of eBay or somewhere, and I'm holding them

in my hand and looking at the one from the super beetle, and they're literally identical. The only

difference is the slotted top hole, but the tube itself is identical, the length is the same,

the little the mounting flanges are the exact same. So and the only other difference is the break

hose tab is sits two inches shorter than the same exact plane, but two inches lower on this on the

944. When you're when those struts are on the 944, you literally they're opposite. So like the

break hose comes in from the backside on a 944. So when I use them on my beetle, I flip sides.

And so the put the break hose tab in the exact same location just two inches shorter. So I sent

you a picture showing my my just breaks on my car. And you can know reason I literally took that

picture was because I had had a guy make me custom good year break hoses because I needed him to be

a little bit longer. And so I took that picture he'd never done Volkswagen once before he wanted

to see so that's what that picture was actually for was to show that break hose. And then

probably six months later, I am in my normal fashion, I changed to freedom stainless steel

brake hose line. So so now what year did you start doing the mods on your stuff? I have always done

mods. But I mean, I never I'm not a purist. I've never ever not my plan to mod my cars because

my question is what year did you start doing mods on your super beetle when you had this? So that way

you could like you were looking for lowering stuff what was available on the market statewide?

You know what I mean? Like what? Well, I mean, I started looking that's what I'm saying. So with

my very first 1975 that I had that I got somewhere in the middle 90s, I was immediately looking sourcing

I that's what my the very first struts that I coilovers that I created was back in the 90s.

So this is before there before we can find stateside before we can find like other

like lowering options for super beetles? Correct. In fact, so

top line existed top line is a company that John Chabot started it. It's a very brilliant on his

part because everybody disliked the super beetle back in the day and he he's every vendor sold a

couple of super beetle things. But John gathered everything and he specialized in super beetles.

And so he used to sell an agenda. It was just like the impia justice strut. It was his own thing,

but it was literally the same design. And when we started at super good was only James and I

he flew out because he was going to go with me to a I live in Modesta. So I'm away,

you know, 80 miles south of Sacramento. So I started going to the buggerama

up there in the Sacramento Raceway every year. And so I invited him out.

And we were going to go to that event. And then we were going to go down drive all the way down to

LA meet John Chabot, because we had asked him if he would sponsor our site. We said, you know,

he was the only guy who was only doing super beetle stuff. And we were starting a website

that was super beetles only. So he naturally it was fine. You know, we he agreed to it. And so

we went down there and we took him to dinner. And we sat down with him for about two and a half,

three hours, just explaining, because in all our impotence or all our inspiration was coming from

the kaffir cup guys was like, this is what you want. And this is what you want. So we kept

going on and on about it. And he was a little bit resistant because he's he likes to, you know,

his his stuff was successful. But what we said that you really want to have a skinny spring

on the strut, not so much for the adjustability per se, but because it gives you more room for

tire. Yeah, because there's this literally that in the spring is not huge on a super beetle,

but it's big enough that it really limits the amount of space you have underneath a factory

fender. Right. And so he took our idea and ran with it and redesigned his struts and came up with

with the struts that he has that are his greatest, his by far his best seller.

And people like you go on the same button, you say, Hey, I want to lower my suit, everybody says

top line, because it was that's what I say was brilliant on his part, because he he picked a

niche that, you know, that it was just there's, you know, tons of vendors selling Volkswagen

stuff. Right. There's very few people that are literally limited to super beetles. And that's

what he did. So and so we that went wild. I don't remember because I'm sorry, I didn't mean to

interrupt you. Go ahead. Go ahead. I was going to say we were we

for quite a while, but we started having issues because like I said, this was early in the internet

era and we started having issues with the quality of our server. We started, you know,

having difficulty with like when our server would go down for days at a time and stuff like that.

And so at some point, James made some kind of repository for all our information. So for a

long time you could and then the site just kind of disappeared for a little bit, although we were

the guys were still we still communicated, but the site was getting difficult to utilize. So

they made a repository for all the information because over the years we got all these guys

who know because every in every enthusiastic field, you get people who really know what they're

doing. I think I mentioned to you the guy Steve Carter from Australia who's got arguably one of

the fastest super beetles in Australia. And he he does the kind of racing where it's kind of like

quarter mile, but they race on like airport raceways. It's a half mile run or something like

that. And they go for the maximum speed. I don't know what that's called, but right. That's one of

standing mile. Something like that. Yeah, they start from a dead stop and go and they then they

get a trap speed at the end of their whatever the distance is. He's got one of the highest rated cars

in his in his class at that. And he also runs it on the track. I mean, his car is gorgeous. It's

like a burnt orange Porsche color and he's got 18 inch Porsche wheels. Just it's just a beautiful

car. And then of course, he's he always puts whatever year he has, no matter what he always

puts, he converts it to rack and pinion. And he puts Porsche brakes on it. And then of course,

he has he's running a what we for us turbo, I mean, a Subaru STI engine is a 2.5 liter here in the

United States. But most people around the world use the Japanese two liter. And I believe that's

what he has a two liter turbo or STI engine in his car makes like crazy horsepower 400 horsepower

or something like that. Yeah, for a track car. Well, there is also the other video that was out

not long ago on Michelle, not Michelle, when they can Nicole Johnson's channel that the first

video that she had with a bug with the 500 horse subi motor. That car is insane. John Reynolds.

Yeah, John Reynolds. So yeah, that's that is the craziest car because it's such a sleeper. But

it is so I mean, I just watched the videos of that of that build. It is just so meticulously

built. It's beautifully done. And so one of the things Steve Carter did was that he he wanted to

run a Porsche gearbox. It's like a 959 15. No, no, what's the bigger one? Well, there's a later

one. There's a G 50, which is the gated G 50. That's where it's 87 later. He wanted to run that.

So what he did was so he's got his cars a curved with a Super Beetle. And we run Super Beetle's

have 26 and nine sixteenth inch torsion bars. He wanted to be able to fit that transmission. So

he had to cut the center of the tunnel. I mean, of the torsion bar housing. So what he did was he

moved the pivot or the the inner spline, he moved it out and then uses the shorter length ones from

an earlier car. So pretty pretty smart move like so you reinforced it so the transmission fits

moves forward. And then he has that in his car. So on my original on my original 75,

which I actually never had roadworthy. But I had I had installed 944 brakes front and rear.

I had installed a Porsche 901 gearbox. Although it did, I never had the shifter hooked up.

And I had my adapter on there, but I never got it never got my water coolant and mounted in there.

I had an ADA two meter that I was going to put in it, but never never got around to it.

Decided to get out of the hobby for a while. So now you get out of the hobby for a little bit.

