Jet Beetle

Nothing I could write could equal what you will find by going to this site:

http://www.ronpatrickstuff.com/

1991 VW Jetta – part 1

We have a new project at Jim’s Garage.  A good friend with a small web business (www.justgerman.com) lucked out and found a 1991 Jetta for $500.  He’s done some work on it, putting in a new clutch and changing out the front grill for a European model with round headlights, but we thought it was time to give this black beauty some handling.

The first thought was to get some nice tires and, of course, some nice wheels to fit them to.  Not wanting to get too radical we decided on 16 x 7 inch wheels.  These were Sport Edition D3’s with a 38mm offset and weighed in at seventeen and a half pounds.  Not bad for less than $100 a piece.  This gave us a lot of tire choices in the 205/45-16 size.  Kumho had a great tire that we think will be perfect.

Next was to improve that suspension.  This car had a lot of miles on it, plus it has sat around for several years.  Just changing out either the struts or the springs didn’t work for something that needed a lot of suspension components refreshed anyway so we did some research and decided on the H&R Touring Cup spring and strut package.  This not only replaced a lot of worn parts, but dropped the front by 1.3″ and the rear by 1.25″.

Now I’m not a big proponent of changing ride height, although I’ve done it to a few cars I’ve owned.  You run the risk of changing the roll center and roll axis in some very bad ways.  Of course you also lower the car’s center of gravity, which can be a real improvement.  You just have to be aware of what other changes you are creating along with improving ride height. Another consequence is alignment.  Negative camber is fine, but you really have to be sure to have the toe set to zero as you go more negative.  A trip to the alignment shop is a must when you lower the car.  While we were under the car we also checked on the condition of the tie rod ends and the anti-roll bar bushings and end links.

The mounts at the top of the struts were in sorry shape and we had to replace them.  The tie rod ends were okay for the time being as were the anti-roll bar bushings.

Then we took a look at the brakes.  As I said earlier, the car has been sitting for quite a while.  We knew that the brake fluid had to be flushed and broke off the bleeder valve from a rear caliper when we attempted to do so.  We were able to bleed the other corners, but it was just temporary.  It was clear that this car needed new caliper, pads, and rotors.  The parking brake cables also needed replacement.

My friend Jake and I are scouting around for a brake system upgrade that won’t break his budget.  So we won’t be converting to Brembo’s at this go-around, but we will definitely be improving on the stock set up.  If we can we will see about some Porterfield R4-S pads and some high quality rotors.  Right now we are not certain about going to slotted or drilled.  We will use a very high quality brake fluid like Ate Blue.

Fortunately Jake’s business specializes in performance parts for German cars, including VWs.  This means we can maximize his budget!

As you can see there is a lot of research and many decisions that go into improving the performance and handling of any car.  Jim’s Garage will follow up

Richard Hammond

Those of us that are Top Gear fanatics (BBC show on cars) received some bad news.  Presenter Richard Hammond was in the process of driving a jet car for a segment of the show when it went out of control at considerable speed. 

It sounds like he is making progress…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/topgear/richard_hammond.shtml

Factory Five

 

I knew it was always just on the other side of the canal, but once I was on the Cape for vacation it was so hard to cross over the bridge until I was leaving for home.  Then I realised that I was missing a real opportunity.  So in the summer of 2004 I headed for Wareham and the Factory Five factory.  I could have kicked myself for not having done it sooner.

I got there as one of the owners was wringing out the the Roush powered coupe for a video that would be on their marketing DVD.  It turned out I knew the cameraman, Jim Coleman.  Jim had done several marketing videos for the company I worked for and lived in Raleigh.  He and I talked some and then he went back to work shooting more scenes of the coupe.

Then I went inside for a tour of the facilities.  The showroom was full of the various roadsters that they offer.  Some were in street trim and one was the Challenge Series racer.  The weekend prior they had held an event at my home track of VIR (Virginia International Raceway).  Mark Weber came over and introduced himself and offered to give me a tour.

Now usually when you get a tour of a company it includes some areas that are set aside for potential customers with maybe a side trip into some of the “safe” areas of the factory floor.  Not when Mark gives you a tour.  Mark shows you everything.  I got to see the area where they were going over the cars that they had trailered back from the VIR event.  I saw the complete manufacturing areas and even got to see the prototype of the GTM Supercar.  All questions were answered and every part of the process was open to view.  I kicked myself again for not having done this sooner.

