Budget-build 1968 VW Beetle drag racing - Our Shed

By: Glenn Torrens - Words & Photos

Date: 03.02.2022

Glenn Torrens fits the final bits to his budget-built brown Bug and christens it at a drag race event with the 'big boys'

Over more than a decade of weekend motorsport in my bright yellow VW Beetle, I’d acquired a pile of spare engine parts. Sitting around my garage, I had a pair of beaut high-performance cylinder heads; twin carburettors, an extractor-type exhaust, a good set of valve rockers, a crankshaft and some rods and an engine block – known in the VW scene as an engine case.

The engine is a big-bore 1916cc with twin carbs and ported heads for around 90hp at the rear wheels. A standard VW motor has about 35 so this is quite snappy 

Other than wistfully looking at them occasionally and thinking, "Ah, one day…" I hadn’t done anything with these spare parts for years. However, after I sold my yellow VW Bug race car in 2017, I decided that, with some spare cash from its sale, I’d ask my engine builder Stan Pobjoy to top-up that parts pile with new pistons and a performance camshaft and assemble the whole lot into a hotty street motor.

Great idea!

After the body’s rust was repaired, the inside and underside surfaces were repainted in the original Safari Tan colour and then I began the Bug’s rebuild

But with my hill-climb Bug sold and no other road-registerable Bugs in my garage at the time, my nice new motor had no VW to be put in! So in many ways the brown ‘bitsa’ Bug project came along at the right time… As did whisper of a terrific new motorsport event, a tarmac sprint/drag race at the airport in the lovely NSW town of Taree.

I applied these roundels to the doors to make it quick and easy to add a black-tape race number for weekend track events. Plus, they add to the retro-racer appearance

After considering things for about two seconds, I devised a plan: I’d put my nice new high-performance 1916cc motor – sitting unused on my garage floor for two years – into my nice new brown Bug project car and have some fun at the drags!
With my brown Bug on the road and registered, the new engine needed running-in. This is the process where an engine’s new and freshly machined internals are encouraged to settle against each other by driving the engine at differing revs and road speeds for 800-1000km. After this, the engine’s important torque settings and clearances are checked or reset, the sump drained and filled with fresh oil and the carburettors re-tuned.

Then it’s ready for action!

Fresh paint and polished original chrome spears adorn the dash. It’s fitted with a later km/h type speedo. The minimalist press-studded carpet kit can be removed in seconds  

I couldn’t do an 800km drive in one stint so I ran-in the motor over several shorter twilight treks of 150-200km. I have a couple of performance-built gearboxes, too, so after the engine’s important first service – and with the VW’s air-cooled engine being famously quick and easy to remove – I was able to fit my little brown Bug with a box cogged for good acceleration: perfect for a quick sprint along the tarmac of the Taree plane station!

I had this old suitcase laying around so I chucked it in the Bug’s back area. Why? Just Cos… it’s the right colour!

With another very well-developed 1916cc engine, my yellow hill climb Bug was capable of a 13.85-second quarter mile, about as quick as a 1980s Porsche 911 Turbo. With this more modest engine, I guesstimated my brown Bug would be capable of around 15.5s – about as quick as a typical 1990s Commodore or Falcon V8 and around six seconds quicker than a standard Bug.

A spin on my local dyno – at G-Force Performance – confirmed the tune of the Weber carburettors to be spot-on. With around three times its standard power, this Bug is a lot of fun!

The Taree event was run over an 1/8-mile – half a quarter. However, drag racers have a ‘rule of thumb’ conversion, 1.55, that estimates quite closely the elapsed time (ET) that a car is capable of in a full quarter based on its ET in the 1/8. Straight off the street, my little Bug ran a 9.69 so the 1.55 factor suggests a 15.01 for the full quarter… quicker than where I guessed it would be. Excellent!

It’s not a dedicated track Bug but I’ll grab any opportunity for some off-street motorsport fun! The Taree Airport Drags should become a regular event when the world returns to normal-ish 

Since that Taree event in 2019, lockdowns (among other things) have thwarted my ambition of taking my little Bug to Sydney Dragway on a Wednesday night for a fun run down the full quarter-mile. And sunny Sunday drives along twisty roads with those Weber carburettors warbling 6000rpm between grabbing gears in my close-ratio gearbox have also been disappointingly few.

The light flashes green and he’s off. You can tell that cos its bum has drooped

Anyhow, for my little brown Beetle’s resurrection, it’s job done for now. I began with a bare brown body bought from another local Bug nut’s backyard and finished with a great handling, reasonably quick and characterful ‘outlaw’ street/track Beetle.

I’ll enjoy this Bug for a year or two, then sell it with a standard motor – or possibly engine-less to cop someone else’s horsepower – to another VW nut. Who wants it?

From Unique Cars #460, December 2021

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