What brings you back to the hobby? So I was out for 10 years. I just simply because at that point

it was before I graduated from college. My wife is now who's now an R in a nurse in California,

which is limit crazy money. But back in those days, she was she did medical billing. We just

you know, we got married young and didn't have any money. And just my vision could not be fulfilled

because we just didn't, you know, I want to do this, I want to do that, but I just don't have

the money for it. So right. So that's what was the input. I completely dropped out of any kind

of modifying even though I still had my GTI. I wasn't doing any kind of modding. And then

things got better. I graduated from college. I got into Subaru's and I actually had a

I had a outback wagon that was lowered with all JDM suspension and all that kind of stuff. So

I wanted to do a project car and started thinking I want because so what did you have with my GTI?

I did it was like I said, I autocrossed it and I had all the back then the hot name for

suspension for a water cool Volsage was new speed. Yeah. And I had all new speed suspension. It was

slammed to the ground and my wife would not ride in my car. So I decided I needed to whatever my

road car was, my daily, I need to have a car that I could mod to where I liked it and she would be

able to ride in my daily car. So when I got into Subaru's, I started looking for I wanted to do a

Japanese car completely parted with the whole German concept. And but the problem I was finding is

that you would the cars would either be completely done and they would cost an outrageous amount

or they were just basket cases that, you know, would cost you can get you can afford to buy it,

but you'd spend five times as much trying to make it as nice as one of the so I looked at

this kind of car and that kind of car and this and nothing was clicking for me. And so

I thought finally, wait a minute, I can't even know more about Super Beetles than most people

should. So I started looking into it and got right back into it. So then I bought my first I got a

74 but it was it was rough. I drove I was it was I think you mentioned this on your website. I mean,

I'm sorry on your podcast where you said that you go and look at something that's really hard to say

no, like you just the addiction is so bad. Yeah, your brain starts happening in your head and

like, Oh, I know what I could do with that. I know what I can do that. And you have to be really

disciplined to not to not buy something that's beyond what it should what you want to really get.

But right, unfortunately, my first endeavor back into Super Beetles, I was looking at it through

rose colored glasses and I drove 60 miles over into to San Ramon, which is over to East Bay.

Yeah. And looked at this car in the rain. And, you know, I was like, Oh, yeah, I want this and

I paid too much. I'm just gonna get it here. I'm gonna get it. Yeah, got this car and drove it

in dumping rain without the windshield wipers didn't work. So my son and I stopped at a auto

parts place and I picked up rain ex and I just smeared rain ex on the windshield just to try and

have some safety drove in like smelled strongly fuel and it ran good. But everything about it

was rough and we get home and I start that starts being my project and it was more than I wanted

to deal with. But I still that's all I had. So I started working on it. Well, this guy showed

that and for what a reason I would do this all the time, like I because the here in California,

the scene is LA. I mean, that's where right, they're still hot down there. And I would look at

and also set Craigslist was a big, big way you would buy stuff back then. Now a lot of people

you use marketplace but but I would peruse the LA area Craigslist constantly and I kept seeing this

one 74 Superbillet look the pictures to clean. I mean, you can never be sure for pictures. But

so after months of seeing the same for sale, I contacted the guy said, Hey, I have a website

where we are. We only specialize in Superbills. Why don't you look into my so I'm not proposing

anything for you. I just said, you know, we have a classified section. Once you look there,

that's all Superbill guys and maybe you'll sell your car. So that's a good idea. So he gets on

Superbills only becomes a member, post his car. It sits for months and months and nobody's interested.

I can't figure it out. He doesn't he's not asking too much. And and so I finally after months go

by and he's like, dude, I don't know, tell you nobody's interested. The guy was in Mojave. I

don't know if maybe it's because of the desert. I don't know. But I said, I said, I'll tell you

what, your car looks much nicer, much cleaner than the one I'm working on right now. If you'll

take I said, I've saved up a thousand dollars. He was asking like 2500 for his whole for the car.

Right. I said, I've saved up a thousand dollars and said, I'm not trying to insult you. But

if you'll take a thousand dollars, I'll come and get the car. He's like, okay. So I go.

That was too easy.

Well, it was a little more involved in that. But I went to my son and I

drive down to Mojave, which was way further than my GPS for whatever reason made it sound like it

was just, you know, east of Bakersfield. But no, it's quite a way. So we drove four hours,

five hours. I don't know where it was, but driving and driving and driving. Unfortunately,

it wasn't a hot day, which I was kind of afraid of. But we show up at this guy's place and this car

is immaculate. It is rust free. It's spent its entire, the paint is 100% original. It's spent

its entire life indoors in the desert. So it's, so there's not a spot of rust on it. And I'm looking

at him thinking, 1000 bucks is a steal for this. So we're starting to look at it. He shows me the

things he's done. It has, it's got all the carpets done and he put dynamite down on the floor.

It's got a brand new headliner that was installed professionally. He's, all the rubber is all new.

Like he put every little rubber dot that is a bumper for whatever is all brand new. I don't

push it out of the garage and he goes, well, wait a minute. If you're taking the car,

you got to take the parts and I look around like, I don't see any parts. He was come with me and he

takes me to his backyard and he's got these stacks. They're all moving boxes, the cardboard

moving boxes. And each one has a paper on the end that's item I showing exactly what's in these

boxes. There's 25 of them. Oh, wow. It's just, and what he would do. So he tells him the story

was that he was, his sister has had always had bad luck with cars. And so he just decided to

apply himself. He was a Camaro guy. He was always, he had an old, like a 60, late 60s Camaro in his

garage that he was working on, look really nice. And so he said, he decided to build a car for

his sister. And so he bought this beetle and he was from there from the hobby area. And he's

built a way on it for several years. And his sister finally comes by and she just goes,

well, I can't drive a stick. And he said, that was the end of the project. And just sat in his

garage for five years. And but what he had done is that all that time that he was working on it,

was he would drive to LA to swap meats. And if he needed something, he found it, he'd buy it. And

then the next time he went, if he happened to see the same thing, that was a nicer condition,

he'd buy it. So there was like two or three parts of everything that car needed. So I mean,

it was not complete when I got it. It had an engine in it, but it wasn't, wasn't running.

I had a gearbox in it, you know, had everything was, it was a roller.

The interior was out, but he had all the, you know, there's chair, everything was there.

And so unfortunately, I told you that what I'm doing this week off of work is I'm putting a

new shop in my backyard or the shop that's been back there. I took all those boxes when we got

back. And it was so much stuff. It filled every, I stuffed the beetle, I stuffed every, you know,

the truck bed and all over the trailer, every place we could put it. When I got home, I put it

in my shop. Well, that shop was, it's a radial building that was sitting on it. It sits on a

concrete slab, but the guy who built it way back, you know, two owners of this house ago

did not use pressure treated lumber for the sill place. So that kind of rotted underneath the

bottom. And one, one, one winter we got this real bad rainstorm that came through and the

water just flowed right underneath that, the sill plates and soaked all those boxes and they just

collapsed. You know, it's like a horrendous, torrential rainstorm. So all those boxes got ruined.