 

It was a wonderful time and really got me to thinking.  They provided me with a lot of informational material and let me know that if I had any questions they were ready to help.

That winter I decided to sign up for their build school.

About 40 miles from Flint and 60 miles from Detroit, Michigan is Howell, Michigan and Mott Community College.  Here is where you go to a three day school where you learn to build a roadster replicar from scratch.  Factory Five is the only kit car company I know of that offers such a thing. 

In May of 2005 I drove from NC to there in one day and checked in at the Amerihost Inn.  There would be fourteen other students attending the class and they started to arrive at the hotel.  We introduced ourselves and took a ride out to the campus so that we wouldn’t get lost in the morning.  After supper I went over all the materials I had which, courtesy of the class, included an assembly manual.

The next morning we met at the campus and went into the classroom which was a very well laid out garage and instructional area.  The students were from all walks of life and from all over the globe.  One was from as far as Australia.  Some were retired and looking forward to spending their free time building their dream roadster.  Others were young guys who’s father was giving them a project of a lifetime.  Everyone had their own reason for wanting to learn and we were all at various stages of our life, but we all were going to have a good time together and learn a lot.  One guy was a mechanic for the Rahal Letterman IRL team.

The course was excellent.  We went from beggining to end without leaving out anything.  The only thing we did not have to do was strip parts off a donor car.  We also did not paint the body, but we did learn all we needed to know about that process. 

On the second day a couple of local owners came by with their completed cars.  By that time we had gone through enough of the build process that we had some good questions and really appreciated what these guys had done to make their dream cars.

The final day we completed the car so that it was fired up and driven outside for some tire smoking fun by one of the instructors.

  

I left the school excited and with a much clearer idea of what building a kit car would require in terms of planning and execution.  I also left with many more friends.

From there I headed up to Minnesota to visit my parents for a few days and then started the two day drive back to North Carolina.  Halfway I stopped in Indianapolis and since it was May went to the speedway.  The sound of the cars practicing was incredible.  I could hear it from my hotel room a couple of miles away, but at the track it was intense.  I bought a medallion to get into the track and made my way to Gasoline Alley.  There I met up with Albert Gray, the student from the Factory Five class, and he let me into the Rahl Letterman garage.

That was a real treat and I spent a hour watching the team of mechanics assemble and prepare a car for practice that day.  When it was all put together and the fluids were added (they pre heat the oil and coolant), I watched the Honda guys show up with their laptops and prep the engine for startup.  The noise of an IRL engine is one thing, but the methanol really makes your eyes water.

  

As i headed home from there I reviewed all the things I had experienced over the past few months and I also knew that a Factory Five car was in my future.

The Hanto Pinto

Shelby had his Cobra and in 1974 John Hansen had the Hanto Pinto.

It rated an article in Autoweek at the time.  John had his dream of putting a high performance engine in a compact car and creating a sports racer.  He started with Ford’s new economy car the Pinto.  The Pinto was light weight and priced cheaply and he would need a performance engine to turn it into something special.

Carol Shelby made a deal with the AC car company in England for their cars less the engines and with Ford for their small block (later the large block) V8 engine.  With that combination he put together a legendary roadster that won races and captured hearts.

Jack Griffith put a Ford V8 into a British TVR and created the Griffith.  The Griffith never saw the fame of Shelby and his Cobra, but it garnered a loyal following that appreciated the power the little coupe that would easily do 0-60 in less than five seconds.

Then there was the Sunbeam Tiger.  The British motor car company built the Sunbeam Alpine convertible two-seater with a practical four cylinder engine. Then they replaced it in the Tiger with a 260 cubic inch V8 from Ford as well.  This became a super sportscar that still has a cult following.

If you couldn’t find any of the above you could get an Austin Healy 3000, pull the engine and transmission and replace it with (you guessed it) a Ford small block and four speed which took 150 pounds off the front end and turned it into a poor man’s Cobra.

The sixties were over and no one had done anything like those cars for ten years, until John Hanson worked a deal with Lotus for a twin cam four cylinder and worked to combine it with the Ford Pinto.  John was in talks with both companies as he did development work on the car.

