dune buggies and hotVWs March 2022

As I am writing this column, 2021 is about to wrap up. I hope all of you had a wonderful holiday season and will have a happy new year. By the time subscribers receive this issue of hotVWs magazine, we are assuming (and wishing) that some of you had a wonderful time in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, while attending Buses by the Bridge. We will also be in the middle of the Grand National Roadster Show craziness in Pomona, California. We wish all of you to stay safe and have a great year 2022. I just cannot believe that it’s been almost two years since the beginning of an uncertain situation due to the Covid-19 pandemic. I understand that some major events in Europe have been canceled this year. On…

Last month, I wrote about the upcoming auction of a portion of my massive assemblage of “stuff”. After so many years of gathering and collecting, I reached the breaking point and decided it was time for a change and time to let go of a lot of long held treasures (and some trash). Realizing that it could take as long to sell everything piece by piece as it did to collect it, I chose to go with an estate auction to get rid of a ton of stuff at once, and I must say now that the dust has settled, I am very happy with the results. I contracted with a local estate sale company that has a strong track record of online auctions and through their platform listed just…

In the early days of the Panzers and for that matter the early days of building VW engines, there was not the abundance of VW parts companies that exist today! Oh sure there was Empi, Scat and Autohaus, but their focus was more on accessories and wheels. I’m talking hard parts cranks, big pistons and well, you know, HOT ROD stuff! Now Empi and Scat were in early stages of “good parts” development, but we Panzers wanted it all now! These were the days of welded strokers and Corvair pistons being used to build bigger motors, and using Solex P11-4 carbs off of Porsches. Many people used 356 or 912 Porsche engines in their Bugs to increase performance – these provided 90 to 100 horsepower. Cool, but on the horizon…

40 or 44 Decision Hi Jon, I am considering using Weber IDFs, but I can’t decide if I should go with 40s or 44s. Which size would be best suited for a dual-port 1776cc Type 1 motor? Heads are stock. Thank you. Scott Ray Orlando, FL Scott, my favorite setup for this kind of engine are the dual 40 IDFs. They come with pretty small venturis though, so I would take out the “smallish” 28mm ones and install 30mm. Calling Agent 009 VW used a large number of distributors. It seems most of the performance engines (bored, longer stroke, etc.) use the Bosch 009 distributor. Do all those performance engines fit into a narrow category that a single (009) distributor works? For stock or slightly modified engines (1600cc or less),…

There were three models of Transporters that Volkswagen introduced in 1950. We have already discussed the commercial model Panel (model 21) and the passenger model Standard (model 22). Now it is time for the Kombi, which is a combination of those two models. The Kombi is both a commercial and a passenger model. It is truly the most utilitarian of all Transporters. It is also sometimes spelled Combi, but we will stick with the German spelling of Kombi. Some people describe it as a panel van with windows. It has the same glass arrangement as a Standard Microbus with 11 windows (except the earliest versions which had no rear window.) It falls into the commercial model line, with a simple single-tone paint scheme like the panel. At first, most Kombis…

In one of my latest columns, I wrote about the roots of DFL (Der Fieser Luftkühlers) VW club – basically about the interest group from which members split up to found DFL. An American friend recently asked me if I could tell you something about the origins of DFL – quite appropriate considering this hotVWs issue’s Cal Look theme. Well, then let’s have a history lesson on the California Look in Germany. When I got interested in old Volkswagens in the late 1980s, the term California Look in Germany was associated with bright colors, graphics, lowering all around and chromed wheels and no – or only little – increase in performance. And, icing on the cake, a little chromed Cal Look script on the engine lid… We just had no…