So I, in order to preserve the parts, I went to, ran to Home Depot and bought a bunch of those

totes, the 27 gallon totes. And I just started throwing the parts in the box in the totes. So

they all got, you know, all this organized, you know,

stuff became a big, you know, it's a big jumble of, you know, like 10, 10, 27 gallon totes of

parts. So, so when people need stuff, sometimes they'll, I'll say, Hey, let me check my stash.

And then they go out and dig through and dig through and see if I can find something. But

and now let's actually try. Oh, sorry. I was just gonna say, let's talk a little bit about

suspension a little bit because for some guys that have, uh, super beetles in there trying,

like, so you can go to top line and you can get the lowered struts or you can go to a junkyard

and pull struts off a first gen rabbit or a 924, 944. Well, those, those will fit.

Okay. So sorry. Um, I will say this, knowing what I know now, I can tell, first of all,

rabbit springs are really big around relative to a beetle. The beetle spring size is not,

the factory size is not that big and unbeknownst to me, literally, then if you put a 924,

straight, it would be the same exact thing. They're the same height.

And the spring, the difference is that a super beetle has a progressive spring, whereas a 924

or 944 has a linear spring. So, and, but the thing is oddly enough, they are not a much,

much different in spring rate. It's about, uh, they're maybe about, maybe about double. So I think

a, I want to say a 924 is 140 pounds. So I guess, I guess it's quite a bit bigger because the factory

spring rate of a super beetle is abysmally low. It's like 68 pounds per inch. So I guess you could

just put that directly and then you'd get sport suspension, but it wouldn't be lowered.

It'd be the same height. So now a rabbit. Oh, so 944, if you do a 944 strut swap,

it's the same stock height. Correct. Okay. And then the lowered one is going to be a first gen or

second gen rabbit. So you could use either one actually, both fit. So GTI, but you have to change

your, you have to change your upper strut bearing. The only thing you could, the housing is good for

it would be to, um, to convert to a coilover. You couldn't just put the thing on there directly

because I don't even think the spring, the spring's too big around. I don't think it would fit up into

the space, even if you swapped to the different, uh, to the upper strut bearing from the upper

strut mount. So to convert to a coilover, you would do that just using the bottom strut housing,

and then you would put a different spring on top or do you do a whole coilover shock and just use

the housing? I, what I did on my original, the very first one I did back in the nineties was I

literally cut the, had the cut, the perch completely removed. There was a race chassis designer,

a couple of cities over from where I live, and I found them and I took it to them,

cost me a fortune, but, um, would they literally cut the entire, made it just clean down to a tube

so there was no spring perch from the original spring. And then they put a new, a little like a

ring welded on that would support a lower perch. And so I bought a coilover kit. It was actually

from, uh, ground control way, way, way back in the day. And what's funny is ground control now says,

we never sold that. I said, you most certainly did. It's who I got it from. And, uh, because I was

trying to get, uh, when I was redoing my, because I literally am using that same, uh, coilover conversion

kit from my original rabbit struts that I did way back in the day. I'm using that. That's what I'm

using on my nine 44 struts that I have now. Um, and that's like, I don't even know how many cars

ago, five, five cars ago. Cause I, I've gone, I had, I've had a total of five or six, uh, super

Beatles since the nineties. And then the one that you have to, you currently have two right now.

No, no, I sold the, the, the tan one that, so I sent you a picture.

Yeah. That was a primer one.

Um, it was great. Look, it's one, one's blue and one's beige. I'm a little colorblind.

Okay. Sorry about that. The beige car, which might have looked primer gray was,

if I sent you a picture from the, uh, of an eighties paint job car. Yeah.

Did you see that's your first car? No, that's the, that's the beige car.

So what the story on the beige car is that my son was 15, my middle kid,

he came to me and said, dad, let's build a beetle together. So I'm like, okay, you know,

so I went, we bought a beetle, which was that eighties paint job car.

We built that car and he drove that to school and we took us a couple of years, but you know,

before he graduated from high school, we got it done and he was driving that to school.

We got a little tiny fender bender, uh, driving home from school one day and come to find out

all those paint colors were custom mixed. So I, because I looked into getting it resprayed

because it was all faded. It looked really cool. I thought it looked kind of cool. I mean,

it was an eighties paint job, but it looked kind of cool. And, um, I looked into getting it resprayed

because I had parts on hand. We replaced it dented the hood, it dented the front valence

and it dented one of the fenders, but I had a set of 74 fenders on hand and a hood.

So I put the hood on it. I had to buy the valence and I put my 70, uh, I put the 74

fenders. It's a 73 car, but you could have seen, you probably saw in that picture that they had

done some custom work on the, on the lower valence and all kinds of stuff. It was ugly. I didn't

really like it, but so I converted it all back. And then he had also the previous, the guy we

bought that car from had fringed in the taillights. There were elephant foot taillights, but they were

just fringed in about three inches for the custom work. Yeah. Yeah, I guess I didn't, I never liked

it. So I had 74 fenders and put them on there. Um, and then we went to get that, you know,

look into that, getting that paint resprayed and they come to find out all those custom mixed

colors was about $6,000 worth of material. So I told my son, take your color cause it isn't

going to be those. And so he said, let's do beige. So that's how it became beige. So, but the funny

story he hates when I tell the story, but so my son graduated from high school and he went right

into fire Academy, got through that and became a firefighter. And one day he comes to me and he

says, dad, firefighter stoned right beetles. So he bought a truck and he came to me, the beetle

back so far a while ahead too. So that's why, why you see pictures, you can see my blue car in one

shot and the beige car in the other. But we did, um, we did autocross it together. So that was kind

of cool. But I didn't keep that car because the previous owner, because it was a show car,

he had done, he'd sealed up every ventilation hole on the thing. So like there's supposed to be

vent holes across the cowl right in front of the windshield. He welded those all shut. And so

I had at the time that we had that car, I also had a Subaru legacy GT of the turbo car and I

had exploded the turbo in my car. And so while I was going through the process of fixing it,

I started driving that beetle to work and come to find out having no ventilation and because I

got to work at three in the morning and having no ventilation and having to drive in the winter.

Yeah. At three in the morning, it's not fun. No, so I had to drive through the windows down and it

was cold and it's, it's Modesto, California. We don't get, you know, we don't get like,

you know, I was telling you, I'm friends with Lanter and Lanter lives up in Alberta, Canada,

and his, he gets temperatures like, he'll send me a shot of his thermometer. It's like negative

one 34 or negative 34. It was like, Oh my gosh, one day we were driving along the freeway and I

look over and the sun was shining, you know, driving past an almond orchard and it's in blossom.