I saw it at one autocross.  The engine gave the car remarkable performance compared to any configuration you could get from the factory.  It still needed a lot of development to get the chassis in tune with all the new power.

It might have gotten there too, but life can present some unforseen twists and turns when you least expect them.  John ended up having domestic difficulties as he and his wife were going through a divorce.  The was a young son involved and as the story goes John took off one night for Canada with the boy and a trailer with his car on it.

Later Chevrolette tried something similar with the Vega and put in a Cosworth Twin Cam engine.  It was the brain child of John Z. Delorian.  It never caught on like the earlier hybrids since it cost just about as much as a Corvette.  Later Vega owners would find kits that would allow them to bolt in a small buick V8.  It lowered the Vega’s weight and provided the power it desperately needed.

You don’t see much of semi-production cars built from engine swaps like you saw in the sixties.  I’ve heard about the RX-7 Chevy small block swap that has become popular, but those are owner swaps like the Vegas.

With the demands of the EPA and the safety requirements that have come about we may never see Cobra or Griffith type cars again.

The Grose Jet

It was a classified add in the Competition Press, the newspaper that became Autoweek, that I first saw it.  “2 Balls do the Trick” was the tag line.  It was an inventor’s replacement for the troublesome needle and seat used in carburetors as a valve to control the fuel that filled the carburetor’s fuel bowl.  The fuel bowl is like a tiny gas tank that is part of a carburetor.  It provides fuel as needed rather than waiting for it to be delivered from the fuel tank.  The needle and seat is opened and closed by the float in the fuel bowl.  When you re-built a carburetor setting the upper and lower limits of the float was critical to smooth performance.  As the fuel is sucked out of the fuel bowl the float sank and pulled the needle away from the seat allowing gasoline to flow into the bowl until the float reached the point that the needle was pushed against the seat and shut the flow off.   The “needle” was shaped much like a rod with a cone on one end.  The rod was usually not round.  It had three or four flats so that the fuel had less resistance as it flowed past the cone end.  The cone end came in contact with a seat that was angled much like the seat that an intake or exhaust valve seats against.

Over time the cone would develop a ring wear pattern where it constantly came in contact with the seat.  They were usually both made of brass, but sometimes neoprene was used for the cone part to try to limit the wear pattern.  Once the ring was worn into the seat, the valve never worked as it should and affected the carburetor’s performance.

Mr. Grose had the bright idea of completely re-designing the needle and seat valve.  His idea was to use a ball bearing that would constantly present a new surface to the seat and therefore provide a consistent metering of fuel.  A large ball was used as the surface that the float would act against while a smaller ball would come in contact with the seat.

It was a simple and elegant solution to pesky problem with carburetors.  The race car world loved it.

Carburetors were complex devices that performed a very simple function.  Carburetors atomized the fuel so it could be burned.

When gasoline is in its pure liquid form it doesn’t like to burn.  I used to watch guys throw their cigarette buts into a pail of gasoline and put out the cigarette.  DO NOT EVER DO THIS!!!  It was a stupid thing to do because if there was ever enough gasoline vapor above the liquid it would have been tragic.  The point is that for a gasoline engine to work well the fuel burns best when it is mixed with air.  The ideal ratio is about 14 parts air to one part gasoline.  This is not a constant though, which is why carburetors are so complex.  The ratio must constantly change based on manifold vacuum, throttle plate position, engine temperature, and on and on. 

If you want to see a simple example of how a carburetor atomizes fuel look at a spray bottle of window cleaner.  As air is pushed across the top of a hollow tube a vacuum is created that pulls up the liquid and mixes it with air forming a spray mist.

One day I decided to drive up to Stoneham, near Boston, and pick up a Grose Jet.  This was in the days before Mapquest or GPS so I looked up the address in the ad and found a map of the town.  It was called D & G Valve Mfg. Co., Inc. on 8 Mt. Vernon Street, and I really did not know what to expect.  Would it be a large brick factory with chain link fence and guard house?

It turned out to be a house in an old Stoneham neighborhood.  I went to the door and knocked.  A large man with a machinist apron on greeted me and invited me in to the manufacturing shop set up in the basement of his house.  He wanted to know what model of carburetor I needed a gross jet for.  Since I was there I picked up one for the Quadrajet on my mother’s Pontiac as well as the Holley on my VW.  He took the time to show me how his jigs were set up to manufacture the different Grose Jets.  For motorcycles he used glass for the larger ball to keep the mass down and deal with the vibration better.

