Slow Fridays in the office can get expensive ....

I have been accused of being obsessive, mono-maniacal, ultra focussed, 'extra' (by my daughters) and I see those as good things ... mostly. The downside is that I get a new project and it fully occupies my mind when I have other, important things to do as well. Luckily, after a hellishly hard week or so in the office its a summer holiday Friday and I can look at some of the major design features for Bub.

No matter what Bub is going to look like when I'm finished, there are a few things that are common to all the ideas: sports seats, roll cage, big tyres and raised suspension. 

Big tyres or Raised Suspension?

Yup, I'm heading, ultimately, to the sand, gravel and rocks of the Sahara Desert and Atlas Mountains. Rust2Sahara allows you an extra £500 budget for preparing your car for the rigours of the desert on top of the normal £500 'buy and prep' limit for the other rallies. Your car will need raised suspension and bash plates as well or have a high tolerance for grinding and smashing noises.

My solution for Bub is BOTH big tyres and raised suspension!

Why both when Beetles are already high? 

It's like this, Beetles (especially 1303's) are 'nose high' and 'rear low' and after 45 years the rear torsion bar suspension is weak. Levelling the suspension is dead easy and essentially free - turn the trailing arm on the torsion bar by 1 or 2 notches and you can have 2" to 4" of extra height on the rear (I'll ignore the slight change to the geometry). You can also get (I've heard) new 'raised' spring plates that do the same job but better, for £200. The front is just fine ... step away from the Macpherson strut ..... although I have an idea of how to raise it as well if necessary.

See what I mean about 'nose high'?

The other REALLY easy way of getting more ground clearance is to change the standard 24.5" diameter tyres for, say 235/75 All Terrain tyres ( which gains you an instant 2" rise (gearing geekery alert for later...). If you need new tyres anyway then this is zero cost option as well.

click the link below to

 see the bigger picture

In Bub's case, the current tyres are 22" at the front and 23" at the back (185/55 & 185/65) and I've bought remould 235/75s which arrive on Monday and then we'll see exactly how high he's going.

cheap, chunky, great for sand/gravel/rock

Bigger diameter tyres might not fit under the arches so a simple fix to the new problem you've just caused is ... raising the suspension.

See? You've got to do both ... and get as much as 5" of extra ground clearance for basically no cost.

Ah, but for every solution there are 2 new problems!

The eagle eyed will have spotted that 235s are also 2" wider so there is an issue about the tyres sticking out (a technical legal issue to be fair) but have you thought about turning circle? If the tyres are 2" greater radius then they will catch the bodywork before the steering lock stops and affect the turning circle and possibly damage the car and your new tyres.
In the Landrover world we fit backspaced wheels and/or billet wheel spacers ... which fix the turning circle issue but make the tyres stick out even more .... (and put more strain on bearings, bushes, steering joints ...). We will cross those issues when we get to them by basically not giving a fuck.

Gearing - this is a freebie

Beetles are slow. even with bigger engines they are merely less slow. It doesn't matter how powerful your engine, the car will have the same cruising speed for any given rpm however it will get there faster. So how to gain proper motorway speeds in a 'standard' Beetle? Spend £1,100 on a 'Freeway Flyer' gearbox to gain 14% increase in gearing ... or fit 235/75 tyres ..... nice.

 For the record I will be fitting a proper engine ... once funds allow.

Finally,

Sports seats - no need to explain

Roll cage - obvious really but covers safety, being cool as, and having somewhere to fix seatbelts to, and being cool as ...