The sun shined, it just looks beautiful. I took a picture. I said,

we had six inches of sunshine today and he didn't respond to that. So I don't know if he thought

that was humorous or not. So now if somebody's got a super beetle and they're looking for like

the most cost effective way to get it to ride better and, you know, handle like they want,

let's say they want to take it autocrossing, right? And you said you've autocrossed your beetle

a bunch. Yeah, the beige one. Yeah. Right. So you guys, you autocross at a bunch. Now, what,

what was your setup to autocross it? Okay. Hold on one second. Sorry. So I had, I created

coil overs. What I did was I purchased a set of, of rabbit coil overs off of eBay that were meant to

be, they were supposed to be lowering coil overs for obviously, like I said, a rabbit.

I changed to a different spring because the, those coil overs come with like 300 pound springs.

And so I changed to a 120 pound spring. And then I got, I had some issues with the insert

fitting. So I had to end up getting this off brand insert that because the strut housing wasn't

long enough for your typical like KYB or whatever. Yeah. And then on the rear, I put a Porsche 944

torsion bars, which is roughly 50% stiffer than the factory 22 millimeter torsion bars. They're

23 and a half. And they go right in. They go, they're perfect. Yeah, they work in any IRS car.

And I can tell you right now, that suspension was outstanding, outstanding. What year 944?

Anything that was from 83 to 85 has the 23. Actually, I think that the 924 ones are also the

same. And in fact, in another, here's another little hack, then the Volkswagen type three square

back also uses 23 and a half millimeter torsion bars. The same, all the same. Those are all the

heavier in the back end. Yeah. Yeah. And so I believe, oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. So with that

setup, was the back end lowered? So did you have? Oh, yeah, I was doing lower in my car. I set the

suspension about two and a half, three inches lowered. And then the front with those coilovers

that I had, it was automatically two and a half inches shorter in the front. So it sat perfectly

level. It rode outstanding. I never had any issues with tires rubbing or anything like that. I ran,

on that car, I ran, I believe I had two, let me think about it, 205, 55, 15s on the rear. And

the front was 185, 60, 15s on five and a half inch. I had, I actually purchased a set of

legit, you know, this is kind of a funny story. I was looking for sports bug wheels. I wanted them

pretty bad. It's like I said, this is my son for my son's car. He didn't really care. I just was

searched for him and I couldn't find any. And so finally I resigned myself. So most people don't

know this, but the Porsche 914. What does he say the 940? The stock looks exactly the same. The

difference is that the sports bug wheels are ET 26 and the 914 is ET 40. They will fit. They fit

just a little, they're a little bit off and they don't look quite as deep. So I go, I found this guy

selling a set for a hundred bucks in Vallejo, which is like kind of northeast bay near, it's

about an 80 mile drive from where I am. So my son and I go and I pull up to this place and this

music is playing so loud, it gives you a headache. And I see a guy standing there and he looks like

an absolutely buffed Albert Einstein. He has white hair that's just shock standing up.

And I walk up to the thing and he's got it back to us. He's working on something in the garage.

And there's Volkswagen parked all over in front of his house. So I guess I don't know if he did that

on the side or whatever he did, but I started going, sir, sir. And he's not, he's not responding.

And his music, like I said, it's so loud, it's, it's punishing. Finally, I like wave my arms around,

he sees me, he turns around, he walks over and turns out the guy's deaf as a doornail. And he's

like, are you here for the wheels? I said, yeah, but what those are, those are 914 wheels,

they're sports bug wheels. He was, I don't care, you want them? Yeah. So I got sport bug

wheels for a hundred bucks. And so they had the caps and everything. They needed a little

refinishing. So I took them home, sanded them and sprayed, you know, the silver from the wheel

paint that you can buy it at every auto parts place. And now when you're, when you're autocrossing

that car, how competitive is that car? What motor you're running? Okay. It had a very, very, very

slightly warmed up stock engine. It was, we were just doing it for the fun. And I will tell you this,

it stuck like glue, but it just, it didn't have any power. It was just for fun. It's not, I don't

know about the, because I'm building a much bigger engine for my 74. I've done every, every

aspect of the car is upgraded versus that car. But so I, you know, it's going to have more power.

I've got a buddy who autocrosses a 71. And he's got, he's has a really high revving engine that

makes a lot more power. And he has a lot of fun doing it. He's pretty good. I don't know if it's

going to be ever be competitive and to be quite honest with you, at this point, see, hold on one

second. I'm sorry, I've got a bit of a cough still, but I don't know if I, it's not really about

competitive for me. It's really about just having fun. And I, I discovered autocrossing is a good

way to get the racy feeling out of, out of me for, keeps me from doing stupid stuff on the road.

Yeah. It's safe environment. I get my sons out there and have them run and

um, so that's, but still, I, I always build the cars if I'm building this competitive car,

but regardless, I don't really expect it to be. There's no class because of all the mods I've done,

like I have an upper strut tie bar on the front. I've got the truss bar on the back,

the K for cut bar to, to keep from having the, the forks flexing. I've got,

and that's where that gets breaks for rear. That's where that comes from is the K for cup cars

had that rear torsion triangular mount in the back. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's really,

people think it's meant to do something with the, with the, um,

traction shock. Yeah. All I mean, it does. It actually keeps the, you don't get wheel or

eliminates wheel hop because the forks, you know, the way the transmission and engine amount of

there sitting out on those forks floating out in space and that's not conducive of performance.

So you get anything with a lot of torque is going to grip and then causes those,

those forks to flex up and down. So what that does essentially,

they just use the, the mount between the two shock towers as a place to have a straight bar

go across and then you have a bar that goes straight down to the, to the, um,

so into those forks from flexing the rear mounts and the front strut tower brace.

Those are, those are making a noticeable difference.

The front strut is vital in my opinion. The rear, I don't, it's,

I didn't have anything like that on my, on my 73, the one we autocrossed at all.

I didn't have anything on the rear. Um, the front, you have to put a,

you have to put an upper strut tie bar on there on the front because the way it's designed,

the, your, your whole mount for the, for the McPherson struts is sticking up a foot from the,

from the floor of the trunk. There's no way it won't flex back and forth. And I,

you can literally set the tension on your, if you like, I have one that's adjustable

and you can move those strut towers back and forth just by adjusting your,

your tension on your upper strut tie bar. And there's no way it's not moving when you're driving.

