Chassis

The first step was to find a chassis. There seems to be loads of configurations for the beetle, some better than others.

Fortunately I came across a local 1303 super beetle chassis on eBay, and won the auction at £200. 

The super beetle chassis adds a few complications to the build as it has McPherson struts that mount into the body. The standard beetle has torsion leaves.

 





 I wont be using the gearbox,so I resold it at £150.

Total cost so far is £50!

Stripping the chassis

Most beetles are pretty crusty after 40 years. Even though this was one of the last produced in '73 it had quite a lot of rust. I decided to replace the floor pans completely and cut out any other rust.

 

Before any repairs I stripped the chassis, cut out the floor pans and sent it to the local shotblaster.

 

This highlighted quite a few holes I would have otherwise missed.

The front end didn't look too bad from the top, unfortunately it was a lot worse underneath. I cut out the lower frame head/nelsons hat and replaced with a pattern part.

 

Painting the chassis

I've spent a good amount of time prepping the chassis so I wanted to use a good quality paint to protect it. 

After researching various types of paint, I settled on 2k. 

2k Is a paint that needs to be mixed with a hardener. Once it hardens it is much less susceptible to damage from chemicals, weather, or UV rays.

Its pretty dangerous stuff, if sprayed you need to use an air fed mask, and full protective suit. Even the best filter mask isn't enough to filter out isocyanates. 

As I wasn't bothered about the finish and just wanted durability I decided to brush paint it, which according to the HSE is perfectly safe. 

The primer is 2k OSCCAR 755

Top coat is 2k ARCRITE polyurethane

Brakes

My beetle cable with drums all round. So upgrading to discs is a must. 

There are a number of ways to do this, I chose to use early 944 parts. 

The rear is pretty straight forward. 944 discs, carriers and calipers are a direct fit to the standard beetle IRS arms. 

The front is a little more complicated. Early 944 brakes can be used on the late 1303 (3 bolt strut, not 2 bolt) if you also swap to the 944 spindle.

I picked up a set of front and rear calipers and discs, plus front spindles for £60. 


Early 944 Front caliper

Kawasaki green seemed an appropriate colour. 

Wheels

Using 944 hubs means I need wheels with a PCD of 5x130.  

Fortunately I came across these early Boxster 16" wheels on eBay for £100. 

Engine and Diff Subframe

I want to use rubber mounts between the engine and chassis to reduce vibration. This also requires the diff to be bushed, and a custom flex disc between the two.

The custom flex disc turned out to be pretty expansive, so to remove the need for one, I decided to build a small subframe to rigidly mount the engine and diff. The sub-frame will then be mounted on engine mounts.


Orignal gearbox mount

Defender engine mounts

Captive nuts in box section

Calculating max angle for CV joints

Engine support

Clutch and Gears

I'm using the ZZR1100 original master cylinder.

I removed the hand grip and fabricated a new arm so that a full pedal stroke = full compression of the master cylinder.