Well it's probaley about time i did a bit of a right up on my latest ride which has now been out and about a bit ,but we'll start with a couple of pics




Well last year myself and Eileen were once again at Valla and i hadn't been there 2 minutes and Mr Berry was giving me a flogging for not showing up in any form of VW , so the seed was planted .
So as we all do you troll the swap meets etc and do the valla thing , well by Sun morning i had a plan .
Buy my mates 62 ratty looking front garden orniment and we have six weeks to build a car for Warwick
With the car hame a week after Valla it was quickly apprent that this was gunna be a big ask for me to complete the car in that six weeks , so i invited my good freind Graham to help me in exchange for dirves at Warwick which didn't take to much convincing .
So we had a plan , some builders and one very ratty 62 beetle , but when your building a rat it was definetly a great start .
For the first couple of weeks i think my neibours thought i was quite mad as the'dd all seen a few of my rides over the years but none that looked as daggy or rusty as this girl but i pursued on and cut out and replaced any strutualy rusty areas while Graham consentrated on getting it to run to start with , with the original 1200 so we could drive and check the gearbox .
With the rust now all repaired and the gearbox getting a tick we moved onto the rest of the Mechanicals .
At this time i still owned part of CVD and so we pulled down an unknown 1600TP out of the racks and gave it a quick run with its stock carby and dizzy etc and all was sweet , good compresion , no rattles , and from the condition of the gaskets probaley a low milage motor , so it to got a tick of approval for the ride and all the tinware removed and cleaned up and repaired and my 36 DRLA Dellorto fitted along with a 009 dizzy and a set of old EMPI merged headers .
So things were starting to come together .
Now if ya gunna build a Rat , it's gotta be low so as seen above it is reasonably low with just on 100mm to it's lowest point . The front end is just an adjustable beam with stock spindles and the rear end is approx down i full outer spline which i think gives it a nice stance .
Now seeing as we were going drag racing with this ride we also fitted an offraod front gearbox strap , bell housing strap , and i fabricated a berg style rear tramp bar under the rear of the engine which all in all makes for a bloody noisy ride , but come hell or high water that box ain't movin .
To finish of the ride i refitted all the guards to the car including the already rusty RH rear guard , bought the rear centrelines , cleaned up and drilled out the clips of aset of front stock wheels , and of coarse painted them the retro looking bright orange and lastly had some sign writing done and i chequer painted the headlight tins and tail light bucket .
With it all finished we ran abest time of 11.37sec at Warwick which was a second and a half quicker than any other 1600 at warwick and not bad going with a lot of carburation issues over the weekend .
Well come 2011 and none of my other rides were getting any closer to getting back on the road ,( although as i write there getting closer) so it was decided that i'dd get it registered which over a couple of weeks was acheived to as you see it today .
Hope you enjoy it and we'll see some of you in Sydney for the Nationals in the " Rat Racer "

Crikey, you think she'll make it to Sydney Andrew???

Hahaha. Cool post mate, thanks for throwing the blame my way , faster times this year hey????

Yea carby is all sorted now so hopefully into the 10's and between myself and Graham we'l be packing plenty of ear plugs for the Sydney run , as a strapped in box and no floor linning definetly makes for 10 hrs of pain

What, just ten hours?

Heard of concrete, two bags?

very cool beetle.saw it at dubs a few weeks ago.wish i had one just like it!

Andrew,

That looks so cool!

very cool

looks the goods mate

Cool Towdster,i like what you've done with it

Here's some more pics....

Funny how those first two shots IICabs lok like there standing still when in actual fact they were at 110kmh on the Gold Coast to Brisbane Freeway

Not too bad a pic from the phone....

cool little rig

as Borat would say " Very nice, i like "