So if you want any kind of precision at all, which, you know,

that's what autocrossing is about handling, you have to tie those top things together. In fact,

I got a buddy in, um, up in Ashland, Oregon area, who's building the most gorgeous, um,

beetle, super beetle that, uh, he, this guy is a X, uh, aerospace engineer. And he's,

I've never seen somebody build to the quality that he's building. Every single wire is completely

lined up with the next one and there's super, everything is perfect. And, um, but he's, uh,

he's building a brace that will tie the K for couple guys. What they would do is not only would

they tie across the two strut towers, but then they tie down to the, to the cowl, uh, right,

right inside of the, um, the hood, you know, you lift up the hood, they have an X brace there,

which would definitely be beneficial, but at the very least you need to have those towers fixed

with each other to at least eliminate some of that flex back and forth. Cause that would,

that would make all kinds of geometric changes as you're going through a corner. Right. So,

I will tell you this, the way I had my 73 setup, it, it was so glued to the ground. I could not

break it loose, even though I'm, you know, granted I had 58 horsepower,

so it wasn't maybe 60 with a couple of, couple of things I did, but not much. And so, you know,

clearly I'm not going to be able to kick the back in around just using the throttle, but

it stuck like glue. And we actually did an autocross in the monsoon like rain and my son said,

dad, I'm going to spin it. Okay. So he goes out and he had to be really dumb about how he was

turning to get that thing and just dumping rain to get it to break loose. And we're not even

running on autocross tires at that time. It was just street tires. So it just, it just really,

really stuck. And it was just, it made, it was a pleasure to drive with any kind of performance.

And so just needed some power. I've got the sport bug that the plan is to kind of do this thing and

kind of dial it in a little bit and then either, you know, figure out, do something cool with it,

give it away or do something. What, give me, give me the, the, the top five or however many

things I need to do because I want, I want my, you know, my, I already have a set of Porsche

twists that I might put on it. So I could do some color match twists and then get some fiberglass

fenders for the rear. So the rear. Oh man, it would be, it would be awesome. Because now,

because if you put, you have to be, keep in mind your, if you put a ski front spring on,

you get, give you some space, but you do have to keep in mind that you're, you want to, you don't

want to, you have to watch your offsets. So you need to, an ideal front is like a, like if you're

going to go, say a 17, 17 by seven with an ET in the 53 or 55 range. If you got that, it should

clear the front spring. If you have skinny springs and then you may encounter, I don't know, it should

fit. I think John from top line says that 17 by seven or the ET 50 will fit inside the, with his,

with his suspension, it will fit inside the, now if you don't want to go, I mean, it depends on

how far you want to go. If you're looking to make it sporty, if you're just wanting to like lower it

and, and have it look good and it'd be a little bit sporty, if you bought top lines struts with

his yellow springs, and then you could run the factory, the regular, although I absolutely would

recommend getting the 23.5 from a 944, but if you run the 22s that come in there, you can run it lowered

as long as you stay, you stay conservative on your width of your wheel, you know, don't try fitting a

eight and a half or whatever you can get like that, because you're going to, you'll definitely,

now you're talking about getting different fingers, so that does make a difference, but,

right, but if you're going to try and get anyone near staying inside the factory

with fingers, then you, the back is kind of a lot, you know, there's a lot more,

more critical with your offsets and your width, but, but the front you're limited just on your width.

Yeah, so you stay with us. So what, what's the setup that I need to make that thing cool? The

top line, like the super low economy springs, the 74 to 79 on their website or like the, I mean,

I see those.

One thing you definitely need to determine which suspension setup that you have, if you have the

prior to 73 and a half, top lines pretty much are only, only option because there's no, unless you

buy something from one of the companies out of Europe, which are very spendy, then you're talking,

the only option you really have is the top lines setup, because I don't know of anybody else who

does a, I think you can get something from MP, but it's essentially the same with my friend,

the guy I've mentioned from Ashland, he's got, he's got a 72. So he actually is making coilovers

using an MP adjust strut, but he put a converted to a coilover and then he's running conies inside

of it. So which fit and so that I believe that they would also fit inside of, inside of the

top line, because it's essentially the same, they're the same design. And then if you get,

locate some, I don't know, you've done a lot of stuff working on cars, obviously on Beatles,

obviously. So you shouldn't have too much issue with a lot of people don't like messing with

torsion bars. I don't really have a problem with it. It's a pain in the ass if you have to adjust,

you know, half an inch or whatever. But, but if you have no problem switching on torsion bars and

get the 23.5 from a 944, you can get them, or you can buy like sway away, sells really good

quality stuff, but then it starts getting kind of spendy, but they, but their stuff is really good.

So, and then I usually, I use, I like to run about two and a half inches lower, you can go further

on the early, early suspension. I don't really understand what makes it able to do that because

with a later suspension cars, you start, maybe it's the difference in how the ball joint

attaches to the, the lower control arm, because it sticks straight down. So it's,

it maybe has a little bit more space so when you can drop it further, but you start to run

out of room with the later suspension and, you know, the maximum really practical limit is about

three inches. And that's, that's if you have a good stiff spring, that's not going to flex too

much. I will tell you this, the fears of having stiff springs, I was, I'm actually surprised how

you can't really notice the stiffness of the spring. I ran the 120s on that, on my 73 forever,

and it just felt superb. It just, it absolutely felt superb. You had no issues with it?

No, it was, it ran, it rode beautifully. And, and this coming from a guy who had a

race setup in my GTI that rode like a go-kart. This thing was nice. I mean, it was not, it was

just sporty. It was not punishing in any way. It was very comfortable. Now on the top lines,

those are, they get a set of max struts or those from Europe or those, those, uh,

and honestly, the max strut was patterned after my original coilovers that I created.

He actually kind of copied that or gate that I got the idea from my original coilovers that

I had. Oh, with the skinny springs and the max clearance. Yeah. Now he, you know, he almost,

he definitely went to a, he went to a 63 millimeter or two and a quarter inch spring,

which gives you more space and that's better. I've always, always only used two and a half inch

inside diameter springs because they're pretty common. I actually, um, the ones that are on my car

now, I think some had them on sale for like $29 a spring. So it was like super easy.

And, you know, if you, if you, and now I haven't seen them on like that kind of sale since then,

but, um, they're not super expensive. I mean, you could, you could go crazy and buy some,

you know, hypercoil or some of the fans of your brands. Now getting back to the suspension setup

for the, for the sport bug. So I want to do, I'm going to do the wheels. Is there any, any 944

hubs that slide directly on that beetle spindle? No. So, so the issue with this is another thing. I

really had super, it's, it's always offended me that in Europe, so in Europe, the way that the

cars are, they pay their taxes on their cars is based on the size of the engine. And so a lot of

European people, at least, um, uh, England, especially bad is, uh, they will just, they'll

have a nice looking car, but it'll have a really small engine. And so in Europe, if you bought

the big engine, quote unquote, which, uh, the 1600 you, you could get the s package, which

would meant disc brakes. We only ever got the biggest engines because we're Americans and we

would only stomach the biggest engines, but we never got disc brakes on any type one other than the

Gia. So you can't, you, you have to, whatever you use, it has to be, um, it has to have an adapter.

