august 23rd saw the start of "the jam" '04, and it was set to be quite a prominent one for the hvwc, debuting not only our 1st racecar but also
allegedly the 1st electric car ever to run santa pod dragway! anyway after just a week or so of planning we set about our 50 quid beetle in the pub
car park with grinders and welders and started to cut as much weight out as possible, we came across an old 1960's milk float which still seemed to
have all it's running gear so we striped out the motor gave it a bit of a clean up and fired it up, it still worked!
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don't worry it's a VW thing
wacked1
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posted on August 24th, 2004 at 09:32 AM
we then built a sub frame for the motor and had a coupling machined, so we could couple it to the existing beetle gearbox that meant no complicated
transmission work for us.
to get any kind of half decent speed out of the car we were going to need a lot of power so we sourced 12 lead acid car batteries, which supplied us
with 144volts and 540amps! speed control switches, resistors and contactors came from the milk float.
we we're put in touch with the megabug beetle by paul at team botch, he sold us a line lock and 6 point roll cage, richard from all smiles made our
glass fibre front end and decklid and also supplied us with a sparco bucket seat and carbon fibre door cards. a mat black was paint job chosen for
ease and to give it that stealthy look and contrasting tango orange was to symbolise the electric side if it. standard wheels were used but with
205/70's on the back and 115/50's from a space saver on the front. much to our surprise, it was now starting to look like a racecar!
so, we put the finishing touches on when we arrived at santa pod on friday, the whole team was working franticly to get it finished, due to our haste
we had incorrectly wired some of the switch gear so on our first test run we blew a switch, but we overcame the problem and saturday morning a new one
arrived, we managed 3 runs through the course of the day, the1st we had gear selection problems, but by the second run we'd sorted that and got our
highest speed of 54.85mph, and by the 3rd after some tinkering we ran through with a 21.414 second 1/4 mile! that's faster than a standard 1300
beetle!
black current... you did us proud.
massive shout out to…
richard @ all smiles
paul @ team botch
pauline @ the sun inn
amtecs ltd
josh, jack and bella!
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wacked1
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posted on August 24th, 2004 at 09:34 AM
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VWFREAK
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