Well with Warwick only a few weeks away i finally decided i best have a look at the compresion leak it has had for a little while , just thinking it'll be a poorly seated head to barrell ....................
Well once the heads were off that was quickly deminished as a pair of well cracked heads with the main heard compresion leak being a dirty big crack straight up the side of number 2 plug , so as i right i am waiting on a reco set of stock TP heads to arrive from Jax Heads @ Lismore .
With the heads under control we pulled the barrells of to fit some new rings and was greated with sections of rings dropping at my feet ,mmmmmmmmmmmm poor little 1600 only driven on Sundays i tell ya , but dam hard .
Anyway in keeping with my strict budget i set myself on this car i am quite happy to just give the barrells a hone and the pistons a clean up as neither are past servicable use so this afternoon myself and IICab have honed the barrells and all is looking sweet for engine together and back in car by next Sunday .
With the engine now sorted in my head and a plan for time etc , one of the other issues that has always slowed the car is it's slpping clutch so i have also ordered a 1700 pound pressure plate and if that slips well ltes just say the 1200 box just sprayed itself all over the track on a flat change and if it hasn't hopefully were on our way to a 10 sec pass which is not bad for a dodgy old 1600 .
See ya's at Warwick .

Andrew

Looking great Andrew!

Sooo much win.

Well after a few headaches the rat racer is all back together and going as well as it ever will with the current running gear .
By sun morning just gone it was running again although it did have the flat spot from hell which has taken myself a dam lot of phone calls and a very good parts collecting wife to sort out .
What was the problem you all say , well lets just say that i am a determined idiot at times and was not gunna let a single 36drla dellorto beat me .
Anyway hope to see you all at Warwick .

Andrew

Well, was it the pump bleed???

Love this car!!

Did this ever sell?

Nope. He drove it to valla on the weekend....

in all it's ratty glory
I'm sure he is keeping it

seen this this morning going north towards grafton with a semi up his backside ,looked and sounded great

Has had an upgrade in the last week to some 40mm Kadrons and is already a lot sweeter drive .
As said above yes i have chosen to keep the rat for now as it is currently my only drivable vw , but come the day of the Towdster and it will be available again ....................................mabey !!!!!!!!!!

Awesome ...what a RAT !

Well another Warwick has been and gone , thanks Craig and the Warwick crew for another great weekend .
At valla this year i finally picked up some kadrons for the poor old rat as i was well and truly over the airspeed issues of the 36 DRLA Dellorto , so after a rebuild on went the Kaddies and it has become such a bettter drive it is amazing .
Anyway back to Warwick , we arrived up at Warwick on Thur arvo as the Manx Club had orginised a winery tour at Stanthorp for friday which was a great day of just cruising and sampling the wines of the district .
Fri night was rowdy as usual in some camps as partys went way into the am , which led onto some pretty sore heads at the sat morning display in town.
Back at the track and the Rat Racer was striped of any unessasery weight ie most of the interior ( not that it has much ) and scrutineered , yay time to go racing again .
As i drove up for the first pass i only had one thing in my mind and that was to get better time than last year which was and 11.071 which was then the best the car had done with the DRLA fitted , and so it was the little rat was not out to dissapoint me with theat first run being a 11.015 @ 60.32mph with a 2.291 60 ft .
With the first nervous run out of the way we could only improve from there so up we go for the next run , a better burn out , staged with the clipped in handbrake knob , loaded up the gearbox with around 4000rpm and we were out of there for the best run of the weekend with a 10.879 @ 61.22mph with a 2.231 60 ft
Had a few more runs sat arvo with no changes to the car , red lighted on one run , missed 2nd on another but all in all the car was running great and the runs were all pretty close
Now some of you are probably thinking these time are not earth shattering but keep in mind this is only a 1600 , stock heads with stock valves and ports , no ratio rockers , stock cam , unknown comp ratio , a 009 , some 40mm kaddies and some old merged empi extractors with a stinger .
As per usual sat arvo at Warwick and the rain came down , oh and Westi , still trying to get his car to fire up lol .
Sunday morning brought the sun back out and i gave the Rat a bit of a tune up with a points & timming adjustment , and check how the plugs were burning etc , which was pretty good considering the jets were a guess at best ( 125 mains by the way with 28 venturies and 55 idles )
To add some fun for Sunday i decide a couple of weeks ago why not get a little crazy and get dress up as the crazy green monster again so between the test and tune run and the eliminations i became Shrek again , which brought plenty of laughs and the kids loved it big and small
Again we were running in the 11.0 to 10.88 range so i dialled in a 10.87 for the round robin eliminations and was going well with 3 full wins from 3 starts ....................................... but alas the fun was ll over come the burn out in round four when the left axle had decided it had , had enough .

MMMMMMMMMM upgrade that brocken axle to a blown diff centre