Hi NQ!!
Great to hear from you and hear the progress you have made! Love the big place/lots of VWs. I also find I steer towards stock more and more, as it just makes more sense. I know there are a number of places that sell blank drums and/or sell drums with certain other patterns already drilled into them- eg four lug drums with stock wide 5 lug pattern drilled into them. I do not know about the offset needed but may be doing some research on that as well. I also bcc'd a great friend/former VintagVW source to see if we can lure him into some answers here. Ray -----Original Message----- From: No Quarter <[email protected]> To: vintagvw <[email protected]> Sent: Thu, Jan 1, 2015 11:48 pm Subject: [vintagvw] Beetle questions Hey gang - NQ here. My wife and I have been really busy over the past few years. When she moved here 4 1/2 years ago from Australia, we had immigration to take care of, she went back to school to get her nursing license, and we needed a place to live. She's now a citizen as of December 12th, she's working as a nurse, and we spent our holidays painting the inside of our new house in the country where I can collect many VW. Right now we are up to around 17 or 18 assorted VWs for projects and parts! LOL! An upcoming project for us will be a restoration of a 1963 Beetle for her to drive. It's her dream car and so I've been thinking about how to approach the restoration. I really don't like how swing-axle transmissions tend to leak and how you have to gut the entire rear-end for every single little bit of maintenanace and repair. The ease of the IRS set-up has spoiled me and so I'd like to convert the beetle to IRS without too much sacrilege. I've decided that I want to keep the stock pan and add upgrades to it that would make it fairly easy to resort back to factory if anyone ever wanted to. I want to upgrade the front axle to the later brake system and have the brackets welded on the rear to convert to IRS. I have all the IRS parts I need from parts dubs I've collected. I had toyed with the idea of mating the 1963 to a later IRS pan, but I decided against it, because it just makes it too much a bastard beetle. At least when you're in the bug, it will all appear vintage and correct. I didn't want to cut and reweld the 2 body mounts under the rear fenders although I will have to cut, clearance, and weld up the frame horns for CV clearance. Before I do any of this, there remains one big question and that is can you get blank drums of IRS beetles and have them drilled for wide-5 rims? If so, does anyone know if there is any appreciable offset that needs to be countered by having the center of the wide-5 rims relocated closer to the outside edge of the rim? I'd want to do this before getting them powder-coated. As I'm getting older, I'm appreciating stock more and more. It comes with age because you sometimes just get tired of dorking with the same old stuff over and over and by keeping it stock, you stand a good chance of it working for a good long time. I had entertained the idea of rebuilding a 40hp engine, but there are so many advantages to a good ol' stock balanced and blue-printed 1600, that I'd like to make the upgrade for my wife. That means an IRS transaxle would be needed to take advantage of the extra horsepower (I'm sure a swing-axle trans could be upgraded to the steeper ring and pinion with my personal favourite being the 4.12 set, but I don't want swing-axle on this car.) An area that concerns me is the heater box to firewall clearance as I remember someone saying it could be quite a trick to get it to fit. If I'm going to do body work or have it done, it is possible that this part of the firewall could be clearanced? Does anyone have any experience with getting a 1600 to fit in a 1963 beetle? Thanks for entertaining my questions. I'm just trying to get the game plan put together for what we are going to do with her car. I think a modest set of upgrades for better breaking, longevity, and more get up and go will make this a really nice car for her to drive. Lookin' forward to any advice... Thanks! NQ -- Visit the VintagVW archives at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "VintagVW - Air Cooled Volkswagen Discussion List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/vintagvw. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- Visit the VintagVW archives at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "VintagVW - Air Cooled Volkswagen Discussion List" group. 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