Best extended sump for type 1 motor in a street beetle..

HoneyAbba wrote:Yep its a Hellbug idea but without those big arse return lines , also added extra baffles..

I,m very familar with Jeffs motor and can remember him racing at Grafton pulling 9700rpm in 2nd gear awesome sight.
The single thing that solved his oil probs was two return oil lines running from the bottom of the heads down to the Berg sump on either side.
While this idea is very good i,ve found using the smaller width Berg sump keeps the oil closer to the pickup tube.
I have also blocked off and removed my pass side tappet cover breather.
The thinking being that windage side the cover collects then fills with oil finally pumping it up the hose and filling the Berg style breather box.
I will test this new idea at Huntley Hillclimb with another change in my breather system to come later.

Cheers Col

IMO and testing the hoses were not needed

cheers

why stuff around with hoses going here there and everywhere when u can just run a pobjoy sump and will have no problems.....just a thought....

colin wrote:

HoneyAbba wrote:

LOWBUG wrote:Yeh me Berg as well, would't waste my time with a Australian made fith pistion.

Australian made stuff is usualy far sup
Berg ones are good , I have on 2 different cars but the do NOT stop oil surge during hard cornering.They require lots of internal mods to stop the oil surge. Very dissapointing

What size oil pump are you running?
Maybe the pump is emptying the sump.
I run a small size pump and have truck loads of pressure at all rev levels.
IMHO oversize oil pumps are simply not necassary in our humble little motors.
I may be hailed down but years of racing and engine teardowns tell me what works.

Cheers Col

Actualy, I run a standard pump and I believe that the extra oil the you carry in a deep sump is benificial. I don,t just drive my car in a straight line. I have notice that since going to a proper deep sump holding more oil that oil temps did go down, it makes sence with large volume.

I not trying to convince anyone, its just my opinion through experiance over many years

cnfabo wrote:why stuff around with hoses going here there and everywhere when u can just run a pobjoy sump and will have no problems.....just a thought....

Pobjoy sumps still have surge problems.....depending on how you drive.

The oil temps don't go down , it just takes longer to heat up !

Well I bought a sump for the motor..a 1.5 quart CB Performance sump..its the wifes car anyway and I dont think shes gonna do laps around Mallala Raceway so its good enough for the street car that it is..😊

INCH BY INCH

Hellbug's Jeff Unwin takes us through what it took to squeeze a few extra seconds of performance out of his racing beetle



It had been two and a half years since we had turned a wheel in anger in the mighty little beetle and i was itching to get back into hillclimbing. The CAMS newsletter had arrived in the mail and there was an item on the upcoming Australian Hillclimb Championships at Grafton in six and a half weeks and not being one to procrastinate, the decision was made then and there to go for it! The only problem being that companion Jo Smith's car had sustained a huge prang at Bathurst back in 1990 and desperately needed some attention. On that occasion, the fan had exploded at 8000 rev's, taken out the accelerator cable tube and jammed the Dellorto's flat out as she was approaching The Dipper.

Well, what can i say, fate was really kind not to roll her over. (the car that is) so there was no body damage but three corners of the suspension were badly bent and the right hand front shock tower had put a 50mm deep dent into the inner guard.

The car had then been retired to a relative's farm at Binnaway, and suffered the indignity of sitting in a barn there and accumulating a solid layer of bird poo while it sat forlornly in the the farm shed. I took a quick trip to Binnaway one day and loaded the very bent bug onto a trailer and then took it home the next day- all without incident. I was very lucky to have three untiring helpers in the form of James McKinnon, Grant Camper and Shimo.

Previously we had raced the "Bug out of Hell" in the road registered class and later as a sports sedan. Times had changed however and with the introduction of the group 2E Silhouette Class i,e 60 series tyres, no 'glass guards and a maximum seven inch rim size for cars up to 3000cc.

This formula posed a couple of problems. Firstly our old gearing was too tall (the 3.88:1 diff, 3.4:1 1st, 2.21:1 2nd, 1.48:1 3rd and 1.125:1 top were nowhere near close enough) and secondly, we had no 60-series tyres because back in the '80s we used 50-series.
As it turned out we had bought an old drag race gearbox earlier in the year, so we had a few extra ratios to choose from (this included 4.375:1 ring and pinion and 3.8:1, 2.06:1, 1.58:1 and 1.21:1 gears). In the end we came up with a great little close ratio 'box using the 4.375:1 diff gears and 3.4:1, 2.21:1, 1.58:1 and 1.21:1 gear ratios which worked in really well with the 205-60X15 tyres.