All of the, there was a lot of promise with the Porsche 924 spindle, which shares the same

bearings and width, bearing width. It uses the same ball joint as the late, um, suspension

super beetle and it will bolt to the strut. The problem is if you're looking at the front, the

nose of a beetle, I'm sorry, the nose of a 924 or 944, the, the suspension splays out from top to

bottom for the, a beetle is almost literally straight down. Yeah. Super beetle, I should say.

Whereas the 924, 944 goes out at an angle. I don't know what the angle is, but it's enough

that the holes in the spindle don't give you the camber. It becomes a camber issue and I could not

get, I used top line cells, extra eccentric inner, um, lower control arm mounts bolts that

basically give you a bit more, uh, adjustment for camber. And I did every, like I would, they

on the little water cooled cars, they came out with these things called crash bolts, which

essentially is a skinny, um, the, the shaft of the bolt that holds the spindle to the strut

is skinny so that you could rotate around and get a little bit of, uh, movement from the,

you could tilt your, your can't get more camber. And then the purpose of that was that if car

gotten some kind of accent and they needed to correct it, they could get a little bit of play

there. Well, I used two of them on each side and the best I could do with either 944 or 924

spindles was zero degrees camber. And when you're autocrossing, you need the sweet spot like between

two negative two and negative two and a half degrees. So without having enough camber adjustment,

I completely abandoned the idea of using, uh, 944 or 924 spindles. They will, they can be,

there are people who do use them. And if you could, you know, those, they're cast, so it's not

an easy correction. You can't just weld them. You have to know what you're doing to, to change the

whole locations. There's a guy in, uh, England hit on the same, but he goes by the term, the name

dodgy who, he used 944 turbo spindles and then he corrected them using some kind of computer

software. He put the isolated, the absolute location for the nine of the 1303 spindles and then

transfer it onto the nine 44 turbo spindles and correct had it corrected. And then he, they became

usable, but it's a lot of work. I mean, you're the, ultimately I completely abandoned the concept of

using those, even though it gives you, especially if you use 944 gives you the ability to use a

ton of different 944. Yeah. So what's, so what's my best bet for the brakes on the switch to Porsche

pattern and get it going? So there's a, that's very easy to get, get a Porsche, the five on 130

PCD, a lot of companies that sell brake kits have them that are drilled for that.

I said the brakes, PCS pitch circle diameter, which is the basically the German, the European way of

saying run look pattern. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah, no worries. If, if you're, if you're going to go

with a five on 130, then there's a CB performance as this really cool custom hub and, and this setup,

but you don't, don't even bother with it. When I, on my car, I went with vented rotors. Basically,

so this, the story is that because of the K for cup racing that I was my big inspiration back in

the nineties, I always wanted to do 944 brakes. And because the 944 rear brakes are literally a

bolt on with a couple of small mods. That was always my plan. The problem is they're vented and

you, the best accompanying setup for a super beetle based on weight distribution, all this kind of

thing is a 42 millimeter piston caliper for the front. And what car has that is the 914.

So you 914 front brakes and 944 rear brakes is an ideal balance. You don't have to have a

proportioning valve. The problem is the 914 rotors are solid. So because I'm weird and can't stand

having wouldn't, I know two guys, Steve Carter in Australia and this guy, Wally, you've probably,

I don't know if you've heard, he's got this crazy car. He's from the Netherlands, I believe.

Yeah, the Netherlands. And he, they both told me completely separately that they had the greatest

setup they had from a, from this perspective of having a car that had you're shooting from like,

like the say 150 to 100, the 200 horsepower range was the 944 front and then I'm sorry,

914 front and 944 rear made an ideal balance. So that's what I was shooting for. Well, because

like I said, I, I, so 914 front is solid, solid disc. Correct. Correct. But they use a big 42 big

relative to a beetle 42 millimeter piston caliper. They're kind of heavy. But I had, I was trying to

fit a vented rotor front. So I discovered that the 944, I'm sorry, you get really confused,

the 914 caliper will bolt to a 944 spindle, but the disc is a lot bigger on a 944. So I actually

had a set turned down so that they fit so that would, it would bolt the caliper still bolted to

the spindle. And then I used the 944. It was a 944 rotor. So I had, I found out that the 911

early cars had a 35 millimeter caliper piston caliper for the rear that is the exact same

casting as the 944 and our 914 caliper. That's going to get really, I'm sorry to be for the front.

Yeah, but they have, but they're wider. So I harvested the spacers from, I got a set of old

911 calipers harvested the spacers. I had to buy these insane bolts from Germany

because you have to have the right hardness. They have to be 12.9 hardness and they have to be M7.

So the only place I could find the long enough size of that with that hardness and that was M7

was this company called Tola Tools out of Germany and they cost an arm and a leg and it cost me

probably equally amount, the equal amount to ship them. So I got my calipers spaced and got

everything mounted up and then I, then I couldn't get the camber I needed. So I abandoned that.

So what's my, what's my best setup for brakes on the front? Sorry, sorry.

No worries, no worries. So I often recommend top line. Everybody sells essentially the same set.

It's all based off the MP disc brake conversions that were, that came out whenever they did.

So almost everybody, whatever they are, they're very, they're very similar.

Top line with the advantage with them is that their kits come with the wheel bearings and it

comes with the inner seals and it comes with brake hoses. Like I used on my, on my beige car,

I used CB performance kits because their CB performance is literally about, you know,

90 miles away from me and they're real good people and I like buying stuff from them. So

I use their kits and were great just as good as anyone else's. But the problem is they didn't

come with wheel bearings. They didn't come with those inner seals and they, and I had,

so I had to source all that stuff separately. So it's just, it's six to one half dozen the other.

But top line makes a complete bolt on kit. Correct. Now the one thing about top line is

periodically he doesn't list a rear conversion kit in his catalog. Sometimes he doesn't,

sometimes he doesn't. I don't know why he doesn't. CB performance has, particularly since you're

wanting to go to a five by 130 PCD, they have all kinds of kits in there. They have a kit that's

really nice that for the rear that literally uses the same rotors from the, if you use the four on

130 kit, the rotors are from a 914 rear. And if you use the four or five on 130 kit, the rotors

are from the Porsche. I'm gonna say the 9146. They're literally, so you can go to any parts place

and get them now. You may have to, they may have to be ordered a minute or what, but because the

one thing I don't like about the CSP kit that I have on my car, their vented rotor kit that I have

on the front of my current 74 is that it uses these specialized rotors from Germany. And I have no

choice but to buy them from them because nobody, they were made by Sebra, which is a really well

known European manufacturer of brake rotors for a lot of cars, but they're specially made for

CSP and Cursure. They went together in this brake kit and that's the only place you can get them.

