Steve Bennett engineered a flywheel-end-drive Type 1 conversion which takes advantage of the big clutch-end bearing at that end of the case. Not sure if GPASC still offers it but it's likely. There is a prop extension but I'm not sure how long it is. I saw the installation on Bruce King's BK1 trigear. I thought it might space the prop out away from the exhaust pipes more than the typical pulley-end drive but it didn't look like any clearance was gained.
As I understand it, Revmaster sells an extension for their engines which I believe use a somewhat different bearing at what would be the "pulley end" of their cases - if their cases had ever been intended to be installed in a Bug, that is. I know of a Sonerai owner with an extension maybe 3 1/2" or so on the pulley end, turbocharged Type 1, and he races his airplane. I would think he's stressing the bearing with a lot more power than the typical VW installation and flogging it as well, so maybe the pulley end bearing is actually more robust than expected. On another note, I recently bought a V-Witt project which has Steve Wittman's prop shaft extension setup. This is a conical housing that bolts to the clutch-flywheel housing mounting holes on the clutch end of the Type 1 case, and an internal shaft about a foot long supported at the small end of the cone by a wheel bearing from a GM early Toronado/Eldorado. The end of the prop shaft is tapered to take a hub from the taper-shaft Continental engines. This results in an extremely smooth nose as the wide parts of the engine are well back from the prop. The shape of the whole fuselage flows back from a C150ish ice cream cone-shaped spinner. So I suppose the point is that there are a number of ways to approach the mounting of a prop on a VW and some people are getting reliable results from setups that aren't necessarily recognized as optimal nor even desireable. I love the Experimental category. Can you imagine trying to do this stuff in a country that requires engineering approvals on homebuilts? Chris