There was a huge list of chores to complete before we headed to Grafton. This included stealing the front end out of the old race car, replacing wheel bearings, tie rod ends, ball joints and control arms, recondition the calipers and fit new metal pads. other tasks undertaken included replacing steering coupler and dampner, fitting a race seat, harness and half cage.

Next we rebuilt the entire rear end, bushes and breaks and then stripped down several gear boxes to salvage the required parts to make up one good unit.

The 1904cc motor was stripped and freshed up ready to be raced. We then went over to Eastcoast suspension for a 4 wheel allignment and then back home to fit the sway bars ( 20mm front and 22mm rear ).

We then packed up all the spares and headed off for Grafton ( a day before practice started Jamo and Grant drove up and met me there on Thursday morning )

Grafton's track had been lengthened, resurfaced and was alot tighter than what I could remember from 5 years earlier so I had the car scrutineered early to be one of the first cars out onto the track. Even though the track was a bit green ( leaves and branches littered the track and no rubber had yet been laid down ) , I was still quite happy with how the borrowed rubber was gripping. I was only about 3 seconds off the old record.

A quick check of the tyre pressures and off I went again, this time really getting the feel back again and throwing the car around like a Formula 1 car when suddenly the oil light came on. I turned it straight off and coasted down the return road. When we pulled the Oberg filter apart there were parts of a big end bearing straing at me. It appeared that we should have put the oil surge gates back in from our old Hellbug motor as now the sticky tyres were generating the same G-forces as the soft slicks I ran before.

There was a fair bit of dissappointment in the camp. In fact, Grant and Jamo were shattered. I ended up driving to Kempsey, taking a 1916cc motor out of a buggy and fitting up our Webers and exhaust. But alas the off-road motor had an inappropriate cam and didnt really go. We managed a last-in-class finish and the distinction at being the only vehicle unable to spin the wheels off the start line. At this stage I must thank Mark and Luke Pell for their help with all our problems over that weekend. It was their motor that was so generously lent to me.

BACK TO THE OLD DRAWING BOARD

Not one to be put off by such small hassles I had the motor rebuilt in 2 weeks ( this time with all the baffling in the sump ). And competed in the show and climb at Canberra winning the class, being 2nd outright and the fastest Group 2E bug. Now we were cooking and competed in 5 more 'climbs before Christmas managing class wins in each of. So the poor little motor was owed a bit of work by the time the years racing was complete.

Upon disassembly some very interesting observations were made: 1: The tunnel of the case had worn out allowing the centre main bearing to move and the crankshaft to flex. 2: Some evidence of oil starvation was still present in rod bearings #1 and #4 and: 3: The breather system had not been adequate because the 2.0-litre catch-tank was always filling with oil at the end of each days racing.

After a meeting with Shimmo and Peter Gonad, a complete revamp of the breathing and oil system commenced. This was a two-pronged attack to ensure that I had adequate breathing as well as adequate oil in the pick-up area (deep sump centre ).

I had purchased a late-model AS21 fuel injection case ( with the huge oil galleries throughout ) from Gene Berg in 1989 as a back-up for the 2213cc motor. This already had all the machining done, i.e. decked , bored for 90.5mm barrels, fully flowed, 8mm case stud nut lands spot-faced for the 15mm head nut conversion and die ground to fit a Washington Antishocker.

To increase the breathing of the internals, a 32mm hole was machined where the fuel pump hole should have been ( PI* case remember! ) I then fabricated a baffled breather tube and fitted a motorcycle air cleaner to stop dust getting in.

The rocker cover breathers were increased from 3/8" i.d to 3/4" i.d and a small baffle plate brazed over the breather outlet hole on the cover. This then necessitated enlarging the breather pipes on the Berg breather box-cum-oil-air filter to take the larger hose. Another motorcycle air filter was used on top of the Berg breather to stop any restriction in the system.

As far as oiling went this was somewhat more perplexing and a lot of testing and rethinking was needed before the final tolerances were initiated. A deep sump already had a quadrangle set-up with flapper valves so that the oil in the sump could only find its way from the four outer corners into the central pick-up area. The only thing that could possibly stuff this up would be if the oil wasnt returning to the sump fast enough.

