(c)Tero Virta, 1995-2009

Monday, February 25, 2008

Flashback: West Coast Aircoolers at American Car Show '98





Shots from 10 years ago. My and Heebah '63 Beetles side by side in 1998 American Car Show.

Both of us started stroker engine projects after we got our cars sorted and neither of managed to collect all the parts and get the engine up and running before the cars were gone. I sold my '63 in 2000 and Heebah passed his '63 forward to Otso little later.

Both of our engines were based on 84mm Okrasa cranks but that's where similarities end, I opted for driveability and Tomi all out performance. I tried my engine two occasions at drag strip and got best et of 13.7 while Tomi has been a lot faster. Couldn't check out how much since Jyri's list wasn't available..

Heebah's '63 sported Judson supercharged 1200cc at that time, "Old Speed" before the Belgians even invented the term :)

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Misc Cabriolet Stuff


Started assembling some easy parts to get the car look like a Beetle again :) Most of the parts I stored when teared the car apart now look like shit when compared with new paint, new repro parts and some NOS goodies. Damn..


NOS steering lock and proper NOS 6-wire indicator switch with powder coated steering column. I got very nice deal of powder coating various parts from Tmi Jouko Koli near Hyvinkää. I was going to use my EMPI GT wheel, along with some NOS EMPI stuff like EZR shifter and wooden dashboard knobs etc, but not so sure anymore since the ivory looks very good against the red and would like to keep the number of different colours minimal.

We teared the old Cabriolet top apart yesterday since it also requires little bit of tweaking and new paint. The top frame was actually far better than I have thought, first such surprise in this project :) Since the amount of shit in my life is static, I wonder what other surprise I am going to face in near future..


I hadn't realized that the wooden top parts were originals in my car, they're bit busted though. The wooden part around the rear of the body was totally shot and it was a small miracle how it managed holding the rear of the top in place over the years. I was going to replace all wooden parts except the header bow but now also the quarter window facings look still usable. CSP parts that I had bought couple of years ago were also nice surprise qualitywise, or actually not, since CSP-stuff has't never let me down. Originals on the left, very good match in shape. (Thanks Helge!)

One task that I am not looking forward is polishing the better set of Earlies. I am going to use 4.5" and 5.5" combination.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

My Cabriolet returned home


I am extremely pleased how my Cabriolet turned out in the end. Big thanks to Kari Kuusharju who did the hardest parts in the beginning of the project and Juhani Laaksonen who finished body work and painted the Cabriolet along with his brother Marko. Just awesome work!

Now lots of opportunities to me to screw up other's hard work while assembling the rest of it :)


Nicely tucked among my '55 Oval, Luftsick Takis' 90's looker and Vilho's Sonderbus project.

Monday, February 11, 2008

This is what the cat meows..

Just came home from re-uniting the body to the pan.





Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Volksworld Wallpapers




One of my favourite cars featured in my favourite magazine. I had nicked every photo of Paul Smoot's Oval I could from theSamba.com and that'll influence my own project too. I had chosen red colour and have couple of sets of Fuchs laying in the garage, but this feature was all the confirmation I needed.

For other cool wallpapers see Volksworld's site, other cool GFK rides see the GFK Fest in theSamba.

Monday, February 4, 2008