DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

All four wings now the same;

last one done

Nicely done. I'm sure the pictures don't do justice to the hundreds of hours of work in the shape.

Hi Gary,
Thanks for your comment. Can you image how much time, energy and cost must have gone into the Porsche Singer shape! Certainly given a second go I would enhance some small details to give a better overall look. But really happy so far, at least my hours are free.

Morning,
I spent a lot of time during the chassis/ suspension build to maintain all the original geometry setting and build as much adjustability into various cambers, toe in, toe out, ackerman, off-sets, ride heights as possible. Confident the rear is going to be fine. However, now having had the time to look at settings using some better equipment, it appears I need a little more caster angle adjustment. 3 to 6 degrees positive caster appears to be better than my current 2 to 3 degrees. Then I should be able to get self-centring a light/ manageable steering and a camber to give a planted feel. So out with the grinder and tourch .
First I did a drawing and checked some more measurements;



The idea is to add a further 70 mm steel cap on the side of the shock tower (blue) and then create a steel cap (red) for the top of the shock to move around the contact patch of the tyre.
The shock tower is now cut and the cap fabricated and all clamped into position ready for TIG welding. The cutting alone was another 22 hours! Will post some more pics of progress soon.

22 hours! Sheesh!

It would have only been 2 hours but needed a break

Hi Greg
Always difficult to cover all bases, better you picked it up now has for the IVA test the steering does need to be able to self centre to pass.

Nice to see it all in one colour eh.

Hi Rich,
The adjustable caster angle will allow me to set the shocks back to say 6 degrees for a very pronounced self centring alignment after a turn for the IVA test and then reach a compromise between good self centring and low steering effort. A large 15" to maybe 16" steering wheel will help. Plan to start with the very padded Porsche 944 wheel which is about 14.5" to get a feel and then take it from there.
Still playing around with colour, most days its slate grey hands down, but do wonder about grey/ blue over red oxide colour and then colour sand (2500 grit) back to reveal a well loved patina look.

First stone chip in a flawless/ expensive paint finish would be quite painful. As I want to drive the car I think I would be more inclined if I was not worrying about protecting the finish.

IVA test first!

Do it right and then drive it anyway. Better to have a car looking nice and gradually looking 'patinated' after thousands of miles, than looking like crap from the beginning and getting worse as you clock up the miles... Nothing worse than fake patina.

Wise words indeed.
Stick with the slate grey theme or maybe Fjord blue or black, guess will need to commit to a colour at some point.

Ok, so the caster angle is now adjustable to an approx +5 degrees which should be sufficient to give self centring and not give heavy steering. I don't know what impact this change has had on the rest of the suspension geometry but time will tell. So the development continues

Firstly fabricated two stainless steel 4mm caps with 10 mm slots on opposite sides. Bolts pass through the slots to allow the cap to slide forwards and backwards, once the correct angle is set then the whole cap is locked off.



Then as mentioned cut the side off the old shock tower and welded an extension on the side to allow further rear movement. Interesting welding near the oil line and some cables!



Just need to do a little metal cleaning, prime and paint, will most likely complete when I get the car back home.







Time to complete mini project took around 34 hours with lots of head scratching, mugs of coffee, and larking about

Spent yesterday working on the front suspension. I have now managed to get four high tensile 12.9 x M10 bolts in place for each shock tower and maintain adjustability. So difficult to get any sort of drill/ drill bit combination into a small space. The difficulties of making changes after the event

So visited the Intermaccanica flickr site to check out the wide body speedster build progress, looks all but finished;









This speedster really does look fantastic, attention to detail surpasses mass produced cars. The site is a great source of ideas for any speedster builders.

click pic


Well now its mostly alive looking at the throttle linkage smoothness and checking clutch before moving onto suspension geometry and tune, then home!

Yes.... It's alive. A few teething problems l guess to get it running sweet.

Morning,
Rich, you are right about the fine tuning. I think there will be several improvements made before IVA
I have used an off the shelf bowden cable outer and inner to engage the accelerator pedal to the throttle linkage at the back. It's nearly 3m long, whilst it operates, it is not very smooth. Difficult to achieve a smooth progressive pedal it tends to be lumpy in feel. So I am currently fabricating a set of stainless brackets in order to use the original Beetle throttle rod, this is the rod which runs a roller at the pedal and feeds through the tunnel. I plan to use a close fitting stainless tube to support the throttle rod and bolt/ weld brackets at the tunnel. The bowden cable can then just pull the throttle linkage at the back in a straight line.
Will post some picture