He pulled two Grose Jets out of the drawers of his cabinets and sold me what I was looking for. 

I drove home enlightened to see what a Yankee inventor could produce out of the basement of his house and become famous for in an underground sort of way.

Look up D & G Valve on the Internet, you can still find it.  Amazing.

http://www.stromberg-carburetors.com/grose_jets.htm

FWD, RWD, AWD

You have choices and may not even know it.  You find a car that trips your trigger and take it for a spin.  Often it handles well just because you like its looks.  Do you care if it is front wheel drive (FWD) or rear wheel drive (RWD)?  Are all wheel drive (AWD) better?  Is AWD the same from manufacturer to manufacturer?  Like most things, it depends.

I started out with my first car that was rear wheel drive.  It was an air cooled VW Beetle.  With the engine hanging behind the driving wheels it was great in the snow and on dirt roads as long as you understood how it would react once you reached its limits.  When it let go it was like Thor’s hammer and that weight took over.  Porsche drivers, with their higher horsepower cars learned about it as trailing throttle oversteer.  Go into a corner a little hot and you learned to grit your teeth and keep the power on.  If you were foolish enough to lift the rear end would try to swap ends with the front giving you the cold rush of that “oh shit” feeling.

There were other rear wheel drive cars out there and I had a chance to drive many of them.  The Jaguar XKE with its twin cam six cylinder engine was a powerful car (as fast as the Pontiac GTO’s acceleration) that had european handling and a body that was simply beautiful.  Its sculptured curves said sex like a tight leather dress on a beautiful woman.  Jaguar would later come out with a V-12 version, but I always liked the light and agile six cylinder version.  Compared to most American cars of the 60’s it invited you to find a road with some undulating turns and delight you with the smell of oil, the thrum of the six, and wind blowing past your grinning face as you braced yourself against the leather bucket seats.

If you had a particularly tight road to transverse you might be better off with a Spridget.  This was either the MG Midget or The Austin Healy Sprite.  The most desirable was the “Bug-eyed” Sprite.  It had no mechanical difference between it and the MG Midget, but its looks were irresistible.  A pair of headlights apparently shoved into the fenders on either side of the grill gave it the look of a frog or bug.  These short wheel-based cars with their converted four cylinder tractor engines could be thrown around with abandon to scare the willies out of your date and throw her into a fit of giggles.

It was the summer of 1964 when I saw my first Shelby Mustang.  I wouldn’t get to drive one for a few years, but it was love at first site.  I was used to seeing cars squat in the rear and raise up on the front tires when the driver poured on the coal.  This car just hunkered down like it was getting sucked to the road.  A throaty roar drummed through my body as it turned a corner in front of me and disappeared down the road.  By the time I was able to sit in the driver’s seat it was a Shelby GT500 KR.  It had lost a lot of the race car attitude, but became a tail happy muscle car with little provocation.

Front wheel drive cars were rare at first.  SAAB had this weird car that had a two cycle engine that would scorch an autocross track.  It was front wheel drive.  In the mid to late 1970 FWD cars multiplied like rabbits.  It was hard not to find one.  Gasoline availability had experienced two dramatic shortages and that had finally convinced people to think light and small.  VW brought out its Rabbit.  Honda had the Civic.  American manufactures were struggling with the concept.  They had first tried FWD with some large cars like the Rivera and the Toronado, but they were from the era of gasoline at twenty cents a gallon.  Trying to scale them down to economy size proved to be a conundrum.

These FWD cars were a different driving experience.  Take them hard into a corner and they would pull you around like a dog pulling you by his leash, but bring it in too hard or start to loose your grip and it would understeer in a most horrible fashion.  I found I preferred the tail happy RWD that you could at least modulate with the throttle.  Not that I didn’t enjoy my FWD Ford Fiesta.  It was interesting to autocross with it against the Rabbits.  They would lift their rear wheel in a corner like a dog peeing on a tree and the Fiesta would lift the opposite wheel.  The Rabbits had independent rear while the Fiesta had a solid axle.