So if I need rotors, fortunately, Beatles are really, really gentle on rotors.

But yeah, I was, I mean, with, I've got 944 NA brakes on my, on my bull run bus and I put pads

on them in 2000, 2001. Yeah, they last forever. And I've never, yeah, it's so over break, the car's

over break. That's like, I don't think I've ever wear through a set of pads, you know. Yeah. Yeah,

no, you won't. So that's, so it's kind of a, it's just one of those erroneous fears that I have of,

of not being able to get something that I might need, but the chances are very slim that I ever

would. So let's review the list of the stuff. Let's say if I just want to get a super beetle to

handle. So keep, keep me from going sidetrack. We would do, we would do obviously a disc brakes

setup. So, and it looks like probably top line is a place to go just to get a bunch of this stuff

because it's all really, it's all true. So sway bars, I'm assuming would be worth it to get the

front and rear sway bars. I'm sorry. Yeah, that's something we haven't discussed. And

top line is the, so in the, in the United States, the biggest front sway bar you can get from

super beetle is seven eighths, or what I like to say is 22.2.25 millimeters. The only thing

larger that's even available for a super beetle, there used to be white line in Australia used to

have a bunch of different sizes and they had some big ones, but they stopped supporting the super

beetle is probably about 10 years ago. A cursor and CSP in Germany went together and created a

23 millimeter bar. That's really slick. It's got a, his little cones that you can adjust your

camber. I'm sorry, your caster by, by putting a little spacer that's a cone shaped spacer that

goes on the pin that goes into the control arm. Right. But we don't, but so you'd have to, we're

in there kind of expensive. I'm just trying to, yeah, I'm not married to this thing. I'm just

trying to make it, I want to make it look cool, get it kind of dialed in and then figure out what

to do with it. All right. All right. No more, no more suggestions. I'll budge it. I'm budget focused.

And so, because I'm trying to do everything. So I'm going to do sway bars, front and rear, the

play for both, for those, both of those. You want to go, you want to go the big 70 sway bar from

top line and you want to go and since you're going to run the car lower, lower he's one of the

options is what's called castor fixed bushings. And essentially what they do is that the bushing

that's mounted, that mounts the sway bar itself, you know, because the sway bar on the front sway

bar on a super beetle is also an integral member of the suspension and it pulls the, it sets your

castor is what it does. So you want what they have, he has castor fixed bushings and essentially,

because if you think about pictures sway bar, it swings to an arc, right? Right. And when you lower

the car, the arc becomes flat. So the tip, the end that's mounted to the control arm is as flat as

it can be. So right, well it's pushing the control arm back. So what he does is he sells these offset

bushings that essentially the hole that the sway bar goes through is set forward and pulls the sway

bar forward. So it corrects the a little bit of difference that you get from to correct your

castor. And castors what gives you your, your self centering and straight line stability and stuff

like that. So people, so what that's what you say you want to, you want the 70s front sway bar with

the castor fixed bushings. And then he sells a 19 millimeter rear sway bar with all the hardware

to mount it because there's no sway bar rear sway bar on an IRS car. And so, and those two together

are really nice. They really give you good roll control. So then you're, and also part of what

sway bars do, there's a small amount of spring rate difference because of their, their thicker,

you know, they control the lean springs are also part each corner. Spring is essentially

controlling lean as well. So, so that means you can run a slightly lower rate spring. So since

you're wanting to go stick, stick kind of budget now, top lines. You really, I'm pretty sure you

have the early style suspension on a sports bug. I'm not 100% certain of that, but I'm pretty sure

you'll find out. I'll go out tonight and go look at the front suspension. Okay. All you have to

see if it's got a triangular flange on the bottom, then you've got the early style. So that's the easy

and the ball joint points straight down. Okay. So that's the easy, that's the easy way to tell.

So top lines are only play there. And then you want to opt for the yellow springs. Okay.

Okay. So on the rear, if you don't, if you're not wanting to change your torsion bars, and you can,

you could easily by sourcing them off of eBay, you could find often find

944 torsion bars for about 100 bucks for a set. Yeah. So like I said, so you want, that's 23.5,

but if you're, if you're not wanting to do that, then you can go because if you, if you use the

factory 22s, but a good quality shock. And by that, I mean something like a Bilstein.

Sorry. Yeah. A Bilstein or a Tony. KYB's have their place, but I just don't, they're really,

that's really budget minded. But if you want something that's going to control your,

your movement, then you need something that Bilstein's probably a good, a really good choice there.

So assuming you, you don't change your sway bars, you want to make sure you get a really good shock.

If you do, then if you get, go to an upgraded sway bar, I'm sorry, torsion bar. If you go to an

upgraded torsion bar, then you can go to maybe a slightly lesser, like you can get a KYB as a shock.

But I mean, it says kind of like a, you have to weigh, do a cost analysis and weigh what's a better

way to go with 40. Yeah. And also, and also you would probably, if I want the car to handle,

get it, need to be, get the rear truss bar and also the front strut tower brace.

You absolutely need the strut tower brace. The truss bar, I, that, what that do, what that's

doing is controlling wheel hop. And so, and that, depending on what kind of engine you're going to

put now, I know you love the type fours and that would be so awesome. I truly believe that the type

four is the evolution of the type one. And I believe that if Volkswagen continued to make

the super bill, they would have put a type four in it, which would have been crazy cool.

But I have one, a 2.6 liter to go in it. So dang bro. So we'll see. So when you have this contest,

I want to know because I want to get my name in there. Yeah. So the plan is, is kind of get this

thing put together, then throw a carpet, get in it and stuff like that. I mean, the car is super

rust free. You're more than welcome to contact me if you have, if there's any, you have anything

you want to clarification on, I can itemize everything out and make sure that, because I know

I, I have this tendency, that's why I warned you about that, that I really will get off topic

because I, all these things, all you got in my head and I think you got a lot to say. So now,

do you run the super beetle only Instagram page? No, no, I, I'm just a, I'm just one of the

moderators on there now. They, it's all run by Mark Miles and that guy is doing the stellar jobs. And

so, I mean, there's a, there's a, we have about a, you know, a dozen or so mods and we just make

sure people are keeping, you know, keeping their language fair. And that's on the Facebook, but

then I'm assuming it's the same guy runs the Instagram page for this. Yeah. See, I don't see,

I don't have Instagram. So I don't, I don't even know what, what's going on there.