As the oil pressure had always been adequate ( when the oil was there to suck up ) at 700kpa at 7000rpm with a 30mm Berg pump. When fitting a larger oil pump you not only get a higher pressure but also a much larger volume. therefore, if we cut down the volume being pumped then it will take longer to drain the 3.5 litres in the sump giving us a few extra seconds of supply before we run dry. A 26mm very plugged oil pump was fitted as a result of this logic.

How to get more oil into the deep sump?
Once again a two-pronged attack was required. A new oil pick up was bent with open flowing bands so that there was no added weld-on parts that picked up the oil in the sump. The hood that normally went over the oil strainer area was also not used so that the oil in the engine sump had a much larger area to fall through.

As I always ran the oil level at the top mark of the dip stick and already used windage push rod tubes, the premise was that a fair bit of oil was sitting in the rocker cover area ( because we could not stop the oil from running up the push rod tubes on very hard cornering ) A quick look at Col Matthews' porsche to see what "Big Brother" was using gave us the answer. Two 0.75in. oil returns were fabricated on the bottom of each rocker cover going straight down into the top of each of the sumps four corners. Voila!

As it turned out this system has worked perfectly with the main bearings and CAM bearings being only changed annually and the rod bearings at half yearly intervals.

Now that the engine reliability problems had been solved we went about a full revamp of the steering and suspension set ups. Its funny how the fickle finger of fate changes from the "you beaut" thumbs up of success to the heavenly - pointed middle finger of dispair in a matter of seconds.

friday nights trip to the first rund of the Hillclimb Championships at Bathurst was miserable weather, rain, sleet, fog - everything you'd expect going to Bathurst. When we got to the top of River Lett Hill doing about 80 clicks around an 80-rated corner while flat-towing the bug on an A-frame behind the ute, I felt the tail of the ute come out. After a big correction I thought I'd saved it only then to pirouette 360 degrees followed by a 180-degree turnaround and finish up against an embankment. In the olympics that stunt would have gained me a series of 9.5's from the judges...... as it was all we achieved was some battered suspension and sheetmetal.

The left-hand front wheel from Jo's car had come around and hit the left-hand rear wheel of the ute. I had to disconnect the buckled A-frame and flat tow the Beetle into Bathurst with a wire sling. By ten the next morning we had a wheel alignment done, tyres changed over to some non-buckled wheels and a trip to the panel beater to have the bumper and damaged guard knocked out so that I could race.

Meanwhile, the right-hand rear trailing arm was still bent with 2.5 degrees positive camber instead of 1.5 negative, but we still managed to take the class win and set a new record on the day.

This last little adventure was probably the main turning point that helped me change the handling set-up of the car forever. As the beam was bent a tad I did the first of our camber restorations on the top arms and dialled in a two-degree negative per side and the car loved it.

I then got to thinking, "How much negative camber can a Beetle take before it gets totally out of hand?"

They say nothing improves the breed like racing and after one full year of Hillclimbing I now have all the formulas for setting up and making a car handle straight out of the box. By "handle" I mean being able to take on just about any street car on the road today and wave goodbye to them when you come to corners. We started off the year 35th outright at Bathurst and peaked at 10th outright at Huntley in 1993 and to say the team is having a ball is an understatement.

Once the handling and braking has been taken care of you can then concentrate on more engine development. The motor now sports 44 x 37.5 Berg race heads and extensively modified ( by Henry Spicak ) 48mm Webers. The big change for 1994 had been the fitting of a GB 315 ( FK87 ) camshaft as opposed to the old GB311 ( K10 ) on the 112 lobe centres which were set-up retarded.

This one change took .6-second off our eighth mile drag racing times ( 8.9 to 8.3- sec ) and added 9km/h to the terminal speed.

This yarn is being written just before Parkes Hillclimb championship round, so the motor is once again apart but more for a freshen up and re cam to a GB 316 ( FK 89 ).

All these changes have made the Bridgestone 610s unable to cope so a change to gumball Dunlop 78Js should help us to stick. And it will keep on going like this, trying to screw that extra little bit out of the Bug. Because one day it would be nice to go to South Australia to run the class at the Australian Hillclimb Championships and then blow all those twin cam Datsuns away.

We work on the theory that the harder you work the luckier you get.

good read. i was actually reading this a couple of days ago.....