Then came AWD.  My first drive was in a 1997 Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX.  I ended up buying the car.  AWD and turbocharged engine was a wonderful combination.  The AWD forgave the fact that you didn’t have the natural talent nor seat time of Mario Andretti.  The factory wisely dialed in some understeer but that didn’t keep me from forcing it into oversteer.  It still had the stock tires.  They were 215/50-17 Goodyear’s that were squeezed on to six and a half inch wide rims.  I took an off ramp with the confidence of a fool.  This car could get me through anything, but physics can be cruel when you violate its laws.  The sunroof was open and the windows were down.  It was a beautiful afternoon in the spring.  The car entered the corner and the tires started their serenade and the rear started to come around.  I caught the tail and kept my sights on where I wanted to go as the car slithered around as if I had been slaloming down a ski slope.  Dried grass flew up as the car drifted from asphalt to road side lawn and back again.  The car came to a halt on the grass.  I looked at my companion sprinkled with the dried grass and wisely decided to get out of there.

The narrow wheels and pitiful tires were replaced soon after with much wider and stickier tires.  My naivety was replaced with maturity commensurate with my age along with the decision to save these experiments to the race track.

AWD is truly addicting.  Later I drove Audis, Subarus , etc., ending up with another Mitsubishi.  The Evolution VIII MR to be exact.  I had been spoiled by AWD and knew it would be hard to go back, just as I had been spoiled by turbocharging.  The AWD technology keeps improving.  The Evo has an active center differential (ACD).  With LSD’s on either end and ACD in the middle it is constantly making the most of any traction it gets.  Mitsubishi is promising even more with the Evolution X.  It has sensors to measure the amount of G forces in any direction that is used to compute the optimal power transfer to the tires as well as adapting the brakes to the maneuver that is being attempted.  This technology is astounding. 

In the dry and in the wet AWD is probably the best.  As long as you keep in mind the realities of physics and with the technology that is coming that will be very hard.

I still love taking out my friend’s Corvette.  One has a 2002 Z06 that is astounding and the other has the 2006 C6.  I have taken them for rides in the Evo MR and they have been impressed with the acceleration and handling in particular, but I am amazed by the torque that is available from their V8 engines as they lope along at 2000 rpm.  Tail happy?  Yes, but the key word here is “happy”.  The Corvette is an exceptional handling car, especially in the Z06 models. 

FWD is no slouch either, but can be really challenged when you build in some real power.  I remember chasing down a Dodge SRT4 on the Tail of the Dragon and being impressed with the handling given the FWD layout.  If they had packaged it in AWD it would have been an amazing car.  VW did with their R32 version. 

A Return

It took thirteen hours to return home.  It helped to leave at four in the morning.  In the darkness as I cruised along the mid-Cape I left the windows open so that I could inhale the air that carried the identity of the Cape.  It was hard to leave this place again as I have done for so many years.

Two weeks prior I didn’t care that the weather wasn’t as beautiful as it can be this time of year.  I was happy to not have to concern myself with the demands of work and to be where my heart will always be connected. 

I spent time visiting many old friends and making more than a few new ones.  Time with relatives was especially important to me as I had lost three in the past twelve months.  My nephew held a clam bake at his house and both my sisters, my niece and her girls, my cousin and his family, as well as two aunts were able to help us all enjoy the event.  There were other good friends that came to the party, including a young Russian girl who spent the summer working on the Cape and renting a room from my sister.

 

 There were other dinners and other visits.  Being sure to get to many of my favorite spots and favorite people.  The Kirk’s had fourteen people at their cottage and we enjoyed a lobster fest there.

 

Of course I had to spend some time on the water.  Sometimes it was on a sail boat and sometimes it was on a fishing boat, but there is nothing like being held in the hands of the ocean.  It was fortunate that the weather turned picture perfect and allowed a picnic on Sampson’s Island.

 

 Before I could leave I had to make my traditional stop at Bill Putman’s car collection.  Bill has over 40 cars, all red, that span many of the most interesting makes of the sports car era.  After letting me explore his cars under the watchful eyes of his cats (28 at last count) he graciously offered to give me a ride in his Lotus Elise.  The Elise is the lightest and latest of the Lotus genealogy.  Light and nimble, just as Colin Chapman would have liked.

 

These are just a few of the adventures that I enjoyed.  It was fitting that there was a final sunset to let me know that the two weeks had been consumed and it was time to head back.