Well, no, I think it's, I think it's cool. And I like, you know, I just like that the variety of

super beetle and stuff like that. I think it's cool. It'd be nice to have one, just to build

something kind of cool and then figure out either, you know, give it away or I will tell you this,

you, because you're, all your cars are modded and you will drive that car and you will be

astounded at how well they handle. I mean, I've driven a lot of cars, like I've autocrossed,

I had, like I said, I had a super legacy GT that was lowered and I autocrossed that and it was

so, oh, there's one other thing that we need to talk about, but it was so fun that it's on my

top list of things to autocross. It's so fun to drive. Another thing you want to, one of the

things I have, this used to drive me nuts, all the things I've done, had done to my 73,

I put a bug tech shifter in it and people would look at all the cool mods and then look at that

shift and they go, what's that? You know, the only thing I ever want to talk about was that bug

tech shifter. It's a great shifter. Yeah. I have one like crew cab and I bought one with the first

ones that they came out. So yeah. Yeah. But the thing is I got tired of people asking about it.

So have you noticed, have you looked at their site anytime recently? I haven't now.

They sell now a gator that covers up the mechanism. That's me. I bugged them and bugged them and

bugged them and said, look, I want a gator and they created one and then because they did,

and now they sell it with all the arts and option with all their, their shifters that they sell,

they gave me a set of, because my car's marina blue, they gave me a set of the little springs,

they sent them to me, marina blue springs to match my car because I, because I kept it. I mean,

I was relentlessly asking to make a gator because I wanted something that covered that mechanism

because it's a stellar shifter. I've used probably about six or seven different types

of shifters and I won't ever change. I had a Berg, a Berg shifter, which was, I liked,

but that bug tech is just, just another level. My brother hated the bug tech that I had in my

crew cab. Really? Because it moved the whole floor because it's, it's bolted to a stamp steel floor

in the crew cab and so it moves the entire floor of the double cab. So it's almost like

you've got to somehow reinforce it some way to make it, to make it not move the floor. Like it

literally pulls the floor up and down. Oh, well that's, yes. See, I don't know much about buses,

to be quite honest with you. I, my, my only area of any Volkswagen Beetle knowledge is Super Beetle.

So it's a outstanding shifter and a Super Beetle or probably anything of that, you know,

strong tunnel that a Beetle has. Yeah. Well, that's cool, man. I mean, anything else we need to

cover before we wrap up? You think that we didn't talk, talk about? No, and you'll probably, if

you do that, you're going to get me on some kind of tangent and I'll extend the length of this thing.

So like I said, if you have any questions, I absolutely would be glad to make an itemized

list of stuff that, so you could kind of have a thing, a formula to follow. Yeah. I mean, I was

trying to do the most cost effective to get the most cool factor out of it. I've already got wheels

and tires. I've already got a motor for it. I've already got stuff to kind of put the thing together.

So just trying to get, I can't believe you're putting a 2.6 liter. Well, yeah, why not? I mean,

if you're going to put a motor and I put a motor in it, you know, yeah. I really, okay. Well, sorry,

I'm not going to get off on a tangent, but I love the type four. I just, yeah, I'm a big fan. It just

doesn't, yeah. No, that's, I think it's a, I actually have three cases. I wanted to build one,

but my son kind of convinced me that the amount of money I have to spend to get the remaining

things that I don't have, I could have a, you know, say a 22.76 type one that will, you know,

give me plenty of power for my beetle. So yeah, but I think that the biggest difference between

type one and type four is the type one has the bottom end torque. That's true. You know,

that's true. Makes all, like when you're, when you're driving at low speeds and just romp the

gas and break the back end loose, that's type four power, like type one.

I know that's, it makes me, it makes me kind of rethink it all the time whenever I hit people

talk about type fours because I just truly think that's the, that's a great engine for a beetle.

I mean, it's not hardly working to move a beetle around. So.

No. Well, cool, man. Well, John, I appreciate getting you on here and talking about this.

And I'm looking forward to getting this, uh, getting the super beetle dialed in and just doing

some stuff. Hit me up because, uh, you know, there's, I'm, I'm not the ultimate answer on,

you know, but I've been around feeling with them for a long time. So I can tell you what

could make a decent handling car. That's for sure. Absolutely. Well, I think it's cool, man. And

anybody wants to get in touch with you about any of this stuff you have, uh, that you don't get

on Facebook or how can they get? Yeah, I am, uh, H two O S B H two O S B on, on super beetles only

and, and plus the Sambar anywhere. And I'm, I'm willing to talk to anybody that has questions.

Now, real quick, people periodically, what's the setup? What's the, since your H two O S B,

are you going to water cool your super beetle? No, that's because member, I told you when I first

got into him from back in the day, I was going to put the water cooled GTI engine and I never

planned to do any kind of, right. Um, so the motor for your new car is going to be what?

Uh, right now I have a completed 1641 with dual carbs in a, in a, uh, cheater cam and a little

bit of a hot exhaust. That's to keep it motivated for now. And then I'm gathering parts to do a

2276. Nice. What Tim's heads and maybe a CSP exhaust and, uh, um, got the cam all chosen. I've

got dual 44. I've got, I've got a lot of parts already gathered for it. So I've got dual 44

Weber's for it. Nice. So, and I'm shooting for hoping for like a hundred and 65 horsepower range

170. Very cool. Out of the, out of the 2276 you're thinking. Correct. Yeah. Not, not out of the

1641 64 ones probably like 70, 70 horsepower. Well, it'll make my car move around so I can

at least be driving it. Right. Build another engine. Well, cool man. It's been great having you

the woods. I might, uh, we might run into each other. I know I might. Yeah, definitely. If you,

if you go to either, yeah, if you go to either like Madera or, uh, Kelly, Kelly Park show,

and you're there, I'll, I'll stop by and, and introduce myself. Well, for sure, man. Well,

for sure. Well, it's great to talk to you and, uh, thanks for all the information on the Super

Beetle and, uh, we'll catch up. We'll catch up next time. Okay. Thank you, sir. You got it brother.

I really appreciate it. Yeah. Well, if you liked that podcast and a lot of that information about

the Super Beetle, feel free to drop me live with anything you found of interest or something

you wanted some more depth and detail in at bill, let's talk dubs.com. Don't forget to

keep an eye out for registration open this week on one crazy weekend. And until next week guys, later.

Ep 354 Super Beetles Only John List

About this episode

Type Super Beetles

Volkswagen Beetle

Chevrolet Corvette

Volkswagen Gti

Porsche 944

Volkswagen Rabbit

Volkswagen Scirocco

Porsche 924

Subaru Outback

Chevrolet Camaro

Porsche 914

Porsche 911

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