I just had Peter Debiasi fit a bigger sump to the motor he built for me that I've just finished running in. I've been told that it will keep cooler without having to have an oil cooler. I didn't realise there were so many different ones until I read this post. He fitted a CB Performance one I think but I'm not sure what size. It will be interesting to see how it goes. However I'm yet to fit oil pressure and temp gauges yet so it's a bit hard to monitor what the engine is doing.

What sort of motor did you get built?..a 1916?..Peter said he just built a 1916 with a C35 cam and HPMX 40mm carbies..

Sounds like mine. I don't yet have details of the cam specs as he hasn't provided me with a detailed invoice yet but it's a 1916 with twin 40's. Sounds like you know more about it then I do. I only got it back about 6 weeks ago. I asked for a 1916 with twins that I could use everyday and let him decide how he was going to do it. And that's what I got. Sent it back last week for an oil change, tune, bigger sump and new exhaust. Drives nice now.

Sounds good!!..you'll have to post some pics of your car and the new donk..now your getting me all excited.Im about to take the motor there shortly..just getting all the parts together at the moment.

Sorry, off the sump topic a little bit. Some advice that I can offer for your rebuild; think about presentation while the engine is out of the car i.e cleaning, wire routing, etc. I was overseas for the entire rebuild so I didn't get a chance to clean the engine bay properly or paint the tinware myself or check in during the whole process. I supplied a stainless firewall kit for him to fit and that was about it so I didn't really get the WOW factor that you should get when you open the engine compartment after a sweet engine rebuild. However, it didn't take too much driving to give me a permanent grin from the torque and the noise. I'm a happy camper now.

All bases covered..😎(I hope)..I was going to give him the car running but after cleaning the firewall I noticed that it was rusted out up near the window..so as it turns out the motor will have to come out for the firewall repair anyway.So the motor will be going to Peter with powdercoated tinware,anodised Scat pulley kit,CSP valve covers,billet block offs and accessories and chrome alternator, new dizzy and direct fire ignition.

While being built..the car is going to a crash shop to replace the firewall and luggage area with a repair panel and the engine bay painted in 2pak. The Ill trailer the car to peter to put it in and get it running..well thats the plan..lol

Better than any plan I had. But mine was never meant to be a show stopper, just a daily hack to get to work and keep up with the traffic (mostly ahead of it). I am a sucker for a nice engine bay and yours sounds like it's going to look pretty impressive. I'm starting to tidy mine up bit by bit though, so it's at least respectable.

It will look clean hopefully but thats probably it!..lol..Did you supply the tin work around the motor and if so what type?..What exhaust did you change to?.. did you drop the car to his house or did he ask to pick it up?..sorry for all the questions but about to sink 5k plus into the wifes vw..lol.Interested in some pics of your set up..PM me if you wish. regards Jason

sander288 wrote:what do you need heaps of extra capacity for? The Pobjoy sump adds 400ml to the capacity and you will NEVER loose pressure or pick-up whether going round corners or over bumps.

Unless Stan has changed his patent,
the ones I have CC'ed were only 250ml .

I think they are great solution to most people's needs,
but I prefer some extra volume available.

On that note, there is no need for anything larger than a 26mm pump.

On some engines,
I have radiused the case entry into the sump to replenish the volume as fast as possible,
and adding a special baffle within the deep sump can be a huge improvement.

Moving the "bell" down lower with the sump is also an important option,
but this must be either custom made, or of a 36hp origin
to allow the deep sump to be assembled over it.

I agree that the square deep sumps are a much better option than the wide ones.

Adding a baffle to these is a good solution.

Interesting to note that most new cases have a crooked oil pick up tube.
This needs to be addressed,
even on stock engines.

The crooked tube will suck air much sooner,
so replacement with a good German one,
or some thoughtful fabrication is in order.

He picked the car up from my house with his tow truck (quite a handy service with no charge). He also painted the existing tinware black (a standard service he provides with engine rebuilds I think. You're probably better off doing it yourself though if you want it to look better than just tidy). As for the exhaust, I asked for one of those tuck away ones with the intention of lowering the car a lot and taking the bumpers off but he ordered me an Empi exhaust that has extractors feeding into a single muffler and then into a single tailpipe that comes out at an angle on the right hand side but sticks out to about in line with the bumper (I don't know what it's called). It apparently flows well and it sounds alright so I guess it will do for now. I accepted it because I needed the car to get to work. It seems to be alright though.

I'll get some pics up soon.

Cool..thanks for the info..It will be good to get the wifes car running with a healthy 1916 twin port rather than the 1500 single port half dead motor..cant wait!.